Meet Izzy!Izzy is a Coolfan, a mini fan which hygienically and efficiently cools your baby or toddler's food. It is the brainchild of Mark Mainey, a dad who got fed up of blowing on his children's food to cool it down to a safe eating temperature.
We have been using our Coolfan for nearly two months now and I can honestly say it has revolutionised our mealtimes. Granted, the Coolfan is NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, a vital piece of baby kit but if you have one it does save a lot of waiting around for food to cool down and prevents the need to blow on your child's food to cool it – this can transfer bacteria through saliva.
In my old house I didn't have a window ledge in my kitchen where I could open the window and leave Lara's food to cool down, and, for hygeine reasons, I never used to blow on her food to cool it. Instead, I always had to remember to remove a portion of food from our meal about 5-10 minutes before we all sat down to dinner to make sure it had cooled sufficiently for Lara to eat. On many occasions, the food would still be too hot and this resulted in the inevitable tears and frustration while she could see the food but not eat it, or worse, see us eating our food. Since using the Coolfan, we have not had to worry about this at all. The Coolfan is so effective that it can take just 1 minute to cool the food down – I was really astonished at how quickly it worked and as such, I now serve Lara's food at exactly the same time as ours.
The Coolfan is a simple concept. The fan is mounted on a shaped stand which sits above the bowl or plate of food. The fan is shaped like a head to make it fun for your littlies although I'm not sure that Lara really cares what it looks like – maybe she will do when she's older. The fan is made from soft foam so that there is no danger to tiny fingers if they do choose to interfere with it. The fan head removes easily from the mount when you need to clean it or replace the batteries. There are plans in the future to provide collapsible stands so that you can take your Coolfan out and about with you to restaurants, friends or relatives.
If I am honest, I feel a retail price of £9.99 the Coolfan is expensive for something which, if I really put my mind to it, I 'could' fashion out of a hand-held travel fan and a coathanger. But, the point is, I haven't done that, have I? And I probably never would – partly because I'm too lazy, and partly because it wouldn't be as safe or as well-constructed as a product designed to do the job.
Despite my reservations about the price, I would recommend Coolfans to any of my Mummy and Daddy friends (there certainly seems to be a lot of interest). My Coolfan is now indispensable but (and there is one big but) it EATS batteries. If I use the Coolfan for every evening meal and one lunchtime meal on my Lara-day each week then I can only get about 10 days usage out of one pair of AAA batteries. I don't know why it uses so much power but I do know that I've had to invest in a set of rechargeable batteries as on the days when my Coolfan was out of action due to lack of power, I really missed it.
