Tuesday, 1 September 2015

Sinchies review

Being picky about what I eat myself, I'm definitely in the habit of checking out what goes into my food before it goes into my shopping basket. This naturally has extended into monitoring my children's food. Many of the convenient snacks and items marketed at children are chock full of sugar, preservatives, artificial colours and so many unnecessary ingredients. I much prefer to make their food myself, at least then I have visibility of what goes into them, and they start learning good habits about how to cook real food, and what it means to be a 'sometimes' food versus a 'healthy' food. Of course, making their food leads very nicely into the best ways of storing it. Being me, I was just not down for plastic wrap and disposable solutions, so I looked to reusable and eco friendly options.

I found Sinchies. I was particularly taken with the fact that they made more than just spout pouches, so I could use their sandwich, snack and wrap options for Ellie and I as well. I should be clear, that there are two types of pouches I tested. The first were the squeezy type pouches, similar to the baby food pouches sold in the supermarkets. These are made of flexible plastic, and mine were decorated with fun smiley fruit and vegetables and with a lid opening to the side for squeezing the product out.

Sinchies also stock great sip-n-lids, made of silicone that you can add to these pouches. They're  perfect for protecting soft little teeth and gums, and helping Jimmy feel independent when learning to eat.

As I have recently gone back to work part time, my first priority was making sure that Jimmy would have some things to eat while I was away from him (Ellie's daycare supplies her food). I packed him some yoghurt, with some chunks of banana in, for both flavour and sweetness.
I didn't want to pack big amounts of yoghurt, so although I have a large 1L pouch and a collapsible funnel perfect for dispersing, I used a tablespoon to fill the 140ml yoghurt pouches. It was a fairly easy and mess free task, thanks to the nice wide opening. I really liked that the base of the pouch folds out so that it stood up nicely when being filled. I can't begin to tell you the number of times I've cursed cheap and flimsy breastmilk bags for falling when being filled, so Sinchies were a great performer for me here. The double ziplock part is suitably firm so that little fingers can't open it easily, which is great. I also liked that the lid opening was to the side unlike with commercial baby pouches, so it didn't get in the way at all when filling.

I've found that the 140ml pouches are great for jelly as well. I mix the jelly up and then decant into the individual pouches to set. Genius and an absolutely hit with Ellie and her friends!
I quite liked the fact that the pouches had characters and decorations on them, as sometimes children feel let down by plain packaging. In this case, both of my children liked the designs and I was quite chuffed with the way there is still a lot of clear window on the fun pouches so you can still see where any product is located. Not only did this come in handy for eating, but also when cleaning so I could make visibly sure I was definitely cleaning all traces of food away.

I also discovered that the 1L pouch is awesome for putting pancake batter in (even storing leftover batter overnight) and perfect for dropping little circles into the pan. Hurrah!

The other type of pouch I tested out were the sandwich/snack/wrap pouches which are clear and a bit more rigid than the yoghurt ones. They are clear plastic with a small section to write content details on, and all open with a double ziplock fastening. I found them great, really sturdy, especially when compared to disposable snap lock bags. Ellie didn't find them very easy to open, but at not quite 3, I'm ok with her not being able to open everything she sets her mind to. I found the snack sized one perfect for packing a few lactation cookies to take with me to work each day.
Pumping essentials!
The wrap/sandwich/snack bags all could have been difficult to clean with the slightly rigid plastic and square corners, but the task was made very easy with the Sinchies brush. Of course, Sinchies are dishwasher safe, so you could easily wash them that way, but it takes us a week to fill our dishwasher, and I was eager to reuse my pouches! I found I got the best cleaning results when I:
  • Rinsed any product before it had a chance to dry
  • Used hot, soapy water and the brush in a twisting motion
  • Dried pouches (with lids off) upside down over knives I had standing in the cutlery drainer
Sinchies are BPA free and reusable, so you are doing your thing for the environment by using them.

** Disclaimer: I was sent an assortment of Sinchies products to trial and review. All opinions are my own however. I was not paid to write this review.

1 comment:

  1. these sound really interesting - Sylvia always wants me to buy her the squeezy pouches in the supermarket but I don't like them as they are often not the best quality yoghurt (ie full of sugar) and they have so much packaging - I must look into these

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