“Ultra-processed babies…”

“Are toddler snacks one of the greatest food scandals of our time?” 

So asks Bee Wilson in an extraordinarily damning take down of the baby food industry published in the Saturday Guardian. She describes the current baby & toddler supermarket aisle as “a colourful snacktopia, colonised by brilliantly marketed and fancifully shaped fast foods”. 

By the age of two, the average toddler is getting 61% of their energy from UPF, and Wilson says that the purees, pouches and melty puffs are responsible for creating a generation of young children for whom any kind of texture or flavour is terrifying, with “massively increasing” rates of tooth decay attributable to both the high sugar levels of many of these snacks and pouches, and sucking from nozzles rather than eating from a spoon. 

It’s true that children’s food is a Wild West when it comes to claims and labelling. Clever marketing means that parents are unwittingly feeding products to their children several times a day under the belief that they are pure and health-giving, when in reality they should be an occasional treat or fall back option. 

Several things need to happen to solve this situation: 

⭐ Firstly, the labelling of baby and toddler food has to be standardised and regulated, to weed out on-pack claims that create a “health halo” and mislead parents.  

⭐ Secondly, families need to be supported and encouraged to cook more whole foods, and rely less on heavily processed, convenience foods. 

⭐ And thirdly, when parents don’t have the time or resource to cook from scratch, they need to be able to access credible, healthy, minimally processed foods for their children that are clearly and honestly labelled.