Michigan’s Gerber Baby Foods. Anyone Know What the First One Was?
If you know your Michigan history, you may already know that Gerber Baby Foods were created here in our state – in the town of Fremont. But Gerber wasn’t the first baby food.
In 1867, Henri Nestlé was taking care of a neighbor child when he came up with a food mixture that would be easy for the baby to eat. His concoction gained popularity in Europe, and his company, Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé, was kicked off with the world’s first baby food.
However, first doesn’t mean best. The best baby food came from Michigan: Gerber. In 1927, Dorothy Gerber followed the advice of her doctor and began straining solid foods in order to feed her seven-month old baby. Her husband told her it may be simpler if he strained the foods where he worked, a canning business in Fremont. He started out by straining fruits and vegetables – and soon his co-workers started asking for that food to feed their own babies.....and that was the beginning.
In 1928, the first official Gerber Baby Foods hit grocer shelves: the very first being strained peas. This was followed by strained bananas, carrots, and prunes.
That same year, a contest to find a baby face that would be featured on the cans took place, the winner being a charcoal sketch of a baby by Dorothy Hope Smith. That first Gerber baby grew up to be Anne Turner Cook, a mystery novelist and English teacher.
It’s a worldwide empire that was kicked off by a mom from a small Michigan town.