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 never understand the motivation of people who think the best response to this kind of story is to point out that they would never fall for it and the onus is on the large number of parents who do and it’s an outrage to suggest tiny regulatory changes like restrictions on advertising, or on falsely calling these ‘balanced’. Do those posters also wish Nestle were still able to promote formula powder in countries where that was leading to babies’ deaths?

The story isn’t a barometer of your personal virtues as a parent, if there are hundreds of thousands of infants who will be fed this because they weren’t lucky enough to have you as their mother then since we can’t legislate for you to foster them all, how about making some easy tweaks to advertising and packaging info that will make it easier for all the less wonderful parents to look after their babies well?

Pretty sure it says on the Ella ones that they should be given with a spoon.

I think a big issue with them is how many won’t know about how eating smooth food excessively when a certain age affects jaw development.

I wonder how many actually know that of course they should be used sparingly. I see them a lot: in large numbers/multiples in trolleys, being eaten by much older children who are more than old enough to eat a whole piece of fruit like an apple. (I think the yoghurt pouches are fine when toddlers are messy with a pot but I see older kids eating the purees.) My DC definitely had them for convenience when travelling etc or for lunch on the go and even after a really bad day. But I was under no illusion that they were the same as freshly cooked veg cut up/mashed according to the stage they were at.

Maybe they should have one of those “not a replacement for a varied diet” statements that vitamins have or something.
But really, people could probably work that out for themselves. Do people actually think the pouches provide great nutrition? Or are they quick and easy, like other convenience foods?

This thread is full of smug responses. Yes you might understand that processing reduces the nutritional content of food, and cooked everything from scratch. But:

• clearly a lot of people don't understand this
• I've just checked on rhe Ella's kitchen website and to me, it's implicit that they're healthy and can be used as a main source of food.

If there is an issue with how much some parents are using these pouches, surely its a no brainer to accept that nutrition is complex, some people are going to struggle to understand, and changing advertising to make clear that pouches should be used as a small part of a balanced diet which is mainly based on fresh foods, is a relatively easy step compared to re educating the population on the grams of sugar a baby is supposed to eat a day.

The 'just eat a bit of what the adults are having' is not always realistic, either because of diet (loads of people have heavily processed diets, take aways etc and were probably trying to protect their baby from this)

I find your stance on this so bizarre, because to me the obvious course of action where a huge food company is making £millions with misleading health claims is just to stop them making misleading health claims.

Literally the only people suffering here are small infants. I know you feel good to be able to say you would never fall for marketing like these other stupid parents, but is it really worth it?

It took you 20 seconds to google how much sugar a baby should eat. But that 14g doesn't include naturally occurring sugars or sugars from fruit. Which is what the pouches say they contain - so no, it isn't simple.
What is the difference between 13g of sugar in a banana and 13g in a pouch of banana puree? I doubt most people know if or what difference there is - not just for pouches but also things like 'healthy' kids' yoghurts.

There are loads of reasons that a parent might not be able to get their phone out in the middle of Tesco and read some articles on sugar limits, what counts as added sugar, what a free sugar is.
Maybe they have poor literacy skills, a learning disability, English as a second language. Maybe they are frazzled and tired and not coping.
Maybe they just trust the labels? Or maybe they are not very clever?

Why not just make the labelling clear.
Stop them putting 'no added sugar' on high sugar pouches.
Make a clear labelling system on the front of the pack that says if it is low/med/high sugar.
Put a warning on savoury pouches that they are not suitable as meal replacements
Put a % of vitamin/iron needs on the pouches.

But oh no! The outcome might be that babies get a better diet. Then how would the best parents feel smug?

Are there people who would turn their noses up at jars but would happily use pouches? If anything, I’d think that pouches would be what people would view as worse than the jars.

I never used either, but are they not basically the same contents (mushed up food), just one is in a recyclable glass jar and the other in plastic?

I appreciate the sentiment behind your post however this just ends up being another stick to beat working parents with. Plenty of us work full time and have never relied on pouches or jars. Lots of parents who don't go out to work use pouches and jars.

I do agree that there should be better education about the dietary requirements of babies and small children, and that the packaging should be clearer. It is misleading and the companies know that well. They rely on parents believing that these pouches are better than what they could put together themselves because they're "organic" or have "no nasties". We have a significant issue with UPF and obesity in the western world so clearly education on nutrition is lacking across the board.

No doubt, a bit of both. Tired, overworked people, with money to buy these pouches, maybe overlooked the fact, that they are not meant to be a main source of nutrition. Many people have low cooking skills, or low confidence in the kitchen, or could have a disability that could make cooking difficult, or impossible.

Maybe less so now as pouches are the standard and you can buy the Lidl version etc. but certainly when Ella's Kitchen first launched it was very much marketed at parents who weren't typically buying jars - organic ingredients, 'no added sugars/no nasties', the pouches were seen as fresher and more full of vitamins than jars or box powders.
It was aimed very much at the Boden/Bugaboo parents. It was a marketing triumph that really changed the baby food industry.

I didn’t use formula, so this isn’t me being defensive about it - but formula is very highly regulated to provide as much benefit as it can, there’s very little difference between brands because of how strict the rules are about the ingredients. It’s totally different to a pouch of mush claiming to be full of nutrients.

I will be honest - I relied on these pouches, and now I feel terrible about it. BUT! I was coping on my own as long term partner had walked out, my mum was working FT and my dad was long gone. I had PND and a baby who didn’t sleep for more than half an hour at a time for nearly two years. I was utterly broken, and desperate for her to eat. I couldn’t give her what I was having as I was living on cheap tinned food, so I spent as much as I could on what I thought was good baby food for my child. I do know about nutrition, but was broke and working every hour to try to keep a roof over our heads, and we did end up homeless for several months when she was a toddler. So don’t slam people trying their best. Clear marketing and labelling on the pouches will definitely help.

I think the majority of people know pouches shouldn't be the main source of nutrition but they are useful in certain scenarios. Eg. when you didn't expect to be out past a certain time and then baby is starving, a pouch can be convenient. Or I've used them on the occasion when baby has chucked the healthy meal I've lovingly prepared on the floor and I'm too tired to make something else. I'd rather he have a pouch than go hungry. I sometimes use the fruit pouches to add sweetness to things like porridge (but only a couple of squirts, so 1 pouch will last a few days in the fridge). I'm not going to feel guilty about that because 80-90% of the time he eats fresh homecooked meals, the same as we eat. We can all have common sense but we can't all be perfect.

The pouches aren't the worst of them. The disgusting bears paw sweets, those over processed "carrot" straw things, any of those kiddylicious "fruit" snack things that are just pure sugar. So many happy clappy middle class parents hand these out instead of actual fruit, which is just as easy, when it's obvious they're total crap but the label says "organic" so it must be good..

There’s a huge amount of people out there who suffer/suffered with PND and other health issues and cooking nutritious meals every day for their baby felt like too big of a task as just getting up in the morning was a result in itself. These pouches were marketed as healthy and nutritious, these parents were mislead.

Nobody should make anyone feel guilty about using these pouches as everyone has their reasons. No one is stupid or a horrible parent for not reading the back of a label and it’s awful to see people saying this!

The difference between 13g of sugar in a pouch of bana puree and 13g of sugar in a banana is that the banana also has a load of fibre in which hasn't been destroyed by a blender, which means a baby cannot eat A WHOLE BANANA because it won't fit in their little tummy! The whole problem with blending is that you're getting 3 or 4 times the amount of food into your stomach than would normally fit, so 3 or 4 times the sugar. It's why health information has said smoothies are bad for years! They were telling you this on TV when I was 19! People should know by now!

I have been given endless leaflets by health visitors and the GP on how to feed my baby healthily and to avoid salt and sugar. There's no excuse to not know it's literally rammed down your throat constantly. You simply can't claim ignorance, at this point it's choosing not to listen.

You are definitely the best parent. Those other babies deserve it.

Yeah, idiotic of them to be born to such inferior parents

Absolutely agree.
There are lots of things that people "should" know, and probably to some degree at least do know, but still fail to act upon for many reasons. And how products are marketed is hugely powerful. That's why large companies have such vast budgets and advertising is big business. If we think we're not affected by it we're deluding ourselves. In fact some the best advertising is probably that which we're not consciously aware of being influenced by.
Of course parents have personal responsibility to their children and of course education about nutrition is important but that's not an excuse to let manufacturers and retailers get away with making false claims. It doesn't have to be one or the other. You can provide as much scientific information as you like but people still get influenced by clever advertising campaigns and catchy slogans. It's a long time since Aptamil were using their "closest to breastmilk" slogan, yet how often do we still see that advice trotted out on this forum? I've even met HCPs who believe it, and there is absolutely no substance to this claim, it's just the ongoing result of a very successful but false advertising campaign.
Some are more susceptible than others of course but we all have our perceptions of different brands influenced by marketing practices. That's how the big car manufacturing conglomerates get away with charging thousands of pounds more for some of their marques than others when the differences are superficial, sometimes literally only the badging. We all have perceptions of what "good" brands are, often even regarding products we have never bought before or had any personal experience of. I don't think that's because we're all, stupid, it's because marketing departments are often very, very good at what they do.

Just stricter on declaring additives and tighter regulations for consumer protection.

Fibre isn’t destroyed by blenders.

Information is free and easily available to everyone. It would take a matter of minutes to read a few chapters of a book on weaning when you start your weaning journey with your baby. Or to watch a few Solod Starts videos on social media, or baby led weaning stuff. It's not acceptable to have a baby and then do absolutely no research around such a key milestone. And in an age of unlimited access to information, ignorance isn't enough of a defence.

Yes, Ella's Kitchen and Co need to do better with how they label food. But an average adult human should be able to discern all by themselves that feeding their baby a sodding pouch three times a day, as their main meal, is a silly idea.

Exactly. But you can't tell them that or it's mum shaming 🙄

No they don't deserve it. Their parents should do better.

They are literally in charge of an entire humans life, it is their responsibility to read the bloody leaflets the NHS workers give them. They are written clearly and simply, so that anyone can understand them.

What kind of parent can't be arsed to read some basic information on what they're feeding their kid?

Maybe my babies were just absolute fucking gluttons, but I can confirm that a baby definitely can eat a whole banana.

Anyway, I am firmly on my BLW high horse (except I do sometimes let my kids eat those organix oaty bars, if we're out and I'm desperate), but I do agree that the labelling on the pouches is hugely misleading. They are saying 'no added sugar' because it's technically true, but it implies (and carefully doesn't say) that the sugar in them is therefore not a problem. And 'perfectly balanced for babies' or whatever is just nonsense that they're clearly only allowed to say because it's not specifically measurable and so there isn't a rule about it. Parents are not thick if they get the impression that these products are healthy. And there is often so much anxiety about feeding your children the right things that having someone else 'balance' the meal for you must feel quite appealing.

Ironically, one of the things that appealed to me about BLW was that I wouldn't have to think too much - the books about making special baby purees and what order to introduce individual foods seemed way more complicated and I didn't quite have the headspace to work it all out. If I'd been wanting to do purees, it would have been tempting to use products that said what age range they were for and were claiming to have all the right ingredients in.

I might be misremembering, but I thought when pouches came in they were considered to be a snack or on the go food not meal or component of a meal. There was always negative comment about them being food in drink form. It likewise always seemed pretty obvious that slurping purée was less good as a way or learning about eating than spoon fed or baby led.

But maybe it's just me and my tendency to hone in on anomalous practices. Like the old nut allergy thing of not giving your kids nut products - that has now been reversed - and how that didn't make sense as a way to ward against future allergies.