Commercial baby foods in spouted pouches – intended to boost nutritional intake from the age of six months onwards – are often more like sugary drinks and smoothies than nutritious food, finds an analysis of British products.
They are often higher in sugar and lower in nutrient density than breast milk or formula, as well as frequently lacking the texture needed to help babies learn to eat solid foods, the analysis, published online in Archives of Disease in Childhood, shows.
These pouches are currently labelled as a complementary food to be used alongside breast milk or formula, but the findings prompt the researchers to question whether this labelling is appropriate and to call for a regulatory review of these products.
Breast milk alone supplies all the key nutrients needed up to the age of around six months.
After that, complementary foods are essential for establishing healthy food preferences, optimal growth and long term health, as well as for helping babies learn how to eat solid foods, explain the researchers from the University of Glasgow and British public health nutrition charity First Steps Nutrition Trust.
Complementary foods should have an increasingly solid texture, and be more energy and nutrient dense than breast milk, they add.
But while spouted pouches have become the dominant packaging for commercial baby foods, it’s not clear if their content fulfils these criteria, particularly as the contents need to be thin enough to pass through the spout.
“The texture and manner of complementary feeding is important,” the researchers emphasise.
“While suckling is an innate characteristic, the oromotor skills required for the manipulation of solid food in the mouth must be learnt experientially.
“For that reason, recommendations suggest that first foods offered should progress from purées to lumpy, mashed and finger foods.
“For pouches specifically, not only do they deliver a thin food that can be swallowed with little oromotor manipulation, but they are also often consumed by sucking from the spout, rather than from a spoon.”
The researchers reviewed 298 commercial baby foods in six large hypermarkets in Glasgow, Scotland, of which 178 (60%) were spouted pouches.
Overall, the available baby foods had an average energy content of 66.5 kcal/100g, with only 35% above that for breast milk (65-70 kcal/100g).
Only half (52%) of spouted pouches had a protein content higher than the range for breast milk.
In common with most of the other baby foods, only around a third of the spouted pouches had more energy per weight than breast milk, even though 61% had higher sugar content than breast milk.
This compares with only 8% of the other baby foods.
“High sugar intakes in early childhood have long-term health implications, both in terms of dental health and overweight,” point out the researchers.
In all, only 14 (8.5%) of the spouted pouches were defined as being completely suitable for a complementary food in that they met all the desired criteria; 48 (29%) met none.
By contrast, 37 (32%) of the other wet baby foods met all the desired criteria; only two (2%) met none.
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They conclude: “Products delivered in [spouted] pouches generally do not meet the desired characteristics of complementary foods.
“Many are more similar to sweet fruit smoothies, which are not recommended at all for babies or preschool children.
“Our findings suggest that regulators should consider whether a change in product categorisation and labelling is needed to make clear which products are foods and which are drinks, to discourage the use of [these pouches] and to enable parents to make informed choices in line with public health recommendations for feeding infants and young children.”
