Feeling intense mum guilt due to baby/toddler pouches

[Hellosaidfred]

Obviously I’m not deluded enough to think that pouches compete against actual fruit / veg. But as a mum of a toddler who is extremely picky I’ve found these pouches a life savour for us as I assumed they’d be somewhat healthy.

My child will not touch veg so I always hoped that blending it in smoothies or giving him a few of the Ella’s kitchen or little Freddie’s fruit and veg purée blends during the week as a snack would count as something - but now I’m seeing articles about how bad they are and many comments about how bad these parents are for offering them to their children - I am starting to have mum guilt.

He eats plenty of actual fruit luckily if we slice into porridge or yogurt.

Not really sure what my aibu is, just wondering if there’s any mums out there that used these pouches and feel the same way

Actually, in my opinion as a biologist, there's not much worse you can do for a growing child with a metabolism that is still developing than fill them up with what is basically sugar paste. Nothing is more harmful to growing bodies and hormone regulation that tonnes of sugar. It's what's causing the obesity epidemic in children. You don't know there was no impact until they've made it to middle age without any metabolic, endocrine or weight problems.

But don't let that get in the way of the 'i did my best so fuck the consequences ' mantra 🙄

Sure, but the article doesn’t refer specifically to the BLW approach. And the NHS don’t say you should only feed whole fruit to young babies. So my point still stands that whether you buy a pouch or puree fruit yourself, you get the same free sugars and there is no NHS guidance saying don’t feed babies fruit or to only feed it whole. Apples and firmer fruits are quite daunting so I’d imagine a lot of parents would prefer to puree these initially. I also found giving my baby mango sticks early on frustrated him as he couldn’t chew them, so when I puréed them he was much happier as he could properly eat the thing he was enjoying rather than just suck it and get a bit of juice.

BLW isn’t suitable for some babies either unfortunately.

I tend to follow the Charlotte Stirling-Reed approach which is a mix of finger foods and purées. Although I have offered more fruits (puréed) than she suggests in the first couple of months as we were given dietary advice to be more varied than just veg.

We didn’t want to do blw - too time consuming and messy.
DT’s were weaned on jars and pouches (they are now in their mid 20’s). No harm done - healthy throughout.

This Ella’s kitchen veggie Dahl with cauliflower is fine by me. Whatever you wean them on as teenagers they will still eat too many MacDonalds.

Organic cauliflower 25% | Organic vegetable stock 15% (water and organic vegetables: carrots, onions, peas) | Organic cooked rice 14% (water, organic rice) | Organic onions 9% | Organic peas 9% | Organic aubergines 8% | Organic tomatoes 8% | Organic carrots 7% | Organic cooked lentils 6% (water, organic red lentils) | Organic curry powder <1% (turmeric, coriander, ginger, cinnamon, fenugreek, onion, black pepper, clove, nutmeg) | Organic coriander <1% | Organic garlic <1% | Other stuff 0%

Just to clarify on this, OP. Blending fruit and veg doesn't take away nutrients. It's the industrial processing that takes away nutrients (pasteurisation, heating, adding chemicals etc).

When they talk about issues with blending, all it means is that blending fruit causes the sugar to release more quickly.

If you eat a whole apple, your body has to slowly break down all the fibre and pulp (basically do what the smoothie maker does), so the sugar is released slowly.

If you eat a pureed apple, all the blending is already done, so the sugar goes straight to your blood, and you have a sugar spike.

It doesn't mean that eating blended/ pureed fruit is always bad - but you just have to account for the sugar being a bit quicker. Blended fruit (not veg) should be seen more like a treat food.

If you blend your own fruit and veg it doesn't 'lose' any nutrients. All the vitamins will still be there. It's the industrial processing that takes away the actual vitamins.

Please don't worry about blending veg like spinach and carrots - they are not high sugar foods and they are perfectly fine to blend up in a smoothie. They won't lose the vitamins.

Just be mindful that if you put fruit in a smoothie, the sugar will get into your son's blood more quickly, so you might want to limit sugar over the rest of the day. It doesn't mean you shouldn't ever do it though, just see the blended fruit as a treat.

Where is the anger on this thread???

Fuck the guilt. We should be feeling livid that we've had food sold to us as apparently "healthy", been misled as to its nutritional content*, and not had the true picture.

All those of you reading this and feeling guilty, let that go and swap it for some healthy anger at the manufacturers who happily profited from selling you faux-perfect baby food.

Now we know, we can make choices accordingly. And not feel guilty about it!!

*for the nitpickers: okay the packaging may not have outright lied, but CLEARLY everything about it is designed to make you think that the pouch aisle as a whole is nutritionally balanced and good for your child.

@AllotmentTime I agree parents should absolutely not feel guilty.

This isn't new from big food manufacturers, though.

The misleading marketing of packaged food products as 'healthy' in various ways has been going on ever since packaged food was a thing.

See: Low calorie; low fat; 'no added sugar'; ready meals; vitamins being added to make things look 'healthy'; 'super powered' juices and smoothies that are mainly sugars; vitamin drinks; protein bars and powders.

It's just particularly bad that this one is impacting babies and toddlers.

I dunno @AllotmentTime I never kidded myself that it was the healthiest nutritional choice. It was a convenience food. In all honesty, I can't even said I feel I was tricked by marketing as I didn't pay that much attention to it. I needed some easy feeds and grabbed ones I thought my child would eat. Hard to get angry about that.

Surely nobody really thought they were going to be that nutritious. It's the same with any packaged food. I really don't feel like I've been tricked.

But don't let that get in the way of the 'i did my best so fuck the consequences ' mantra 🙄

LOL what do you want people to do @Wingdings93? Get in their imaginary time machines and voosh back 15 years? People like you are the cause for mum guilt.

I’m still not convinced by the idea that we should feel guilt? I agree with all your points but how would the guilt help us now?

@heffalumpwoozle @Hoplolly isnt that the exact way we've been tricked though?? We know that food companies sell all sorts of ultra processed bad for you high salt/sugar/fat stuff. That's WHY there's a baby aisle. So that we can find food appropriate for babies.

If some people never thought of these as a healthy option in the first place then great for them. But it's not something the lay person has all the information about. For example, we know frozen peas are basically as good as fresh. We know Haribo is effectively not real food. In between those two extremes we're making a whole host of decisions about whether food is a good choice or not. Bread? Might be a UPF or might be healthy carbs. Oatcakes? Cheese? Yoghurt- Greek or kefir or chocolate with little crispy balls on the side?

Then we have, pretty much right next to the baby formula, an aisle full of food dedicated to babies and toddlers. BECAUSE IT'S FOR THEM. It's away from all the crisps and Haribo and over-processed yet vitamin-fortified cereal. Because it's for children. There's a MASSIVE implication therefore that it's suitable for children. There's an industry interested in making us believe that by being in that bit of the supermarket, by paying over the odds to have "organic" be every other word on the ingredients list, we've already made the healthy choice.

All I'm saying is that anyone who therefore believed that the food they bought in that aisle was nutritionally balanced specifically for their child, should not take guilt for that on themselves.

@AllotmentTime Well exactly - it's ridiculous and they need stronger regulations, particularly when it comes to baby food, but actually on all food.

I'm just saying that this is not new or surprising from the food industry. They have never had consumers' health and best interests at the forefront, and never will, unless forced.

People need to wise up, because the food manufacturers aren't going to do it without a fight, and even if the government clamp down more, it's going to be a long drawn out process. It is business at the end of the day and their primary focus is profit.

The BBC documentary is a very good thing, we need more of that sort of exposure, and more education.

The BBC documentary is a very good thing, we need more of that sort of exposure, and more education.
@heffalumpwoozle couldnt agree more with you there!

I did baby led weaning with my twins and one of them still ended up extremely fussy about food. I wish now I'd introduced a few of those pouches into the mix as my son still won't eat mushy food like mashed potato or soup and he's 15!

Pouches came in just as I had my third. They were marvellous; said child happily ate one as a snack for years.

No guilt here. My kids were hard work and I am not perfect.

I have an 18 month old toddler who point blank refuses most vegetables and fruit I give her other than sweet potato , bananas and raisins.

Sometimes the only way we can get veg into her is by giving her these pouches. I know they're not ideal but had no idea the processing of the food leads to nutrient loss. I already worry about what food she's eating enough as it is.

There are a couple of other issues with these pouches (and before that baby food in jars). First that they are labelled for 4 months plus rather than 6 months plus, for no reason other that the companies want to sell more product rather than any nutritional reason.

Also the manufacturing process makes them completely smooth and this doesn't teach a baby to deal with lumps in their food which is a natural developmental stage, learning to move food about in your mouth and mash it with your teeth, or gums if you haven't got teeth. If you're cooking a carrot and mashing it at home this is what your baby is learning. If they are having a carrot smoothie, they aren't.

Also you don't HAVE to do puree food. I did with my first but when my second came along I just didn't have time so she had whatever I'd made for the first, mashed up a bit.

I also think that these pouches are not an issue if used in addition to other foods. But there was a nutritionist on TV yesterday saying she has worked with families where the child was eating nothing but pouches and never having homemade anything, either because the parents lacked confidence in cooking, or because they had fallen for the marketing. Must be costing them a fortune too.

The pouches are different per age group so moving from puree to meals with more lumpy. DT’s worked their way through the ranges and developed a liking for all foods. Never had any fussy eaters.

This is a really helpful explanation, thank you.

You may not know this, but you seem to be very informed, so can I ask what the impact on the sugar content is of mashing up fruit with a fork? My instinct is that it's somewhere between blending and leaving fruit whole.

I wouldn't worry, mine are all young adults now. I breast fed them all, I cooked the finest recipes out of that Annabelle woman's baby cook book. I spent the whole of their childhood putting nutritionally balanced meals on the table, that they mostly didn't eat.
I've ended up with one who takes one look a his Dad's homemade pizza says no thanks and helps himself to a bowl of shreddies and sultanas for dinner. One who lives off red box cheesy pasta and cheap ham, and the other who is allergic to all those heathy fruits and vegetables I so loving shoved down her throat at every opportunity.

Domt worry about it. My DD2 would only eat jarred food until she was well over one. Blending my own food in to it never worked either.
She's 16 now and although is still a bit fussy doesn't seem to have affected her too much. That's the thing you have to remember they won't stay on pouches forever.
And your child is being fed which is the most important thing.

It doesn't change the actual sugar content - there is still the same amount of sugar in it, no matter whether you eat it whole, mash, blend or juice.

It only changes the speed at which your body breaks it down and it gets into your blood stream.

If you blend it til it's a liquid then it's going to be like coca cola, and it's going to be sucked right up into your blood stream and shock your system.

A solid - your body is going to have to chip away at that slowly and break it down.

So an in between/ mashing it up would be somewhere in between the two - slightly slower than a juice/ smoothie, but quicker than a solid.

The quicker the sugar gets into your child's blood stream, the more stress it causes the system and the higher the spike they will need to deal with - so ideally, the slower the better :)

(Disclaimer - this doesn't mean you should only give a baby solids, as they often can't cope with this unless they are soft! - A certain amount of mashing is needed for babies - just limit the amount of sugar you give in the first place).

Please don’t feel guilty. As another poster pointed out, they are in this stage for such a short time anyway.

If you are posting because you want to make changes, then making your own purées isn’t a huge effort - get a stick blender and blend some of the food you eat with a bit of milk. Dishes like cottage pie, fish pie, even lasagne, will work, and freeze portions to use on another day. So you don’t have to do this more than a few times a week when the adults are eating something suitable to blend. Just watch the salt and sugar content is low. Ready meal versions of these dishes are probably too salty. I would make our food without salt and then the adults would sprinkle salt on theirs at the table.

First the stupid debates about giving babies formula (yeah, yeah...breast is best..bla bla), then pouches are an issue...as long as the child is fed and gets a variety of foods, it's not really an issue.

We aren't in the UK. It's entirely normal here to wean using jars. I'm considered to be bit odd using blw but I'm adding in jars and pouches every so often. Saves me having to puree stuff. DD also only eats a quarter of a jar in one go. I'm not going off pureeing tiny amounts of food. Life's too short.
It means she gets a range of foods I sometimes wouldn't bother mixing. Yesterday, she had a pouch with sweet potato and cherries...the other day apples, pears, cucumber and spinach. Yeah, off you go, girl.
Her favourite food is meatballs...and cardboard.

There's always something mums are made to feel guilty about. Is your child thriving? Are they the right size/ weight? Are they happy? Are they developing well (barring any developmental delays)? Then they're doing fine. Just make whatever adjustments you think are necessary and crack on without giving it a second thought. Crikey, parents used to put their babies to sleep on their tummies thinking that was fine. A few pouches is neither here nor there in comparison. Show me a well fed, well cared for baby who has had pouches any day over a child who doesn't know where the next meal is coming from! We need to maintain some perspective here.