ONCE, foods were natural with no additives and no packaging and mothers had the time to prepare meals for the family. But today's children's food market is saturated with convenience products.
There is a small but growing cadre of mothers making it their business to put conscience and goodness back into children's food - while making a crust.
With no business experience and three children, Amanda Murphy started Yum Mum two years ago. "I knew I wanted to have a home business so I could be with my children and it wasn't until I fed my nine-month-old son Oliver a jar of baby food for the first time and he spat it out and then scraped it off his tongue that I knew what that business was going to be," Murphy says.
She sells certified organic meals created for babies aged from nine months. Forget pureed pumpkin; Yum Mum's Middle Eastern lamb pilaf, Tuscan bolognaise, vegetable macaroni, apricot Moroccan chicken and pumpkin and tomato risotto are nourishing children in Victoria, NSW and Queensland. Unlike baby foods sold in jars, Yum Mum is vacuum-sealed fresh food sold in the chilled section of supermarkets and delis.
Learning the business was a steady curve for Murphy, who was out of the workforce for 10 years. She says she now looks at supermarket food differently.
"I've learnt so much about the process of actually getting a food product to the shelf and the value of food with no chemicals and preservatives," she says. "Yum Mum is organic because, apart from the wonderful flavour and nutritional quality of organic food, organic farming is kinder to the land and the animal. It's so important that children have real food right from the start."
And it makes economic sense.Organic industry lobby group Biological Farmers of Australia says the local market grows at 20 to 30 per cent a year, a similar rate to that in the US and Europe. Although she is focused on Australia, Murphy says exports are "definitely on the cards".
Her passion for creating a delicious product that babies love outweighs the lack of experience.
"Everyone from the manufacturer to the retailers has been really supportive," she says.
"I've learnt there's no such thing as a dumb question, it's often the one you don't ask that is the important one.
"Having my own business has taught me to face my fears and not worry about making mistakes.
"I want this to be a big business so I've planned for that from the start. I chose to outsource everything from the cooking to the distribution because I started my business to be with my children, not for the business to take me away from them."
The Australian Bureau of Statistics says that two-thirds of small businesses are run from home and that women run almost 40 per cent of small businesses. And Newsweek says more American mums are combining motherhood and business. The trend has its own trademark - "Mompreneur" - and website at mompreneur.com.
Australia's answer, the Business Mums Network at www.businessmums.com, is aimed at providing business-owner mothers with information, advertising and networking opportunities and was launched by Melissa Khalinsky started it five years ago. She says more mothers are starting businesses. A recent network survey found that 70 per cent of mothers started their businesses to be with their children, while 43.7 per cent did so for extra income.
"Five years ago I was told by so-called business experts I'd never be able to juggle running a business with raising children," Khalinsky says.
"This year we're hosting our first national conference for business mums and launching a wiki specifically for mums running their own business." (A wiki is a website that anyone can edit.)
Khalinsky says these women break traditional business rules: "Out of necessity we are forced to be more creative with our time and money and approach to business as we are caring for our children too."
Necessity was the catalyst for single mother-of-three Jane Fricker. She began Hullabaloo Food to combat her five-year-old daughter Olivia's food allergies. Olivia is allergic to many fruits, cocoa, fish and even rice as well as the usual suspects of wheat, dairy, eggs, nuts and yeast. "Feeding Olivia at home was easy (stir-fry chicken and vegetables) but parties, school lunches, picnics were all a problem," she says.
VicHealth says the incidence of food allergies is rising, affecting 50per cent of children; 60 per cent of allergies appear in their first year. Although this isn't good news for sufferers, it suggests there is more need for low-allergen children's foods. Fricker's business has grown by half every month since it started nine months ago.
Before Hullabaloo, Fricker thought herself a foodie but she wasn't a chef.
"Learning how different ingredients work together, what sort of chemical reaction takes place has been the fun part," she says.
"I love coming up with recipes that work and taste good. It took me two years to work out how to make a cake with no wheat, milk, eggs or soy to actually make it edible. But like the stories you hear of the mother who lifts a car off their child, I was determined to succeed and wasn't going to stop until I did."
Hullabaloo has more than 30 products in its range such as low-allergen cake mixes and cookies, vegan fudge and gluten-free waffle cones.
There's more to running a food business than cooking. Fricker has an economics degree and spent 20 years helping others run their small businesses.
"I've never been a nine-to-five sort of person and since having children I've always worked from home," she says. "I can put on a load of washing, get dinner started and come back to the computer. I do everything in my business from research and production to marketing."
She was renovating her house kitchen, applying to make it a commercial kitchen, when she started the business.
"Building a kitchen from scratch guaranteed I could focus on nut-free cooking and being at home has allowed me even greater flexibility, I often cook late into the night after the children have gone to bed. I don't think I would have been able to do the business without having the freedom of cooking at any hour."
Fricker knows what it is like for families when a child has food allergies: "The most rewarding aspect of my business is helping families - they are so happy to find foods their children can eat. Olivia is no longer my only inspiration, so even once she has grown up I can't imagine doing anything else now."
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says research shows diet-related health conditions such as childhood obesity, diabetes and tooth decay are rising. Former chef turned children's food educator, Jacqi Deighan, is a mum making it her business to promote good food for children. Her business idea emerged while she was pregnant.
"I began researching food for health during pregnancy and found other people wanted to know what I knew," she says. Deighan launched Natural Kitchen Strategies 4 1/2 years ago. The mother-of-three says it grew in ways she hadn't imagined.
"I love public speaking at schools, talking with teachers, students, parents and canteen managers about everything from lunch-box ideas to good foods to eat during exam time."
She will speak at the Adelaide food summit, part of this year's Tasting Australia food festival, in October on childhood nutrition and physical activity.
She also helps people raising or working with children to make good food choices, such as canteen managers. "There's more to running school canteens than banning soft drinks and lollies. It's about showing schools what can be done with food and giving them the skills to do it."
One of Deighan's business aims is to break the notion that children eat differently from adults.
"Parents spend a lot of money on processed and packaged foods for their children," she says. "I believe strongly that if we teach children from an early age the joy and pleasure of cooking and eating fresh foods then they will naturally make the right food choices as adults and this starts with eating at the table with your children."
Mother-of-two Serena Dougall's firstborn daughter, Eliza, was the inspiration for expanding her business, Real Good Food, into the children's food market.
"We started with a very simple range of organic cereals for babies," she says. "The girls influence the business all the time, now that they're at kinder and school it's made me think about what mums want for school lunch boxes. We've created snack packs with organic dried fruit and nuts."
Dougall says there's room for innovative foodie mums.
"There's a market going right up to senior schools for lunch and snack alternatives. So many mums don't bake due to lack of time, myself included. And you don't want to be giving your children the same thing to take to school every day."
Her tip for mums considering their own food business is to know that it's OK to start small and not feel pressure to be everywhere right from the start.
"A business gets to a stage where it takes on a life of its own and your children's needs are constantly changing," says Dougall. "Being a working mum takes some juggling. You can often feel one is not getting enough attention but the children always come first, and having my own business has allowed me flexibility to be with them."
Amanda Murphy Runs: Yum mum, specialises in certifed organic meals for babies Children: Oliver, 3, Jack,8, and Amelia, 10
Jacqi Deighan Runs: Natural Kitchen Strategies, a children's food consultancy Children: Niamh, 12, Conor, 9, and Caitlin, 26
Serena Dougall Runs: Real Good Food, cereals and snacks for babies and children Children: Sophia, 4, Eliza, 6
Souce: The Age Newspaper