Long-life baby food often has the vitamins leached out. One mother set out to change all that.

It makes you stop and think when Hillary Graves, the founder of Little Dish toddler meals and a mother of two, tells you that “shop-bought baby food should not be older than your baby”.

The truth is that most baby food in bottles, jars and pouches (whether organic or standard), have a shelf-life of about 18 months, which means that the lamb hotpot you give your nine-month-old could have been produced at the time he or she was being conceived.

Of course, such foods are perfectly safe because all ambient baby foods have to be heat treated to 121C for a minimum of at least four minutes to kill any bugs. It is this treatment that gives them such a long shelf-life. But this process — before the product even gets to your shopping basket — almost wholly destroys vitamin C and most B vitamins, dulls the natural pigments in foods making the end product less vibrant, and alters the flavour and consistency of the ingredients.

It was all this that, in 2006, inspired Graves, pregnant with her first child, to come up with a fresher option for mothers to feed their children. “I thought other mums will feel the same as me and would like the chance to buy fresh, ready-made meals that they pick up in the chilled section of the supermarket,” she says.

Originally from New York and a former vice-president of marketing at iVillage.com, a leading website for women in America, it was more her business acumen than any nutrition expertise that helped to form her idea. Having spotted a gap in the market, she set up with her business partner John Stapleton, a food technician, and they consulted a paediatric dietician.

Now based in West London, Graves, 39, says: “Together we did a straw poll of the mothers we knew. This anecdotal research came back 100 per cent positive and so Little Dish ready-made fresh meals for toddlers was born.”

We are chatting in her light, airy Notting Hill kitchen — more coffee bar than Cath Kidston, with its gleaming chrome surfaces and bar stools — as Graves helps her sons to make healthy looking blueberry muffins. Much of the development work on the range started in Graves’s kitchen in which she cooked up recipes and her sons Monty, 3, and Ridley, 1, had the first go at taste testing. She is clearly relaxed with the children being up to their arms in flour and bashing the table with cooking paraphernalia.

“My husband Dean and I love food and I love cooking. I would make up Monty’s favourite meals, such as chicken and butternut squash, and then invite his friends to come and taste them. If they got the general thumbs up, they went on our list for the range. It was very much a cottage industry to begin with as I developed a simple fish pie, shepherd’s pie and vegetable lasagna to add to the butternut squash dish. The one thing I made absolute sure of was that I added no salt or sugar to the meals.”

Aware that she was creating a new category in the baby food market, Graves went initially to Waitrose with her new venture. Buyers were at first sceptical, having recently de-listed their own “Food Explorers” children’s range because it wasn’t selling, but they had a hunch about Little Dish. Perhaps sold on the winning combination of Graves’s drive and clear message. They gave it a test-run in 20 stores.

Four years later and Little Dish now feeds more than 80,000 children a week, with a predicted £7 million sales this year. Graves hopes that this is an empire in the making: “We no longer launch new recipes on a whim, but market-research them to ensure that they appeal nationwide. We have also just launched a range of six natural and fresh purées, including, for example, sweet potatoes, parsnips and leek. I believe they are a nice way to start weaning your baby.” They could go a lot farther than simply being “nice”. Research from the University of Bristol reveals how poor diet at the age of 3 and below has a significant impact on long-term performance in school, regardless of subsequent changes of diet.

At an informal food-test of purées in Graves’s kitchen, it is easy to discern the difference not just in taste, but in colour of fresh versus long-life puréed offerings. If babies were to be fed regularly on the latter, it is conceivable that their taste buds may be less able to accept a normal healthy diet post-weaning than children fed on fresh versions. Homemade is preferable, but products such as Little Dish fresh purées are a good alternative.

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