Growing up in Cameroon, Agatha Achindu picked fresh mangos in her front yard and would accompany her mother on daily trips to the market for vegetables like squash, carrots and greens.

Everyone gardened a little, and many farmed.

"In our part of the world, everyone eats fresh organic foods. It's not a choice, it's the only lifestyle," said Ms. Achindu, who now lives in east Cobb.

"Freezers were only for drinks, not food. My mom especially loved to cook and thought food was medicinal. Everything could be cured with the right foods."

Mrs. Achindu left Cameroon for the United States in 1990. She was eager to come to the U.S., a place of education and opportunity, but became baffled by the food industry. Canned foods, out of season produce and chemically enhanced, processed ingredients simply didn't make sense. She got sick within her first few months of being here, and after several tests, she said doctors told her it was pesticides.

"I still cannot connect in my mind how you can have food on a shelf for over two years," she said.

Mrs. Achindu is now combating the agri-business with a small service called Yummy Spoonfuls, a baby food company. She removed the preservatives, additives, gluten, dairy, sugars, filler and salt from baby food, by making it with produce and water only.

She and her husband, plus two part-time workers make fresh, pure USDA Organically Certified baby food. She started making food for her own son, and found that many of her friends and neighbors also wanted her baby food.

The food is cooked long enough to last about two weeks, which retains more of the vitamins and minerals in fruits, vegetables and oats. Store-bought baby food, even organic brands, are cooked in a highly pressurized pot to sustain a longer shelf life, killing the nutritional value, said Ms. Bailey Koch, a pediatric dietician from east Cobb.

"The same is true for processed foods - the more it's processed, the less nutritional value it has," said Ms. Koch.

She said Yummy Spoonfuls baby foods only give children natural sugars rather than added sugars, which contribute to obesity.

However, the verdict is still out among health experts on the dangers of pesticides, said Ms. Koch. Research is starting to suggest that hormones in dairy and meat are causing girls to develop quicker, but nothing has been proven. For Ms. Shannon Dammann Downs, a psychologist and a Yummy Spoonful customer, it's not worth the risk.

She decided before her twins where born last year she'd make her own food. But after hours laboring over the process, she stumbled upon Yummy Spoonfuls in a health market.

"It was a God send to me. Agatha delivers it to my door and my children love the taste. They wouldn't eat my peas, but they loved hers," she said. Ms. Downs made a pact with herself that she would never feed her children something she wouldn't feed herself, and thought Yummy Spoonfuls was delicious.

But more so, Ms. Downs said she was impressed with Mrs. Achindu's attitude. Yummy Spoonfuls is about providing healthy foods to babies, not about making money.

"She offered to teach me how to make her peas without a thought about the fact that I wouldn't buy her food if I could make it," Ms. Downs said.

And after Ms. Downs told Mrs. Achindu that her family had been sick, she delivered her blueberry cereal with twice the amount of blueberries, because of their high antioxidants and immune-boosting qualities. But there was no extra cost.

"I feel like we are all in this world together and even though I don't really make money, I am doing this for anybody who is making an effort to give his or her children healthy food," Mrs. Achindu said.

cknight@mdjonline.com

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