Baby’s first cookie? Foods aimed at very young chock full of sugar
June 28, 2010
THE CANADIAN PRESS
CALGARY—A study suggests pint-sized convenience foods aimed at babies and toddlers pack a grown-up wallop of sugar and salt and normalize an unhealthy diet from an extremely early age.
Professor Charlene Elliott of the University of Calgary plucked products intended for the very young off supermarket shelves and examined their nutritional makeup.
The study included items such as cereal bars, child-portioned microwave dinners, fruit jelly snacks, and dessert purees for babies. It excluded pure fruit and vegetable purees, as well as formula meant for infants.
Of 186 different products, 63 per cent were found to have high levels of sodium or too many calories from sugar. More than half derived over 20 per cent of their calories from sugar.
“The fact that you can have things like ‘premium organic first cookie for toddlers’ marketed suggests that it’s perfectly acceptable to be feeding your toddler a cookie or following up your baby’s dinner of strained peas with baby food dessert,” said Elliott.
“The normalization of these foods is something you really have to watch.”
Elliott said such products have started appearing on shelves within the last five years and are likely to exploit parents who are legitimately pressed for time and want to give their children their own special clothes, toys and food.
Such foods often enjoy a “halo effect,” she suggested. Parents assume the products must be healthy since they’re made for children.
But her research showed smaller-sized snacks packed the same unhealthy punch as convenience food meant for adults — and were sometimes even worse.
“People expect them to be held to a gold standard because they’re aimed at very young children. And yet this isn’t necessarily the case.”
Faced with the childhood obesity epidemic, Elliott said parents need to be wary of products that will teach their young kids that foods need to be overly salty or sweet to taste good.
Parents need to read the nutrition labels on the box, but also cast an eye to the ingredients, she said. Of the food studied, 40 per cent of items had a variant of sugar listed within the first four ingredients, while 20 per cent had added sweetness within the first two ingredients.
“Resist against the idea that adult classifications or adult conceptions of what they think a meal is, the notion of treats, are necessary to feed young children.
“Babies do not need to finish up their dinner with dessert.”
Jennifer House, a Calgary dietitian who caters specifically to pregnant moms and young children, said there’s no reason convenience food marketed to that age group should exist.
“Really, they’re unnecessary. You can go buy yogurt, or dry fruits and things that are appropriate for kids to eat, but that are more natural and cheaper,” she said.
“They’re just as convenient.”
The study was funded by the Centre for Science in the Public Interest Canada and is published in the Journal of Public Health.