If you've been following ongoing debates about the safety of plastics, you may know that silicone is unlike "plastic" in almost every way. It's made of silicon (which occurs naturally in sand and rock) and carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, not petroleum or sketchy chemicals. (Higher grades of silicone also swap out chlorine with acetates prior to polymerization, which eliminates the production of toxic hydrogen chloride and instead produces harmless vinegar.) Beyond the material's decades-long use in baby bottle nipples, the past few years has seen silicone used in ways that highlight both its favorable chemical profile (Adiri, Innobaby) and ability to withstand heat and cold (oven mitts, cupcake molds, ice cube trays, spatulas).

With silicone increasingly employed for direct food contact, it seems pretty obvious, in hindsight, that silicone could solve one of the vexing issues facing plastics-conscious parents: How to send food to daycare or preschool that needs to be heated before serving. But making the obvious a reality takes some doing, and Kinderville [website | ZRecs Guide] has taken pains to offer kid-sized bowls, cups, and storage containers made of 100% silicone that will dispel any concerns you may have about designing products for the clumsiest people on the planet using a material often compared to rubber.

We like all of the products in this line, which Kinderville sent us for review upon our request. But we'll discuss and video demo each of Kinderville's three launch products from least to most useful, then conclude with some general observations about feeding your kids from silicone dishes.

Kinderville Little Bites Cups

Kinderville's Little Bites Cups feel like the product that rounds out a feeding line, and not in a good way. The design is nice, with thick sidewalls and a rounded lip, but they are small (under six ounces), which means they're most useful for the kids who are most likely to fiddle with, accidentally or deliberately squeeze, and tip them. Also, as most kids tend to drink more cool liquids than warm ones, the potential harm of plastics feels most remote, except for dishwashing, but in our household at least, kids' cups tend to get hand-washed or they accumulate too rapidly (Z is always misplacing cups throughout the day and filling up new ones).

Here's a quick demo. The key feature this shows is the thickness and sturdiness of the cup walls.


In short, the main reason to buy these cups would be to have a cute set of kids' cups that match Kinderville's bowls, and at $20 for a set of four, we can't really make an argument for it.

Kinderville Little Bites Bowls

Kinderville's Little Bites Bowls (also $20 for four) are a different story. With a moderate 1.5" depth, a wide (4.5"?) base and gently sloped sidewalls, they are easy for a young child to use, tip-resistant (silicone has a bit of natural grip, too), and work well for adults, too. Children will have to carry the bowl with two hands (it tends to slump if held by the edge) but in other aspects the bowl is more rigid and sturdy than we expected. In fact, when one of the bowls split slightly on the underside (due to Jeremiah's own rough handling) in this demo video, he couldn't resist digging in to see if the bowl had some hidden secret to its rigidity. You can see for yourself what's inside:


Before you protest our wastefulness, remember that we occasionally drop-test glass baby bottles to test bottle covers and/or bottle features. (We'll take another chance on breaking stuff next week when we test out a cute set of baby bottle covers by Cocoozy.) Also, we have a fun future use for that demolished bowl: Play-dough pie crust to help teach basic fractions!

We regularly used these bowls during our test period and our absolute favorite times were when we wanted to make instant oatmeal for Z. We have a water dispenser that has a hot-water tap and that water is very hot; because of this, we have used Thinkbaby's stainless steel and polypropylene-clad bowls for this, as we do for other hot foods. (We do not recommend using plastic bowls in contact with very hot foods, especially ones involving boiling water poured directly into them!) But the Thinkbaby bowl takes more time to wash than this one does (we have a habit of separating the stainless steel layer from the plastic one to wash them both well), which negates some of the benefit of a rapidly-deployed, largely filler food. The Kinderville bowls are easy to clean and provide the same insulation as our great Thinkbaby bowls. We just wish they came with lids so they could store food for heating.

Kinderville Little Bites Storage Jars

Kinderville's Little Bites Storage Jars are a great example of making the most out of novel materials, and for our money they are a game-changer for a lot of families who have been searching (and frequently contacting us) for a solution to the plastics-at-daycare dilemma.

These little lidded cups capitalize on the frictional stickiness of silicone-on-silicone to make a leak-proof lid that is easier to remove than that of any other storage container you could imagine. The lid seals easily to the smooth, form-fitted lip of these sturdy little bowls, but the seal is broken with a pinch of the little nob in the center. That makes these "jars" the perfect vehicle for small portions of food that need to be taken to daycare or preschool and then heated up without transferring to another container and creating extra dishes to wash or store for parental pick-up (or better yet, lose). For young children, a few of these could hold a whole lunch, or a single one could be sent with food to be eaten cold stored in other containers.

We tested them with a solid food item (cereal) and a liquid (water) to show how well the vacuum seal holds up to either. There's really only one way the seal might get broken in regular use. You can see it for yourself in this video.


In other words, don't just toss these in your diaper bag without considering how they might get squished in transit.

General observations about silicone dishes

We washed samples of each of these products in our dishwasher with no problems, both in our top and bottom dishwasher racks. We even put them in there in awkward positions a few times (lip jammed into a slot at a funny angle, etc.) to see if they would get warped under prolonged exposure to hot water that way. But even after several washings, bowls, cups, and storage containers seemed fine.

The one downside we did notice was that silicone picks up water stains like nobody's business. We have had few problems with water stains on glass or other materials in our dishwasher (we usually use Seventh Generation Dishwasher Gel) but these silicone dishes come out of the dishwasher looking like we used them to whitewash a fence and then sort of half-rinsed them out. Very spotty. This counteracts some of the benefit of a truly dishwasher-safe kids' dish. (We don't recommend washing polypropylene or any other plastic dishes, bottles, or cups in the dishwasher, particularly if they're meant exclusively for kid use.) We can live with water stains sometimes, but then that diminishes the cute factor. If the potential for water stains bothers you, keep in mind that you may end up handwashing these, depending on your water.

Beyond that, I can't say anything negative about these dishes beyond the minor points made above, that some of them are more useful than others, and that the most fantastically useful set, the Storage Jars, will also set you back the most - $25 for a set of four. But given their quality and durability, and the stellar safety record of silicone in comparison with plastic, we think there is a huge market for these. If truly microwave-safe food storage containers don't change your life a bit for the better, you probably don't have young kids who need to eat at a daycare or a preschool. And if you do, Kinderville's Little Bites Food Storage Jars can help you stop making compromises on food options or on your child's chemical exposure that you've been making every day.

For their top-notch design, functionality, and high relevance in the world of safer children's products, we're naming Kinderville's Little Bites Storage Containers and Little Bites Bowls ZRecs Top Picks. We love and highly recommend both of these products.

Kinderville's Little Bites bowls, cups, and storage jars can be purchased from Amazon.com or directly from Kinderville.

We will keep one of each of the Little Bites Storage Jars, Cups, and Bowls we were provided with as part of our extensive archive of children's feeding products, which we use to compare features as products change or answer questions from readers. We'll also keep the bowl we so wantonly destroyed. The others, in accordance with our Keep No Stuff reviewing policy, will be donated to other families who can use them.