Are baby food pouches and purées really that bad?

[RedPandaFluff]

I have a seven month old and have done a fair bit of steaming and puréeing veg, but as we've been out a bit more now that restrictions have eased, I've been using ready-made pouches a lot more. They've been great - I've got the veg-only ones so they must be reasonably healthy, the baby happily wolfs them down, and I get to save some time. In recent days, I've mostly relied on them rather than cooking for DD.

HOWEVER.

Some mum-friends I have are a bit sniffy about them. They seem to spend a lot of time and effort making recipes from Annabel Karmel and Joe Wicks books, which makes me feel terribly guilty as, once we've been through all the allergens etc., I plan to give DD a version of whatever we have to eat. So basically I see the pouches as a bridge to this.

Am I being a terrible mum for using pouches instead of lovingly crafting special meals for DD? Are pouches really that bad?

My daughter was weaned on mostly Ella's pouches and she's still alive, with all of her teeth

@Kiki275 - I bet DH to try the chocolate and tapioca jar we were feeding the DT’s. It looked disgusting - like frogspawn but DT’s loved it although it’s never been eaten in our house since then!

[quote PrayingandHoping]@sauvignonblancplz

I shared this earlier. I really don't have an issue with any of those ingredients. It's exactly what I would use if I made lasagne (which I do sometimes!), although I don't use organic.

So no, I don't have any issue and I definitely don't consider it junk food. [/quote]
No, there's nothing wrong with the ingredients, but food that has basically been autoclaved cannot possibly be the same as freshly cooked food. I believe that some of the more modern heat/pressure techniques of preservation alter the structure and flavour of food less than older methods, but it seems like common sense to me that it is impossible to preserve food in anyway that gives such longevity without altering it in some way. If you treat it with sufficient heat to destroy all microorganisms with the degree of certainly that allows such long shelf lives then it surely has to at least partly denature proteins in the food and probably disrupt other important molecules as well. The product isn't "bad" but its like tinned food, UHT milk etc. Perfectly OK, but most of us probably wouldn't choose to eat them for every meal. The baby food manufacturers often like to advertise their products in a way that suggests they are exactly the same as home cooked meals that have just been conveniently packaged, but that's not really true.
I don't think they are awful. I used a mixture of foods for my children when they were babies just as I do now and ready prepared foods do have their uses. But I don't believe that jarred food is the same as a home cooked meal any more than I believe that tinned peas are the same as peas freshly popped out of their pods.

I think the issue is that you have to look really quite hard and spend a lot of money to get the ones that aren’t just cheap and sweet ingredients, because the majority of them are. I think a lot of people look at eg Ella’s kitchen and see “100% organic” and don’t look beyond that. Or they think that because shops are allowed to sell them they must be good.

That Freddie’s kitchen one you posted looks really nice Praying and I would definitely have given that to my child. It’s all about balance with everything isn’t it. The important thing is to be properly informed.

But lots of store cupboard ingredients that we use to cook our meals are also tinned/pre packed (tinned tomatoes, tinned kidney beans, tinned sweetcorn, Passata, tomato purée, stock cubes etc etc etc)

I think people need to look at the whole picture. In the grand scheme of things, if u think they loose a little bit of nutrition because they've been put in a pouch does it matter? It's not harmful and plenty of ingredients people use and will be feeding their babies will also be that way.

It's like steaming veg compared to boiling. Everyone knows u keep more nutrition steaming yet plenty of people still boil. It's not going to harm anyone at the end of the day.

And remember. Babies get all the nutrition they actually need from their milk under 1

OP I am doing very similar to you. We started weaning in lockdown so initially everything was homemade. As we are now starting to go out more I am using pouches alongside his finger food when out and about. I like the convenience and the fact that I can pick more textured things. I tried filling my own pouches but found them more of a faff to be honest. Plus the spouts were quite small and some companies do wider spouts for more texture. I read ingredients and choose carefully so I am happy with my choice.
In a couple of my zoom baby groups we have been talking about weaning and you often get some quite judgemental mums about even doing spoon feeding, let alone using pouches. Unfortunately people seem to judge whether it be the whole breast v formula, blw v spoon weaning, when to wean, sleep training etc. I found this very hard and feel I had to justify my choices but now I am trying to feel more confident in my choices and not justify them.

Yes u do have to look at the ingredients @HarrietM87... and I'm sure not all people do

The second one I posted was just a Sainsbury's own. So not top end.

I was adamant she wasn't going to inherit my sweet tooth! So I have def been careful about what I think may be sweeter ingredients

But I think her favourite food is broccoli 🤣 (but then that's one of mine lol!)

@Parker231 I'm actually gutted I never saw that one. I genuinely like tapioca, my mum always had a tin in the cupboard as a kid x

@PrayingandHoping babies don’t get all their nutrition from milk until 1. It forms the main part of their nutrition until 1 but by no means gives them all their nutrition.

@Bluebellpainting I do feel a bit guilty for not doing BLW - seems to be what most of the other NCT mums are doing. But DD has always been a small baby and slow to gain weight; I want to make sure she's actually eating and not just playing. So, purées give me peace of mind that she's getting something in addition to her normal milk feeds.

I do give her melty puffs, rice cakes etc. to gnaw on afterwards . . . although she started choking on a bit of rice cake the other day, it was scary.

@Bluebellpainting I do feel a bit guilty for not doing BLW - seems to be what most of the other NCT mums are doing. But DD has always been a small baby and slow to gain weight; I want to make sure she's actually eating and not just playing. So, purées give me peace of mind that she's getting something in addition to her normal milk feeds.

I do give her melty puffs, rice cakes etc. to gnaw on afterwards . . . although she started choking on a bit of rice cake the other day, it was scary.

@RedPandaFluff Please don’t feel guilty. I was like you with regards to wanting to be sure he was getting something. He had finger foods to play with alongside purées. He got so frustrated by the finger foods as he wanted them but couldn't fully manage them- lots of smooshing but not much actually going in but he wolfed down his purée. At about 7 and a half months it kind of clicked. He still has some purées but more of his meal is finger foods now (he is 8 months). I read about both options and went for the combo approach. I see it as the best of both worlds.

That's reassuring, @Bluebellpainting - DD is the same, always keen to get her mitts on the finger foods but doesn't cope with them very well yet. Lots of mouthing and dribbles but not much by way of successful chewing and swallowing. Hopefully it will click for her soon too!

They are better than what older kids are generally offered- chips, beans/hoops, nuggets/fish fingers/ sausages. I don't use them that much because they are expensive but so if babies hungry and I need to do school run or whatever. And yeah, straight from the pouch 🤷🏻‍♀️ with a cup of water after, or sometimes at home in a bowl warmed with some toast/pitta soldiers. Life's all about balance. It's not always possible to spend hours doing finger foods and home cooked meals etc. Sometimes convenience is more important. I try to offer some chopped up veggies or fruit on the side and usually have some veg crudités cut up in the fridge, but I can't really see that a fruit pouch is so much worse than whole fruit if done in balance, or that their spaghetti bolognese is that much different than mine once it's been made baby/toddler appropriate

Plus no worrying about salts and stocks is a bonus!!

Plus no worrying about salts and stocks is a bonus!!

Ohhh I’m immediately taken back to when my DC1 was a baby and we were meeting extended family for lunch about 30 miles from home. It was fraught because DC hated the car, and was generally car sick. The extended family were over an hour late meeting us for lunch, so DS was beside himself (he was about 8 months). By the time we actually found a place to eat that everyone agreed on (but extended family didn’t come to because they were sightseeing) DS knocked the lovingly prepared BLW lunch all over the floor (DH gave him the lunchbox to hold), so I fed him the emergency pouch plus some chips (DS was a dairy free baby in the days before that was so easy). MIL had a meltdown that lasted weeks about me being too rude to wait for their relatives to be ready for lunch and too greedy (I was a breastfeeding mother of an 8mo), and feeding him ‘processed food for common people’. FF 2 years plus and as far as I can tell SIL uses a lot of processed baby food. So you do you. But do try with the finger food, my second was entirely BLW and has a much better relationship with food.

@FoxtrotSkarloey Just to be clear then you think the OP asking if it’s ok that she is now using pouches Regularly and as the default meal plan is ok and inline with HV guidelines?

@Bluebellpainting the current medical guidelines that are your baby needs min 500ml formula if u feed formula under 1 and food is just for fun

The birth to five book, provided to you when your baby was born & produced by the Public Health Agency has all the most up to date , accurate advice . From pages 40+ on page 44 it advises caution in respect to ready-prepared baby food.
It advises a balanced , varied , nutritionally dense approach to weaning .

"Caution" is fine as as discussed last night some do have better ingredient list than others compared to others.

Do your research and make wise choices....

If it really was a no no someone would tell u in person. My baby is under consultant, weaning specialist and (obv) HV and no one has stopped in their tracks and said "oh don't use pouches". Not like they do about perfect prep machines! (Let's not open that can of worms!! 😂) so they can't feel that strongly about them.

As a pp mentioned, they tend to eat all kinds of rubbish when they get older regardless. My PFB was exclusively breastfed and ate only home cooked food, my second was mixed fed and had pouches when convenient as I had already seen what the PFB ended up eating when she was a toddler anyway!

@PrayingandHoping So when you acknowledge that they should be approached with caution and the OP has said she is using them mostly now, with no other health issues or reasons other than convenience, would you say, since she is asking for advice that this is a good idea?

They've been great - I've got the veg-only ones so they must be reasonably healthy, the baby happily wolfs them down, and I get to save some time. In recent days, I've mostly relied on them rather than cooking for DD.

@FoxtrotSkarloey and @PrayingandHoping The guidelines do not say food is just for fun. This phrase has bees trotted out as though it is part of official guidance but is it not. The 500ml milk is regards to formula and need for additional vitamins. If your baby is having over 500ml of formula at 6 months then you do not need to supplement with a multivitamin if having less than this or breast are breast feeding as the baby now needs iron. By 6 months they have used up the majority of iron stores so need additional nutrients. Milk remains their MAIN source of nutrients but they need things other than just milk in their diet. Department of Health guidance says “There are nutritional and developmental reasons why infants need solid food from six months. Infants need more iron and other nutrients than milk alone can provide.” The start for life website also states that by 9 months most babies should be having 3 meals a day. This is very different from saying a baby gets all they need from milk until 1. As I said it forms the main part of their nutrition but they do need solids even if a small amount.