Heinz Baked Beans - can my 8month old eat them?

[absandme]

Heinz Baked Beans - can my 8month old eat them or is there too much sugar & salt in them?

If not when can she have them?

I give my 16 month old Dd the reduced salt & sugar ones, they do taste really boring though. I'm not sure what the salt content is but I think it's quite high. I'm not 100% sure but it is probably worth checking as the daily salt allowance is lower for under 1's.

Id go with the reduced salt ones too,

bung a few on some chopped baked potatoe and grate a bit of cheese on top..

Yum, might have that for my tea, lol.

Be sure to check the low salt ones though I'm sure I didn't use them because they had a much higher sugar content.

Personally I would wait until over a year.

I agree with NAB3. I didn't give either of my two anything that I hadn't made myself until they were over a year. But I may be paranoid mum.

i would say there's far too much sugar - but they are very yummy.

for all that they are going to have, I would just go for it!! DS likes his beans on toast although he was a little older (10 months) when he started having them.

Hand them over. Rinse some under the tap in a colender if you are worried about sugar and salt - but sugar being a major componant of breast milk, I have never been too worried about it.

Ds started havng the reduced sugar & salt ones at about this age, mashed at first. They do still have sugar and salt so I wouldn't use them often, but they're a great quick fallback (and also a good thing to order in cafes though then of course you get the full-salt ones). DS loves them. On the plus side, beans are very healthy.

They love to pick them up. Imroved pincer grip and hand - mouth coordination.

Apparently.

Thanks everyone..... today is the first time I've been on this section, I've had a little read of some of the threads but it just made me hungry!!
Thanks for all your advice!

'Hand them over. Rinse some under the tap in a colender if you are worried about sugar and salt - but sugar being a major componant of breast milk, I have never been too worried about it. '

escapefrom, from my understanding the sugar in breast milk is lactose whch is designed to be utilised as energy by the body. The sugar in baked beans will be sucrose, which the body stores as fat and it has no nutritional value whatsoever - in fact it puts additional pressure on the immune system and is a major contributor to diabetes.

am not saying don't eat them - i love em ! but it's important to be aware that the body is not designed to digest sucrose easily and will cause havoc with blood sugar and not to compare them to readily digestible natural sugars.

This thread reminds me of an 'incident' when my dd was 4 or 5 months old & dh had just looked after her all day for the first time. She started screaming her head off late evening & I was really panicking - until dh admitted that he'd given her beans for tea... Salt/sugar content didn't come into it!

Hmmm are you sure puffylovett? AFAIK sucrose converts very quickly into glucose in the body, and glucose is what the body uses for energy. That is why eating a refined sugar snack gives you an energy spike then a slump. It's not devoid of nutrition at all. If you don't use the energy, it's stored as fat, but that doesn't equal containing no nutrition. Fat is a way of storing energy for when you need it.

I have heard it's true that too much of it contributes to diabetes, but that would be much bigger amounts - eg drinking full-sugar coke all day.

In Heinz baked beans it is not all sucrose; they also contain glucose and fructose.

Not just being picky for the sake of it - it's just I think baked beans are a relatively good food and it's a shame to put people off them. Though one thing you can do is make your own version, with plain beans and home-made tomato sauce.

sucrose and lactose are both disaccharides, therefore neither will affect blood sugar levels quicker than the other - I also feel that it is important to remember that, while babies do need protecting from salt and too much sugar, they have very different needs to adults. Adults need protecting from their own greed, which I don't feel babies do.

It is highly unlikely that baked beans will ever cause type II diabetes, as the overall effect of the food it slow to digest. If you boiled off the bean juice, crystalised the sugar and swallowed it straight, then maybe, but that's not the way we eat beans in this house.