JARS of baby food are more likely to make children favour sweet tastes than to encourage them to eat their greens.
A study of brand-name products carried out by nutritionists at Glasgow University has found commercial baby foods use predominantly fruit and sweet vegetables, like sweet potato, rather than bitter ones like spinach or broccoli.
The researchers have warned that while parents may think they are introducing healthy vegetables by using commercial baby foods, it could be reinforcing an infant's natural inclination towards sweet tastes.
The most common ingredients of the commercial baby foods were apple, banana, tomato, mango, carrot and sweet potato, while green vegetables were rarely used.
And even savoury flavours of baby foods were found to contain an average of 3-7% of sugar.
The researchers said parents should be encouraged to offer home-cooked vegetables to encourage children to develop a wider range of tastes.
Study leader Dr Ada Garcia, a lecturer in public health nutrition at the University of Glasgow, said: “Infants have an innate preference for sweet foods.
“While manufacturers clearly recognise the demand for products that appear to be healthy, commercial pressure will ensure these products are highly palatable.
“Taste-learning requires parents to introduce their children to less palatable bitter tastes and keep offering them, however, it is probably unrealistic to expect commercial products to assist in this process.
“Health practitioners need to encourage parents to offer home-cooked vegetables to promote taste experience in children.”
The study of 329 brand-name products from all the major manufacturers, published in the journal Maternal and Child Nutrition, found fruits were more commonly featured in flavour names than vegetables. Fruit juice was added to 18% of products.
The percentage of fruit and vegetables in the products ranged from 94% in sweet ‘spoonable’ baby foods to 13% in dry savoury baby food.
Garcia said the average sugar content of the commercial spoonable baby foods mirrored that of breast milk.
She said as long as parents fed the recommended amounts of commercial baby food and a mix of sweet and savoury foods, the amount of sugar an infant consumed was not likely to exceed the guideline limits.
But she also cautioned that it was not known if this was a “healthy pattern” for complementary feeding.
Garcia said: “In Western countries commercial baby foods are widely used to introduce babies to complementary food, with two-thirds of mothers giving a commercial baby food as a first solid food.
“A recent study showed that while commercial baby foods list fruit and vegetables as ingredients, higher use of these foods was associated with lower intake of fruit and vegetables in infancy which persisted into school age.
“The risk is that while parents may think commercial baby foods are introducing their children to healthy vegetable tastes, actually, they are mainly reinforcing preferences for sweet foods.
“Infants usually accept new foods and tastes well if vegetable tastes are introduced early, and this early experience influences food preference later in childhood.”
The British Specialist Nutrition Association, which represents manufacturers of baby food, did not respond to a request for comment.
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