The Amara Difference: Find out How we Lock in the Taste, Texture and Nutrients of Fresh Ingredients

Wondering about Amara’s process and product? Here’s everything you need to know about how we do things, and what makes us different. 

If you want the TL:DR (too long/didn’t read) — Amara uses nutrition protection technology (NPT) to deliver fresh, wholesome, delicious, and nutritious foods directly to your family’s kitchen table, without any of the fuss of meal prep or refrigerated deliveries. Unlike traditional repeated high-heat processing, NPT preserves fruits & veggies’ original nutrient structures, flavors, and textures. With Amara, mealtime is easierand healthier, because when it comes to feeding our children, we shouldn’t have to choose. 

At Amara, we: 

• Always use real, whole foods to make our products. 
• Use NPT to lock in foods’ natural tastes, textures, and nutrients. 
• Never use any additives, preservatives, free-flow agents, or added sugar. 
• Source and prep each ingredient individually. 
• Deliver homemade food in the convenience of powder. 

Read on to learn more about the many advantages that come along with choosing Amara: 

How Most Baby Food Is Made

Before I came to Amara, I didn’t actually know how most baby food is made. There are some things that have come a long way — baby food manufacturers are no longer adding salt or sugar to their recipes, for example, as they did in the 1950s/60s (!) — but in many ways this is really an area where we haven’t seen much improvement in the last, oh, fifty years or so… 

The traditional baby food manufacturing process is pretty well-established at this point:  pre-made purees (often, applesauce, as this is one of the most economical blends) are heated, mixed, and reheated. Rinse and repeat. (This blew my mind, seriously: baby food is made from… baby food?)Okay…

The problem with these standard protocols is that repeated high-heat processing strips foods of their natural, nourishing qualities.Food products that have been subjected to high-heat treatment have less fiber, less nutrients, less flavor, and higher concentrations of sugar than the real foods from which they are derived. Think about the difference between a fresh-picked apple, applesauce, and apple juice, for example — every time you “cook down” the real/original food, it loses some of its nutrient value, a lot of its fiber, a great deal of its unique taste, and even without adding any sugar, it’s made sweeter. 

As a result of these exact alterations, most baby food is… pretty much the same. It tastes the same, has the same mouthfeel, the same texture, and often even the same smells and colors. In a word, it’sbland. 

At Amara, we’re doing things entirely differently… 

The Amara Advantage 

We at Amara are dedicated to making food that tastes, smells, and nourishes just like a homemade meal — but with the same ease and convenience as packaged food. 

Here’s what we’re doing to deliver on that: 

• Our process starts and ends with real, whole foods. 

Instead of using repeated high heat (as most baby food jars and pouches do) that concentrates sugar levels and sacrifices fruits’ and vegetables’ underlying nutrients and textures, everything we make is prepared from whole-foods ingredients. Our textures reflect the real deal: actualmangos, fresh corn, hulled black beans, mixed berries…

Rather than relying on high-heat processing, which strips foods of their flavors and nutrients, NPT makes use of very cold temperatures to lock in the taste, texture, and nutrients of fresh. Imagine it this way: NPT freezes our ingredients and recipes in real time, retaining fresh foods’ original properties, features, and composition.NPT preserves foods’ colors, textures, smells, and flavors — and leaves the nutrient structure entirely intact. 

Instead of a puree, our end result is a dry powder that’s designed to be mixed with water, infant formula, or breast milk. Simply adding liquid to any of Amara’s organic baby food instantly transforms the preserved powder back into fresh, colorful, tasty food.It’s like magic, ya’ll, really(science is kind of like magic!). 

“Comparing Amara to other baby food brands really is like the difference between a homemade dinner and a microwave package.” 

~Amara mom 

Another thing about NPT? It does not alter the sugar concentration of foods. In fact, when we asked a third-party lab to test our products, we learned that Amara baby foods contain 50% less sugar than the leading baby food pouches! With NPT, there’s no tradeoff between convenience and nutrition — because we shouldn’t have to choose between the two. 

Our commitment on this one extends from step one through final production — not only dowe not use anything but real foods in our recipes and production, but we also don’t use ingredients that contain or have been treated with additives, preservatives, or other agents. From start to finish, what you see on the ingredient list is ALL that’s included. 

We do everything we possibly can to maximize the flavor and nutritional value of every food we produce, and that starts with the freshest ingredients. We spend “as long as it takes” to find the absolute best ingredients for all of our products and recipes — sourcing each ingredient separately, buying the best apples from one farm, the best black beans from another, and the best mango from yet another.

We work closely with nutrition scientists to prepare each individual ingredient specifically for babies: every food demands a different level of optimal cooking to be best suited for babies’ digestive systems while also hitting the highest nutrient density, so we take the time to prepare each food separately. (By the way,cooking food is different from nuking it with excessive high-heat treatments… like the difference between carefully blanching your broccoli and boiling it into a mushy mess.) Instead of heating all of our ingredients together, we analyze the best way to achieve optimal nutrient density from each fruit or vegetable. Often, it’s just like you’d do it in your own kitchen! You wouldn’t cook a banana at home — so why would we?

Not only that, but we prepare all of our products with the same care and detail as a treasured family recipe. We work directly with nutritionists and a chef to develop our food pairings, each of which is designed to deliver on both flavor and nutrition. Every recipe of ours is derived from both culinary and scientific expertise — and we’re in constant collaboration with pros in the kitchen and the lab to keep refining and improving what we’re doing. 

It may seem odd to think of baby food as a powder, but it’s actually incredibly advantageous:

Our powdered baby food blends allow you to make a smooth transition to solid foods, because you can mix Amara with the familiar flavors of breast milk and/or formula, and the consistency is 100% adjustable — you can add slightly more liquid for a thinner puree or use less for a chunkier blend. (That means you can make Amara a stage 1 thin puree, or a thicker stage 2 or stage 3 baby food puree.) And if you wind up with leftover pouches after your child transitions to finger foods, it doesn’t need to go to waste, because all of our baby food blends come with simple finger food recipes on the side of each box. 

Making powdered baby food blends is also more environmentally friendly. We don’t have to ship water, which reduces our carbon footprint, and our packaging demands 12x less plastic than traditional baby food puree pouches. It’s a win all around. 

Our Mission 

Equally important to our process is our commitment to it — to you and your family. We’re doingwhat we’re doing because we know that a healthy diet is SO important to a healthy life.  Studies show that your brain pathways, gut microbiome, and food preferences are all defined in the first 7 years of life. So the truth is, when it comes to nutrition, if we set babies and kids on the right path from a young age, they will live better, feel better, and think better.For the rest of their lives.

For years, parents and families have had to settle when it comes to their baby’s food — or else spend hours making it themselves. We’re done with that! We know that it matters what we feed our babies; they deserve better than over-processed, nutrient-depleted, tasteless and textureless foods. And we at Amara can promise you just that: we’re bringing the brightest, freshest, most nutritious foods and recipes direct to your table, without any required meal prep or cumbersome refrigerated food delivery. 

We know you and your baby will see, smell, and taste the difference. Have fun, friends!