In this , Ben has a special guest on the show to discuss how to grow a healthy baby. Here is the letter that accompanies this episode, written by Jessa Greenfield from : "For the past six months, Marta Greenfield and I have been developing a fresh, new and exciting idea.  We have been working very hard on a business plan, marketing strategy, community surveys, focus groups and many hours of due diligence – and we now feel that we are ready to unveil this business and our product to you. The organic industry has grown by over 20% in the last three years, while the commercial food industry has suffered as consumers become more aware of where and how their food is grown.  Along with this growing trend, many parents are becoming aware that commercial baby food is not the best way to feed their babies.  Every parent wants the best for their baby, and it is becoming more apparent that what is on the shelf right now is not the best, and could actually be harming a baby’s fragile body. I experienced the same feeling as I searched for the right baby food to grow healthy bodies for River and Terran. I learned that the common method of preserving baby food is canning.  The problem with this is that the food is heated to a very high temperature to kill the bacteria that cause botulism. This heating method kills much of the nutrition in the food. An inspection of the ingredients in all the commercial baby foods revealed the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMO’s), which are crops generally made up of corn, soy, cotton and sugar beets. These have been linked to allergies, asthma, digestive ulcers, learning disabilities, cancer, low birth weight, infertility and antibiotic resistance! I didn’t want these for River and Terran, especially since most of the world has banned GMO’s based on multiple research studies. The baby food found on the shelves of most grocery stores is comprised of fruits and vegetables that were picked several months before ripeness, rendering the food tasteless and deprived of nutrients. Furthermore, harsh chemical preservatives are necessary to keep the food for many months as it is shipped around the country (typically grown hundreds or thousands of miles from the economy where it is finally purchased), and nutrient-stripped “fillers” such as corn, soy and wheat are added to thicken the product. Many of the pesticides found in non-organic commercial baby foods contain probable human carcinogens, neurotoxins and pesticides that disrupt the normal functioning of the hormone system, and some of the pesticides are considered “Category One”, which is the highest designation of oral toxicitiy. A 2003 Washington University study found that babies who were fed organically had six times fewer pesticides in their urine than those that were not fed organically! I learned that A) much of an infant’s digestive and neurological development happens in the first 2 years of life; B) an infant’s body is less efficient in eliminating toxins; and C) an infant’s digestive tract absorbs much more than an adult’s. This was the final straw. Our goal for River and Terran was to raise them in as healthy a manner as possible, and commercial baby food was obviously not the solution, for their well-being, for our local farmers, or for any of the other mothers in Spokane, Coeur D’ Alene and across the United States. So after countless hours spent in the kitchen, on farms, in the library, in grocery stores and with mothers from across the region Marta and I have established a solution: Bud Organics. In sum, Bud Organics will be a producer of frozen organic baby food. But what is most important to Marta and I is to provide an affordable, quality alternative to commercial baby food to as many babies as possible.  We want to give these vulnerable young bodies the best possible start they can get.  That means that their food should be incredibly fresh and 100% free of pesticides and GMO’s, with zero “nutrient-void” fillers, preservatives,