Baby Food in Thailand (and Laos)
Laos imports almost everything from Thailand (or China). There are not many factories in Laos; only a few places produce select commodities like clothing, Pepsi, Beer Lao, and coffee.
Packaged/jarred baby food is available widely in Thailand at stores like Tesco-Lotus or 7 Eleven (I can personally vouch for this in the cities of Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Udon Thani, and Nong Khai). In Laos can pretty much only be purchased at mini-markets catering to foreigners (in Vientiane, try Phimphones, City Mart (near Wat Si Muang), M-Point mini-market, and ITECC).
Brands available include some Gerber (basic flavors like sweet potato, carrot, some fruits), Heinz, and a few Austrailan brands (I’ll update this later after another trip to City Mart).
Nestle has a variety of widely available infant cereals all over South East Asia (Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand). Some have flavors (vegetable, fish, fruit, chocolate (I KNOW!), or plain). I usually bought the vegetable flavored varieties because I found the fruit-related cereals to be highly sweetened. The vegetable flavored cereal does not list “salt” on the ingredients.
Here is a picture of a “phase 3″ Rice Porridge Vegetable With Carrot. On the side of the box are preparation instructions in both Thai and English. Rice Porridge (some people call it “congee”) is a comfort food in many parts of Asia.
After I prepared it, I noticed small meat-like chunks, but upon inspecting the ingredients list, I found that they were soy protein:
Baby Deeds gave this the seal of approval. He is normally uninterested in packaged baby foods.
I will continue to add more information about feeding your baby while traveling in Thailand, Laos, and beyond as I have time!
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18 August 2008, 8:34 pm
Looks tasty to me. Did you try it?? I usually don't like packaged baby foods either, but this looks sort of like a barley vegetable soup.
We'd love to travel to Thailand & Laos someday, but our tot is well past the baby stage. I'm sure this is great information for other traveling moms though!
18 August 2008, 9:50 pm
That’s cool to see something in foreign packaging. I am glad your baby liked it.
18 August 2008, 11:41 pm
I wouldn’t know WHAT to feed my baby! At least you/your baby are somewhat adventurous, I think I would actually drive myself crazy making a baby rice, vegetables, etc from “scratch”.
01 June 2009, 5:50 am
Thank you so much.. I am wanting to know if you can travel into Thailand with jar fd and long life milk? we are travelling there in a few weeks with a 13 mnth old! thanks fr all your inf
02 March 2010, 12:21 am
[...] kind of baby food can I buy in Laos? Are there disposable diapers in Thailand? Mom Most Traveled is continually adding more information [...]
09 July 2010, 1:37 pm
thanks for the post, realy interesting,, especially because i will get a daughter in 3 weeks
and we are living in thailand