To think pouches are awful?

[AIBUnamechanger9]

I have two DCs and have never fed them from pouches. I see babies and toddlers sucking on them everywhere and it seems horrible for their teeth? Also for having a routine of eating at mealtimes or teaching them to eat properly. I recently spoke with a friend (who I am quite close with and believe she’s a wonderful mum) and she told me her 8 and 10 yo children still eat from pouches, especially if they’re on a day out, etc.

AIBU to despair at the prevalence of pouch feeding?

I never thought they tasted too bad 🤣 The savoury ones I mean. I would happily eat the hip organic lasagne myself. And I remember having an Ella's red pepper thing (it was almost 4 years ago so I'm a bit hazy on the exact details!) warmed up with garlic bread one lunchtime.

I just don't get the outrage to be honest. Family's are using food banks in record numbers, children are genuinely neglected and abused, there are so many Actual Issues to "despair" about, rather than a toddler eating a warm, perfectly safe meal that happens to come in a pouch/jar/packet.

Extremely lazy parenting. People wonder why we have so many beige fussy eaters in the UK and its because they are weaned on this utter junk.

And you have evidence of this? DT’s were weaned on jars and pouches but eat everything. Never had to prepare separate “child suitable “ meals so many families do. The advantage of jars and pouches is the introduction to so many different types of flavours and tastes - we worked our way through the age ranges.

Congratulations, you get a gold star. I also used re-usable nappies, but I was lucky enough to have a long paid mat leave, and live close to where I worked, and have room for a washer and dryer in my home. I also used pouches, as they were one of the only things one of my children would actually eat for months (said child later ended up under paediatric care for their extremely avoidant eating patterns). My point being, that different families have different circumstances, and judging other families for a situation that may well be circumstantial is a pretty unhelpful thing to do.

Incorrect!

@Gruffallowhydidntyouknow I can only respond in an anecdotal way but my son had a mix of pouches, our meals and finger type food and, although he's gotten fussier as he's gotten older, overall he's a "good eater". He's always liked different flavours, textures, loved meals with sauces and didn't mind things mixed together. Always used cutlery really well and sat at the table with us chatting, looking around, shares food nicely.

So no I do not agree with you that by sometimes giving him perfectly safe food from pouches I was lazy mum setting him up for years of issues around eating.

Ha! I did everything from scratch with both my children. And I mean everything. Right down to making flipping baby led weaning sized cheese and herb sausages. Homemade everything. I have one child who will eat anything and everything, including crap (as mentioned in a previous post) and one who eats fuck all. I could try just not letting second child have what he is prepared to eat. But in a battle of wills, he is the winner. He would eat nothing and is already very thin. So yeah, there's a fair bit of beige food, with weird 'exotic' forays into sushi and the like. But mostly the beige stuff. I would prefer things to be different, but here we are.

I was thinking it was the media’s portrayal of unobtainable body shapes and perpetual body shaming on social media, but now you mention it, yes, it’s probably prunes.

Why have you eaten pouches to know what they taste like?

No me neither, the rats are too cute!

There’s obviously a lot of people feeling really defensive about them and I get it, I really do. It’s bloody hard being a mum and working full time. But honestly @BadSkiingMum had it. I’ll link the study she did below.

Unless your kids got medical issues, they really should only be having them occasionally. I just randomly picked one to look up the nutritional value (it was carrot and pea and something else) and it had 8.8g of sugar in it. For a four month old!! I’m sorry but that’s insane!

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59f75004f09ca48694070f3b/t/5d93d133019c986514158dd3/1569968443400/Fruit_%26_veg_pouches_report_for_web_Oct_2019.pdf

pretty sure babies are not aware of Media’s portrayal of unobtainable body shapes and it’s more to do with textures , smell , colour and taste of food they eat.
read about it ,children with No neurodevelopmental disorders Like ADHD or Autism diagnosed with AFRID is on the rise.

The age they’re eating pouches is generally too young to know if that are ND or not.

This has taken a turn 😬 Thanks to the people who have been so kind re. my post about feeding DS lots of pouches - and not just when we're out and about. I'll carry on tbh...

I just randomly picked one to look up the nutritional value (it was carrot and pea and something else) and it had 8.8g of sugar in it.

For comparison:
Birdseye frozen peas are 4.9% sugar (just checked the bag)
Banana 12% sugar
Medjool dates are 46.4% sugar

Un-pureed fruits and vegetables contain sugar too 🙄

Yes I tasted a lot of them because I obviously want to know what foods I'm feeding to my baby. I think all the savoury ones are awful. The fruit ones are ok but mostly an indistinguishable mix of apple sauce with hints of berry or banana flavour. It's clearly just the result of heat processing used to turn perishable foods shelf-stable so the flavours suffer. If precooked food inside a bag genuinely tasted good then all adults should be able to survive on army MREs.

Yep! A carrots got 3g of sugar in! People are batshit sometimes.

It’s not about the amount of sugar in fruit/veg (where it will be naturally combined with fibre), it’s that the industrial processes break it down in such a way so that it becomes free sugars.

From the conclusion of the report posted above:

The studies in this review suggest that home- made foods, foods that are minimally processed, and heating for as short a period of time as possible prior to being mashed or chopped and consumed soon after preparation are likely to retain more nutrients, and be lower in free sugars, than those that have been industrially processed using methods that involve shear treatments followed by prolonged cooking and/or thermal storage.
Mechanical pulping, puréeing, homogenisation or blending of fruits and vegetables reduces the particle size, may introduce oxygen to the system, causes the release of intercellular components, and provides a larger surface area for reactions to occur. Depending
on the food matrix involved, this kind of processing in combination with thermal treatment can have several effects including enzymatic or oxidative degradation of nutrients and phytonutrients, reductions in total fibre and redistribution between soluble and insoluble fibre.

But again, no one is saying that pouches shouldn’t exist - it’s a convenience food and there may be good reasons why it is convenient to feed a baby with a pouch on that particular occasion.

Pouches are not processed tasteless junk ffs! Ella's kitchen for one, is mashed up organic veg with a drop of water in a foil pouch to keep it fresh. No preservatives. 🙄🤦‍♀️

@Maddy70 THEY ARE NOT PROCESSED FOOD!!! Ffs

Plenty of babies need purées for medical reasons! So please fuck off with your discriminatory shaming attitude

@VestibuleVirgin How is this 'crap' please? Baffled tbh

Threads like this do my head in. If you want to give your kids pouches then do and if you dont want to give your kids pouches then don't!

People arguing over how other people feed their kids is just silly.

What do you think happens when we chew bananas/apples/any other fruit in our mouthes? IT BECOMES PURÉED! JFC