to think advertising of baby pouches needs to be restricted?

[Pearl87]

Ella's Kitchen outright admit their product should only be used sparingly. A lot of parents use these pouches as the main source of their child's nutrition.

I have no idea what you are looking at, but that certainly isn’t the beef stew. This is the macros for the beef stew:

Values / Typical Valuesper 100g/mlper servingRI%
Energy kJ
292
Energy kcals
69
Fat
0.5 g
Fat - of which saturates
0.1 g
Carbohydrate
10.7 g
Carbohydrate - of which sugars
0.1 g
Fibre
2.0 g
Protein
4.5 g

I assume that’s for one of the fruit pouches, which will obviously have a lot of sugar in. The beef stew has 0.1g per 100g sugar.

But that wasn’t my comment was about anyway - it was to those saying it’s ‘obvious’ that the pouches are rubbish but I can’t see why it’s obvious at all? They have no preservatives, the ingredients looks fine and the marketing suggests they are ‘perfectly balanced’.

Firstly, I doubt most people are reading the back of everything they buy.
Especially if it's organic baby food with no added sugar.
It only contains naturally occurring sugar from the fruit and you're supposed to give your baby lots of fruit, right?
And what does 18g of sugar mean? How many grams of sugar is a baby supposed to have? A banana could contain 18g of sugar.

I'm sure.
Very glad to be in the percentage of those who haven't.

I just watched Panorama (BBC1 - tonight) about this. The vitamin levels were shocking in some of them, totally depleted after the processing stage. Sugar content was high.
It's marketed as healthy food, that's the problem. Busy parents probably don't read the labels, just see the ads and think all is well.
Something needs to be done.

NHS website says a baby should have no more than 14g of sugar a day.

Parents really should be reading the labels of the things they are feeding their kids. That's the whole point of the labels!

They should just be marketed similarly to pet food, where they're labelled as 'complimentary' and it makes it clear they're not for every day/every meal use (so not 'complete' nutrition).

I personally don't give them my baby as they're expensive and it's easier just to share my own food. I do have a jar of baby porridge that I use maybe a couple of times a month if I'm pressed for time and I'm planning to eat out.

I think, like everything else, things like pouches are fine in moderation. Not the most nutritious thing, but fine as a new texture for them to try.

I think it's hard sometimes for working parents and parents of more than one child to find the time for cooking, which is why the pouches can be helpful, but tbh a slice of wholemeal toast with peanut butter/other topping, and some very easy to mash fruit like raspberries really don't require any more time than pouches 🤷

At this point we have to just call a spade a spade.

If there are parents who genuinely believe this is healthy then their just stupid.
Not decieved, not scammed.

It's all on them. And we just have to be concerned about their use of free will to have children.

This. Homemade is best as most things contain too much salt and/or sugar. It's just common sense

Yes, parents need to engage their brains

But you had to look that up?
The NHS also says that's added or free sugars though, and the pouches say no added sugar - it's just naturally occurring fruit sugar.
So already it's not that simple.

You're basically saying that the average parent buying food for their child needs to thoroughly research every claim and ingredient and approach everything written on the packet with caution.

I think that puts too much of the responsibility on the consumer - we shouldn't have to expect baby food companies to be trying to mislead it. The packaging and health claims should be truthful, accurate and easy to understand.

So rather than food companies having any responsibility not to make misleading claims or label food as healthy when it isn't - it should be the customer's responsibility to assume it is all lies?
Wouldn't it be better to stop the misleading claims rather than allow them and expect shoppers to be looking up NHS guidelines and RDAs while they walk round Tesco.

Please can someone explain to me how using pouches alongside weaning is any worse than using formula instead of breastmilk?

But that's what marketing is, people need to take self responsibility because the next person will come along with the next great product. You can't trust a company who's sole purpose is to make profits to do this, even if legislated to do so. That's just being very naive. But who would really think feeding a baby something out of a plastic pouch, that doesn't expire for months and months, would be the best option?

I hate to break it to you but Red bull does not infact give you wings.

I get so sick of these kinds of comments berating parents who are doing the right thing. If you have a child you have the responsibility to do the best for them, that includes knowing what you are feeding your child. Don't blame it on advertising, when others can use their common sense or their eyes and read the ingredients on a packet.

There are different types of natural occurring sugar. Whole in the fruit it's released slowly and is healthy. Juiced or pureed it's released quickly and has a similar effect to sugar. I've seen many experts say this over the years and the panorama show mentioned explains it too. Guidelines also say only one portion of juice or puree a day counts towards your five a day - anymore is too much.

As a parent it's your job to research what a good weaning diet is. There is great advice everywhere, literally everywhere, on what to feed a baby, on iron intake, sugar, fibre. Its not complicated.

Common sense says that feeding your child pouches most of the time is a silly idea, both from a nutritional and from a learning to eat and accept various textures point of view.

Parents are the gatekeepers for their children's best interest. If they can't be asked to figure out basic good eating habits then shame on them.

In what way is the standard higher?

The use of these pouches is shocking. How lazy are we now as a species??

I know many parents very nervous about weaning. The overwhelming weaning advice is to absolutely minimise salt (I would now argue this advice is too heavy handed but I digress) which made me relatively rigid when weaning my first. I can empathise with why some parents would see pouches as a healthy safe option - they're reliably very low salt and marketed as healthy...! They also just sound like what you would do at home if you went down the purees route - just basic ingredients, no preservatives.

I don't/didn't give pouches (did blw) and I personally would have had concerns about the iron and protein levels and lack of benefits for gut microbiome, but I was genuinely surprised to hear just how nutritionally depleted they are! I would have thought you were still getting the vitamin benefits of mushed peas and potatoes but it turns out not.

Bloody hell! It took 20 seconds to Google how much sugar a baby should eat in a day. The limit is 14g so anything over that is bad wherever it comes from. It really is that simple!

You're basically saying that the average parent buying food for their child needs to thoroughly research every claim and ingredient and approach everything written on the packet with caution.

Give me strength! Parents are responsible for an entire human beings life and health! They should at least look at NHS/giver advice about what their child should be eating and read some bloody packets before throwing shit food in the trolley! Take some responsibility for your child's health! They don't have anyone else to protect them it's literally a parents job! It takes 10 seconds to look at the back of a packet and think 'god that's a lot of sugar! Best not buy that!' it's really not a bloody hardship!

The savoury ones (beef stew etc) contain very little sugar and look a lot more balanced. Only 2g sugar per pouch. But they are apparently devoid of nutrients. I think it is a lot less clear cut for the savoury ones. I would know a pouch of puree apply is going to be very high in sugar without even looking at the label

Well said, @Wingdings93

That’s incorrect. The food is pasteurised using various methods to kill all bacteria. There’s pouches are sterile and air tight and vitamin c in the form of lemon juice is used as an antioxidant. There’s no bacteria in them so they don’t decay. It’s similar to canning. The key nutrition issue seems to be the very low iron levels in the savoury pouches, which is a problem if parents use them as main meals. I’d also be concerned that a kid in a pushchair sucking on a pouch may be missing out on human interaction during meal times - all the face to face chat at the table and games such as ‘aeroplaning’ the food in on a spoon! No skin in the game as pouches weren’t really a thing when my three were babies. It was the Annabel Karmel era and I remember a lot of mashed banana and roasted sweet potatoes.

A fruit puree contains the same amount of fruit sugar if you make it in your kitchen as it does if your child is slurping it out of a pouch.