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Photograph by Vicki Thompson

Organic Cubes: Iria Nishimura has launched Nami, a new line of organic frozen baby food. She will be offering free samples at The Alameda Farmers Market Sept. 16.

Mom's idea leads to new business: frozen cubes of organic baby food

By Mary Gottschalk

As a registered nurse with years of experience dealing with children's health issues, Iria Nishimura knew what she wanted to feed her newborn sons, and it wasn't any baby food in a jar.

"When you open those jars, they smell pretty bad, and they don't look like they should look. They have a shelf life of two or three years, and they all have additives or preservatives," she says. "I didn't want to give that to my baby."

Nishimura's solution was to "start cooking.

"I'd cook organic vegetables and fruits. I steamed them to keep in nutrients, and I would freeze them. Joshua loved it; he couldn't get enough," she says.

"I never had any problems with my kids not eating enough. I couldn't feed them fast enough."

When Joshua, now 4, was joined by little brother, Noah, a year ago, Nishimura says she expected that in the three-year interval between her sons, the baby food industry would be offering more.

"I couldn't find that anything had changed," she says. "More organic produce is available, but not prepared foods, so I started cooking again."

The foods Nishimura was feeding her baby didn't go unnoticed by the other mothers in her neighborhood.

Nishimura says when they started asking her if she could make some for them, "I just made big batches. Most of the moms work like I do. They're really busy and they don't have time, but they want to give the best possible food to their babies."

Recognizing a market, Nishimura decided to end the hospital and health clinic consulting business she co-founded with her husband, Jim, in 2001, and launch Baby Cubes & More, a line of organic, frozen baby food.

The first products are labeled Nami.

"Nami in Japanese means 'wave' and in Finnish it means 'delicious.' We're taking the baby food industry by waves and making it delicious for babies," she says.

Nishimura started online sales right after Labor Day at www.mynami.com.

To promote her products, Nishimura is visiting area farmers markets to offer samples and information.

On Saturday, she will attend the Festival and Farmers Market on The Alameda, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the parking lot of Downtown College Prep, at The Alameda and Lenzen Avenue.

"People are going to see me and have an opportunity to taste the different ingredients," Nishimura says. "We're not selling, just demonstrating and giving out information."

While Nishimura initially prepared all her foods in her home kitchen, now she works out of an organic-certified commercial kitchen operated under the direction of a food microbiologist.

"We send samples of every batch of food we make to a lab for testing for bacteria," she says. "We know our clients and our babies, and there's no shortcuts in making food for your baby."

In deciding which fruits and vegetables to offer, Nishimura says she has three criteria.

First is seasonal. She works only with fresh produce, so she expects selections will change with the season and what organic produce is available.

Secondly, she says she looks for fruits and vegetables with low allergenic properties.

Third, she says she looks for unusual produce with high nutrient value.

"An apple is great, but it doesn't have the nutrients of a golden beet. I try to find fruits and vegetables that are higher in vitamins and stronger in antioxidants. On our website you can look at the nutritional value of each food," she says.

Current fruit offerings are apples, apricots, blueberries, cantaloupe, honeydew melon, mango, nectarines, papaya, peaches, pears and plums. Vegetable offerings are asparagus, broccoli, carrots, golden beets, peas, rutabaga, spinach, summer squash, sweet potatoes and winter squash.

The fruits and vegetables are first steamed and then puréed with the steaming water. They then are poured into cube molds and flash-frozen.

Each cube is 1 ounce, which Nishimura says is usually enough for a meal for a 1-month-old baby. As babies grow, their appetite increases, and she says more cubes are used, sometimes in two flavor combinations.

Each package contains 10 cubes and sells for $4.98. Purchasers of eight bags or more get free home delivery.

Packages are shipped in dry ice, and the resealable bags keep up to six months in a freezer.

"At six months, when you take them out and thaw, they taste just as good as the first month," Nishimura says.

Since nothing is added to the fruits and vegetables, Nishimura does offer food flavor tips on her website.

"Two herbs that are really great are parsley, which has tons of iron, and basil, which gives a wonderful taste to any vegetable combination," she says.

"I wanted to keep the foods as pure as possible. I was thinking of babies with food sensitivities. It's hard to find very pure ingredients as citric acid is always added to baby food.

"You can add one ingredient at a time to see how the baby reacts. If there's no problem, you can add another ingredient."

Born in Helsinki, Finland, Nishimura first came to the United States in 1980 to attend a college nursing program in Minnesota.

After becoming a registered nurse, she returned to Finland for a year and then moved to Canada where she earned a master's degree in health administration.

In 1989, Nishimura moved to California to take a job in a Fresno hospital. She moved to the Bay Area in 1995 to work as executive director for a behavioral health hospital. She then worked as executive director of the School Health Clinics of Santa Clara County, a nonprofit providing primary medical care to at-risk children from birth through age 18 in six school clinic locations in San Jose and Gilroy.

In 2001, she and her husband started Mediscor Consulting Services, which they closed earlier this year to concentrate on Baby Cubes & More.

Although she has just started selling her Nami line, Nishimura is already looking toward expansion.

"We're looking at toddler foods, and we have some additional products in mind for moms with babies," she says.

She knows she's not the first to offer organic baby food, but says most of the offerings are East Coast-based.

The Organic Trade Association estimates organic baby food sales at $206 million in 2004. Consumer research company ACNielsen estimates the U.S. baby food market as a whole at $3.6 billion a year, with sales of organic baby food up 58 percent in the past five years.