Important article for parents of babies

[marmaladeandpeanutbutter]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62j0l0gg4go

It’s from the BBC and says that many brands of baby food pouches do not contain key nutrients. There will be a panorama programme about it.

I mean this should be blindingly obvious for someone with even an ounce of common sense. It’s long life fruit purée. A brand sticking a baby and a few pictures of veg on the packet doesn’t make it healthy.

I don’t think that’s fair. Mine are all late teens/ealry 20’s now but these pouches were a lifesaver for me at times (and yes, I did cook most of my own food, but they were a great quick fix, particularly as a single parent). The majority of those that I used were savoury pouches made with vegetables and protein (beef etc). They are not all fruit and ‘obvious’ sugars.

Do you expect long life shelf stable food to be full of nutrients?

They are all ultra processed foods.
Fine for occasional time saving, but not the healthy way of feeding a baby every day that the marketing makes out.

I expect it to have exactly what it states it has on the label. If it states it has X percentage of vitamin Y then I expect it to contain that.

That doesn’t appear to be the case from the article? The pouches aren’t falsely claiming to include more than they are, they are just lacking in nutrition in general.

I just started weaning and it takes so little time to steam some veg or fruit then mash it up. Not sure what the appeal of the pouches are unless you're out and about.

My friend who was very judgemental about me not breast feeding feeds her baby pouches, sausage rolls and other processed rubbish ... not sure why it's not spoken about in the same way. Nutrition in the first 2 years in particular is key for development.

I don't think anyone would judge using them for convenience now and again. But some people really only give their babies this stuff ...

@Sofiewoo the article states towards the end that some of those brands/pouches had lost all of the vitamin C that they were claiming to contain. And true, it doesn’t mention any other false claims but I think if they imply it’s low sugar (as in the case of Ella’s Kitchen) or state that they are a ‘chicken casserole’ or something similar, many people would assume - and I was one of them - that there was a decent amount of iron, not the 0.3mg (from memory) stated in the article.
I used them as a stop gap running around London with 3 young children with no car. I was quite proactive when it came to label reading (or so I thought), particularly when it comes to additives, sweetners etc but if I saw a beef bolognaise pouch I didn’t look at the iron content, only that it contained the beef…

I’m not disputing that they are poor nutritional options for every day but when they make the claims on the front of the packet that they contain the same nutrition it becomes a ‘good’ choice for some people to make. There’s a woman I grew up with, I only know her via Facebook now but she is a really lovely, kind, big hearted person. But she has zero ability to process information beyond its basic form. She is the type of person who would buy pouches and just see the protein component cooked with vegetables and think she was making a good choice for her child. She would just assume that it was a healthy option, particularly if it was a brand like EK, and quite possibly use those as the main food source. There are lots of people out there who are the same.

I would have hoped that the supposedly tight regulations surrounding food labelling for young children were more responsible.

I don’t think that stating something is blindingly obvious is fair or taking in to account the huge variation in consumer knowledge. Not everyone questions what they are presented with.

You don’t need an article to know this. It’s processed crap! Wouldn’t feed it to a dog.

Luckily we didn’t need to use them, and pouches didn’t exist, only jars. They weren’t any better, and tasted bland. Anyway, some people may find it helpful to see proof of how poor quality they are, so I posted to be helpful, rather than judge.

There's a reason my firstborn only ate homemade purees and my other kids very often got pouches lol. Try not to be judgemental at the very beginning of a journey :) Turns out all kids become picky eaters by 3 regardless of how they are weaned lol. And my firstborn is no more healthy / smart than the others.