AIBU to think it's strange there's no discussion of latest baby food pouches news on here?

Isn't there a Panorama programme about it tonight? Maybe there will be a discussion tomorrow.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002bl1w

@totallytotiYou do realize
you’ve contradicted yourself there, don’t you?
Never had a pouch…
Pouches gave them upset tummies…
Why contribute to the thread with lies?

For anyone stuck for quick food to offer their babies and toddlers tonight,

soft boil an egg, and serve with dippy wholemeal fingers.
Or cool shepherds pie
Or mashed potato mixed with finely diced cooked chicken.
Or couscous with cooked tomatoes and a little finely grated cheese.
Or poach a little white fish and mix with mashed garden peas.

Or just give them a little of whatever you are having. My ds used to love my mushroom risotto and cheese. 🙂

Agreed.

“Fed is best” is about formula, which is highly highly regulated to ensure it provides all the benefits it can. The idea you can use it to try and convince yourself that pouches are healthy is laughable. Use them if you want, but where does “fed is best” end if you’re using it for this?

We used these occasionally when we were out and about, they're convenience food like any other I guess. It's not really surprising that fruit/vegetables put in a pouch and kept there for weeks/months are not going to have many nutrients left in them.

Fed is the legal bare minimum.

It's certainly not best to feed unhealthy food to babies.

I don't care what you or anyone else feeds their kids. It's a free country.

But let's stop the wishy washy snuggly mummy knows best BS and just speak the truth.

There was an identical thread on pouches a while back where someone posted a study showing that the "maceration" process of creating pouched purees destroys important nutrients. There was one user who was determined to defend pouches to death and claimed that the maceration process of chewing fresh food has exactly the same effect so you lose vitamins either way. That's the average intelligence level of someone these baby food companies target.

Of course your baby would love the pouches. The same way an older child would love McDonalds. But you can’t seriously be arguing that feeding a child a bad diet is okay so long as you supplement it with a vitamin?
Show me a mother that isnt busy… it’s not really an excuse for feeding your child processed slop every day…

Not surprising given the amount of sugar it seems is included.

‘Fed is best’ is quite a low bar. Like normally as parents we’re aiming for a bit better than ‘not starvation’.

These pouches are clearly deliberately misleading parents to think they’re healthy so I don’t blame the parents at all. The slogans and packaging make them look like good wholesome food.

It’s bonkers even at 17 with my oldest we knew these were full of rubbish people are too scared to do BLW but will believe anything on the front of the pack and ignore the back.

In the end, if you didn't cook it yourself (or someone you can genuinely trust like a close relative did) you don't know what's in it, and the packaging will almost certainly be misleading.

Most of the savory food in pouches tastes disgusting, but to be fair, no more so than the baby food they used to sell in jars.

I mean nobody actually thinks they are healthy do they?

People really really do think they are healthy. And the believe that something factory made is better than home cooking is very pervasive.

You see the same thing in baby milk being better than breast milk. Or in adults that meal replacement drinks are more nutritious than real food. These myths are very deep seated.

I always knew that the pouches would be rubbish but was still shocked at just how rubbish they are - I'd assumed some work had gone in to making sure they contained sensible amounts of RDAs for protein, vitamins and minerals. But apparently not.

I mean nobody actually thinks they are healthy do they?

Manufacturers of baby food have enormous marketing budgets and go to enormous lengths to convince parents that their products are healthy, and use clever wording incorporating claims about nutrition and buzz-phrases about fortification with vitamins and minerals and “the right balance for each stage of development” and the like to give the impression that they are a superior product. Which is the problem: for every person who knows that this is just largely promotional persuasion, there are worried parents who aren’t getting the information from elsewhere being bombarded with this, desperate to do the right thing for their baby’s health, who it works on.

My dd loved pouches when she was a baby, I was extremely busy and they were convenient. She had baby vitamins too and plenty of milk and was happy and healthy. I think fed is best extends sometimes to more than milk!

It's still common sense. McDonalds have reached the far reaches of the world. Quick is usually unhealthy.

They can adjust it but it'll never be healthy

And if they do adjust it it will never ever be cheap

People don't like to admit they want to choose convenience so lie to tehslevs and get defensive.

Probably because those who used them, genuinely thought they were giving their children decent food and are now upset and angry, and those who didn't use them know better than to crow or be smug.

All we can do regardless of which side , is to feed children food of know provenance from now on.

My dc have never had a pouch. I was advised to get them used to it, in case of emergency or travel. And every time I gave them one they had the worst tummy runs. Just shows

I mean nobody actually thinks they are healthy do they? There is a reason babies love them like little kids love a mc Donald’s.

It’s why they have real food when it’s then offered as it’s loaded full of sugar rubbish. Fine for an emergency or a “treat”.

My children refused to eat them. When I tasted them myself, I could understand why.

I agree.

But generally any threads about foods for weaning involve a lot of defensive posters insisting that it really is just pure veg and basically the same as a home cooked meal (despite the obvious sweetening with apple juice etc in them)

I’m not generally an idiot and I lived with a type1 diabetic for many years, so I did realise that the sugar content in some of these pouches is high. But I hadn’t appreciated how much the mineral and vitamin content can drop compared to home-cooked food.

As a working mum I did use pouches and toddler ready meals - usually if we were out and about or visiting family and maybe a few times a week at home dc might have a fruit pouch or a toddler ready meal.I feel really bad about it now, but at the time it didn’t feel like a terrible choice as long as I didn’t use them all the time and i figured it might be better than eating what I was cooking for dh and I (which might have too much salt in, or be too spicy, or not able to be “mushed up”.)

By the time ds2 came along I was more confident cooking (as dc1 was older I’d had a lot of practice) and dc2 was always less fussy than dc1. I can’t work out if that is because dc1 ate all these identically flavoured ready meals, so when she hit something that tasted different she was more likely to freak out.

It makes me really sad because Ella’s Kitchen appears to have amazing values, it’s hard to imagine that they are deliberately bamboozling parents who are trying to raise healthy kids who enjoy lots of flavours.

Pouches have always been bad tho - this isn't new news.

It is like anything else that some people develop a reliance on. These pouches are quick, and easy to use.

This isn’t news but people buy it so it will continue being manufactured.