Baby’s First Tikka Masala

Food industry veteran Erica Bethe Levin ’05 wanted to introduce her young children to global flavors, textures and spices. But when she searched her local grocery store for baby food brands, she found only a limited selection of pureed apples, sweet potatoes, peas and other common American flavors. So Levin founded Globowl, a company that creates baby and toddler food featuring flavors from around the world. 

Globowl currently sells four flavors, including Pad Thai for Tots and Veggie Tikka Masala. Levin hopes to help parents take advantage of the “flavor window,” a period of time between 4 months and 6 months of age during which babies are most open to trying new foods. Diversifying babies’ palates early on can help stave off picky eating and mitigate food allergies down the road, she says. Soon, each jar of Globowl also will include a QR code that opens a video describing the origins of the recipe’s flavors and why they’re important to a particular culture. “This [helps] set kids up for more curious thinking, open-mindedness [and] tolerance,” says Levin.