to think that commercial baby food is mostly complete rubbish?

[AKMD]

DS loves breadsticks so I've been spending what I consider to be silly money buying branded organic ones (10 tiny sticks in a box?!) for him to have out and about. The last time I went to get them, they were out of stock at my usual supermarket so I looked at the alternatives available. The other pack of breadsticks, whose manufacturer says that their snacks contain 'nothing but wholegrains and natural flavour', had added salt. The other packs of biscuits had sugar as the second ingredient. The shelf above the snacks was dedicated to bottles of fruit juice aimed at babies aged 7 months+.

DS was BLW (or finger food weaned, whichever you prefer to call it :o) so I haven't delved into the mysteries of 'jars' too deeply but I was quite shocked that baby food manufacturers make all sorts of claims about how great their foods are for babies when actually they contain all sorts of rubbish and are even, as a concept, actually a bad idea to give to babies (i.e. fruit juice to a 7mo?!). It concerns me that mothers think that they are making good choices for their children but are being misled. AIBU?

BTW my children are not babies anymore! Just read that back and it makes it sound like I give babies pizza!

YABU to buy expensive breadsticks

I've never ventured down the baby aisle so I haven't the foggiest what is in any of the stuff, but I did get sent this the other day:

www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8440126/Arsenic-and-toxic-metals-found-in-baby-foods.html

I dunno, I used to try ds's jar food before feeding it to him and tbh it was pretty OK. There was a lamb and apricot Organix thing he really liked iirc. This was 10 years ago mind.

I was under the impression that added salt and sugar levels are quite strictly controlled, anyway.

Oh I'm entering into the lion's den of jar food vs fresh food, still makes a change from bf vs ff.

All my kids were raised on nothing but jarred food for the first year of life and went on to have very eclectic tastes as they eat what we eat or they go hungry.

My 4 year old son is always wanting scallops in garlic, lobster, crab, seaweed and sushi.

I think something that seems incredibly important now ( like bf or fresh food) is really not that important in the grand scale of things when you look back on your life. You just feel more virtuous!! ( ?spelling)

I agree with pigstrotters.

DS1 was fed a mixture of jars and fresh as I went back to work FT when he was 4 months old and sometimes jars were easier. Oh, and this was the bad old days when we started solids at 4 months

DS2 hated jars and so pretty much only ate home cooked food. I was only working PT by then and didn't go back until he was 8 months old anyway, so it was easier.

DD refused purees, so we eventually did BLW when she was about 7 months. BLW aka chucking her a bit of what everyone else was eating...

DS1 is now almost 9, DS2 almost 7, DD is 5. Just as you can't tell how long any of them were BF for, you can't tell whether they were fed jars, pureed organic veg or finger foods. In the grand scale of things it really doesn't matter.

The only thing that really does have a lasting effect is the guilt that you somehow did it wrong

DD refused to eat anything I made and lived on jars with bits of toast, scrambled eggs and maybe a baked potato chusked in on a good day for the first 18 months

She's 12 now and considering her food issues (she has ASD) has a good and varied diet, sadly her favourite thing in the world is octopus.... which I have to cook.

OTOH, ds wouldn't touch jars or anything else procesed with a barge pole, except for tinned rice pudding. Oh deary me, the shame of being caught short in a supermarket cafe one day and resorting to cracking open a tin of ambrosia

He's 9 now and will eat anything so long as it isn't nailed down. I don't think it matters either way tbh

I've never met a single person who fed their baby solely on jars.

justventing - you obviously have a very narrow social circle then!

Not really pigstrotters, it just doesn't seem to be the 'done thing' round here.

YABU. The no added sugar baby foods (I'm thinking Organix here) all have concentrated grape juice to sweeten them. Which is almost entirely made of sugars (fruit sugars).

I laboured night and day over Annabel Karmel purees for DC1.

I joined the blogs and made porridge pancakes to BLW DC2.

DC3 gets jars. And adult breadsticks. And chunks of whatever's going really. And I get my sanity back.

FWIW DC1 and DC2 are both fussy little monkeys now despite their early diets of pureed kale with quails eggs etc.

The amount of sugar/salt in baby food is very low. A lot of food you would make at home would have more salt in even if you didn't add any - anything with a cheese sauce, sandwiches etc.
I mainly cooked from scratch but the only problem I have with processed baby food is that it's a rip off.

I gave DS1 jars occasionally when I couldn't be bothered to cook or if we were out and about and needed something easy. I wouldn't want to use them all the time though as they are very sweet - even the savoury ones. I was wondering why the 'no added sugar' bean casserole was so sweet, checked the ingredients and it had pineapple concentrate in it. So no sugar but certainly not how it would be made at home.

It might be worth checking your organic breadsticks for pineapple, apple or grape juice as this does turn up in a lot of baby snacks. I've always just bought low salt adult breadsticks, crackers or ricecakes and often use fresh fruit as a snack, didn't think it was too much of a problem for teeth unless it was dried fruit like raisins.

justventing - I'm not sure how you know what every child whose parents you know was fed as a baby. I'd hazard a guess that you'd actually find one or two who fed their babies nothing but jars if you looked hard enough

Children eat what they eat.
I gave both my children jars to start with (so shoot me)
They are now both adult.
One eats bugger all a fairly restricted diet
The other eats pretty much anything.

Both are healthy - as far as I can tell.
I think fussiness is in the genes.

Oh, and neither of them had fillings (because they certainly had fruit snacks) until they were adult and chose their own diets.

Oh, right, that's very clever of you jemima

I'll clarify - What I meant to says it, I've never met any with recently weaned DC who only used processed baby food.

Of the 50 or so parents I know with children who are currently babies and toddlers, I don't know anyone who fed their babies processed baby food as their staple diet.

I can actually remember a little baby jar I used to get....it was like chocolate rice pudding! Had it very regularly. I know it sounds gross, but it was LUSH. Thanks again, parents.

Squeezing past the homemade/blw debate. I fed my DS loving prepared homemade purees, he rejected everything and knowing it was crap and that the phase wouldn't last forever he nearly always ate Heinz Mum's own jars. Always on offer and much less heartbreaking for me. But I was very conscious of only giving him fruit and veg sticks for snacks. Now is a very easy eater, loves everything. Fish, meat, veg the lot. And icing on the cake he was FF from 6weeks. DD ate only fresh, home cooked food. BF till 4/5 months then formula thereafter. Both are excellent eaters tbh. YABU a bit, because baby jars are not that bad. It's better than Petit Filous and Weetabix all day.

OK, I've just looked at the emergency baby food jars in my cupboard - no salt in them.

Baby breadsticks - no salt

Baby crisps - 0.05g of salt per bag.

I don't see the problem here?

Most of ds's salt intake is from bread, cheese and weetabix.

"The only thing that really does have a lasting effect is the guilt that you somehow did it wrong"

So true JemimaBop

This thread is making me feel really shit about 'choices' I made when suffering MH problems while weaning my firstborn.

Leonie, for the won't eat veg child AK sauces and the blender are your friends. To get DS to eat veg I gave him a choice of fresh veg, a knife and a pot of ketchup. He chose what he wanted, helped with the prep and then I let him dip every bit of cauliflower, broccoli etc in his ketchup pot. He doesn't need Tommy K anymore, but it helped. Guilt is the main problem!