UPFs, prepared baby foods and the issues

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From The Guardian and a recommended read for all parentshttps://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/15/ultra-processed-babies-are-toddler-snacks-one-of-the-great-food-scandals-of-our-time#comments

The problem is they are marketed as health foods and people do buy them as health foods - a huge number of parents feed pouches every day and do believe it's getting healthy food into their child. The pouch of pureed peas is probably mostly apple juice and a huge amount of sugar.
All the fruit snacks that are basically skittles are advertised as being "one of their 5 a day" "immune support" "all natural no junk" and parents actually choose to feed them daily because they want the best for their child's health.

We mostly used Ella's Kitchen when weaning. Definitely one of the best out of all of them for not adding unnecessary things.

My issue with this would be that it's mostly tomato puree and water, negligible amounts of rice & chicken - so not a good or healthy choice for a baby especially if it's making up a large proportion of their diet.

You're missing the point, by about a mile. The article is about weaning, not about bf or ff for babies under 12m.

Obviously all formula is UPF. No one says it isn't.

It’s perfectly fine for a six month old getting an introduction to different flavours and textures. Avoids the situation of those parents who feed their DC’s beige food because they were never introduced to more unusual flavours.

But the pouches aren't an introduction to different flavours and textures, they are fairly uniform, bland, always on the sweet side, easy to suck/drink with no chewing involved which impacts the development of jaw muscles and children do not get to see, touch or smell what they are eating. Plus they are really expensive!

It's an extremely successful marketing gimmick that harms children's development.

You really are quite something.

I must have imagined mine chewing when they had EK pouches. Weird.

Worked perfectly for our DC’s - they worked their way through the ranges for each age group. I bought them by the dozen. We never fed from the pouch but with a spoon from a bowl. Didn’t harm their development and they now like everything. I’ve never had to pander to fussy children and we could take them to any restaurant around the world and they would eat whatever was on the menu.

Worth you trying it - ideal when you have two working parents and time is crucial.

Although that is great for you, it's not really an individual issue. If all children were travelling the world eating everything there wouldn't even be a discussion.

What I was trying to demonstrate is that they do not harm development as you suggested.

But the wider issue is the rise of highly processed, high sugar, low nutritional content, easy to consume pouches and snacks to become the main or only diet of a huge number of children - and how that is linked to the explosion in tooth decay, child obesity, eating and speech issues and problems with jaw development among under 5s.
Your sample size of a couple of children does not demonstrate anything on a population level.

The healthy branding makes me cross. Parents think they are giving their child something that's good for them...they are not. Yeah, it might not be the worst food, but it's expensive and not healthy. It gets parents into the habit of prepackaged snacks which are also really expensive and unnecessary. I see young children's lunch boxes every day and their parents must spend a fortune on this stuff. Fruit pouches instead of a piece of fruit, melty puff things and those horrible fruit winder things which stick like glue if they get trodden on to the floor. Just because it says fruit doesn't make it okay, I mean fruit pastilles contain fruit juice!
Marketing is tricking parents.

But this is precisely the issue with some of the breast feeders who seem to seek validation for breastfeeding on here (I have no idea why, as someone who breastfed for a long time, but that’s beside the point…): they fail to think about it holistically. It really doesn’t matter that much if it’s constitutionally better than formula when things like maternal mental health is considered too. But sure, let’s all go ahead and carry on breastfeeding- never mind about the mothers. I know far more friends and family who had a really tough time breastfeeding than who plainly sailed through it.

There’s ‘sugar’ and sugar.

Do you know how much sugar there is in dried apricots? 53g per 100g.

Ella’s Kitchen Banana, Apple & Blueberry Baby Rice had the highest sugar per serve, with 14g per 120g pack.

Sugar can mean fructose (naturally occurring in fruit), glucose, cane sugar. None of these are inherently bad for you in moderation. It’s much worse to remove them and stuff things full of artificial sweeteners which are hideous for health.

We need some perspective.

And how much sugar is in an actual apricot? About 9g per 100g.

These companies use dried fruits, fruit juices and pastes because of the much higher sugar content and then label it 'healthy'.

I have a real time glucose sensor due to my seizures. Dried fruit spikes my sugars far higher than the time I’ve nicked a fruit puree pot from the kids when I was starving on the go. Honestly, people use it for fixing hypoglycaemia.

Another issue not mentioned in the article is the heat treating of pouches and purees which really destroys lots of the nutrients, meaning they’re much less nutritious than the ingredient lists suggest.

Yes, dried fruits are very high in sugar and should never be given as a snack.
That's why it is often used to sweeten 'healthy' baby products like the ones being discussed.

I would say formula is actually the worst of all UPFs as it forms the only component of many infants’ diets.

This literally makes no sense at all. It isn’t the frequency of consumption that makes a food bad, it’s the inherent properties. Do you really think it’s worse than a Tango Ice Blast? Some of you just sound laughable.

Of course it’s a small part of their lives! It’s only their whole diet for 6 months, then they eat food as well. I don’t know anyone who fed or was fed formula or breast milk as their main diet after 1yr.

You were obviously not feeding your 9yr old breastmilk as their main diet and even you were it would only be about 10% of their life! For most people it’s more like 1-2% of their life.

I think formula is irrelevant here, nobody drinks formula all their lives, a lot of people eat snacks though.

But if they’re added in moderation to a pouch, that’s very different from giving a toddler a packet of raisins to eat, as they’re mixed in among other foods and somewhat diluted.

I think a lot of mums go to great pains to breastfeed and avoid pouches, and they don’t want to hear that the benefits of their labour are somewhat smaller than anticipated.

Like I said, I have done 18 months of breastfeeding between 2 children, so I’m not defensive about this. But if it was a choice between my kids being fully breastfed followed by years of beige freezer food and slushies, or formula followed by a healthy diet with pouches in moderation, I would choose the latter.

Formula is very well studied. DH was fully formula fed and is far healthier than me. I was exclusively breastfed to after my 1st birthday and I have numerous health issues of the kind, ironically, that breastfeeding is supposed to guard against. Anecdotes aren’t data, but the benefit is not as noticeable as some of the crunchier posters on here are making out.

Instead of getting ourselves in a tizzy over formula and apple puree, let’s concentrate on the hideous sweeteners and e-numbers in kids food, as well as the damaging properties of the fact many kids eat exclusively processed meat with a few peas as their only vegetable intake.

Exactly. The poster seems to think formula does more damage than depression and poor mental health!!!!!

An occasional pouch (or box of raisins or doughnut or happy meal) as part of a varied and healthy real food diet isn't an issue.
The average toddler getting 61% of their food intake in the form of ultra processed foods, and 34% of babies 4-6 months eating processed 'baby snacks' is.
A lot of small children are now only eating fruit pouches and dried fruit sweets, and meal pouches with veggie straws and melty sticks in between.