By Ruth Hofer

Are you looking for a completely 100% natural, totally unprocessed alternative to teething medication for your baby? Have you ever had epicurean pleasure of tasting carob in its truly raw, unprocessed state? Did you know that you can give raw carob pods, straight off the tree to a teething baby as a rusk to soothe their gums on? How awesome is that? Carob pods are totally unrefined, compared to even the homeopathic stuff you can buy at most health food stores.

I am such a huge fan of carob. I’m an even bigger fan of carob now that I am mother. I have lots of fond memories tied up in carob. My mum used to buy the cooked sugar free carob buds from the health food store when I was a kid. I used to think it was such a treat! Then I went to school and discovered junk food and the carob kinda lost its sheen for me. But I always came back to carob, and during my uni days when I was a strict vegan I even found a version made with soy instead of milk powder.

Fast forward a few years and there I was with a baby girl whose teeth had begun to grow. Someone, somewhere (I can’t recall who it was or where now) mentioned in passing how the local aboriginal women in my part of Australia would use the whole dried pod of the carob tree for their babies to suck on as teething rusks. I liked the sound of something so natural and abundant (carob trees grow well here… its not uncommon to find them in suburban backyards) so I tracked some down and also did some research.

Carob is native to the eastern Mediterranean, probably the Middle East, where it has been in cultivation for at least 4000 years. Carob also thrives in the wild. The plant was well known to the ancient Greeks, who planted seeds of this plant in Greece and Italy. Carob pods are high in calcium and vitamin A. It also contains B vitamins, magnesium, potassium, and the trace minerals iron, manganese, chromium, copper, and nickel.

This plant is also called St. John’s bread or locust bean because the pods were once thought to have been the “locusts” that were eaten by John the Baptist in the Wilderness.

Carob has a sweet flavour, is rich in calcium and has a really mild analgesic effect. Small children are naturally drawn to its soothing nature. Sounds like a good teething alternative to me. My girl liked it, and I have to admit, I liked the taste too. They seriously taste like candy and its feels pleasant to chew the slightly hard pods in the mouth to release all the wonderful flavours. My baby never had a very hard time with the whole teething thing, but she did enjoy sucking on those carob pods. I felt happy knowing she had something health supporting in her mouth. The only problem I came across was making sure all the hard little seeds inside the pods were removed as the pod opened up. And I have heard that carob will help both constipation and sooth diarrhea. One website I came across states:

“Carob’s tannin content also inhibits bacteria, and can stop certain toxins and free-radicals in their tracks, inactivate them, and get the body to discard them. A research study, using carob powder with babies for bacterial or viral diarrhea, showed recovery within 2 days. Babies treated with conventional medicine took almost twice as long to recover. The babies given carob also regained normal temperature and body weight quicker. The high fibre content of carob, together with the pectin, makes the stomach contents more glutinous, thus deterring the back-flow of acid in the throat.”

Perfect for all the common aliments associated with teething.

Raw chocolate making puts a whole new dimension into the magic of carob. David Wolfe and Shazzie in their book, nakedchocolate.com discuss carob’s rich calcium content, mixing alchemically with chocolate (cacao) to lessen the stimulating effects on little kids and also work synergistically with the magnesium in the cacao. From my own experiments using carob in your raw chocolates also lessens the amount of concentrated sweeteners needed. Carob pods are also high in protein, and in their extracted form are used in numerous protein powder supplements. Less caffeine like stimulation, less concentrated sweeteners, and high protein? Sounds like perfect food for nourishing little ones.

Depending on where you live in the world tracking down dried carob pods might be a tad hard. Most online raw food suppliers sell really raw carob powder (usually from the Mediterranean, where carob was first cultivated) so it is possible that they could stock the pods too. I can buy dried pods from the bulk section of most health food stores in northern New South Wales, Australia and my local farmers market here in Queensland even sells carob nibs (just like cacao nibs, only more mellow in flavour). And you can always pick them straight off the trees. http://www.carobana.com.au/pods.html is a stockist of straight up pods in Australia. Carob also grows in some parts of California and can be picked from the tree. Funkyraw.com stocks carob pods in the UK.

My adventures with carob have taught me that tools to help you in your journey as a mother are usually right there beside you, in a totally natural state. A perfect gift from mother nature. I feel grateful to my mother, for feeding me carob when I was young. Nurturing me with that sweet taste even though it was in a cooked form (the chocolate replacement I used to eat was made with skim milk powder and hydrogenated oil). Carob is such a perfect food for such precious beings as our children and combined with the knowledge I now have about raw food nutrition, I am excited about nourishing my children with this magical seed pod.