Nutrition in Baby Food

We can not stress this enough: Home made baby foods are much better than the manufactured foods. These Industrial preparations- purees, compotes, sauces and infant formulas are too sweet, too salty, have too much fat or not enough nutrients in them.

British researchers studied 462 baby food products in a two-year period and the results of the study weren’t all that surprising. Although these industrial products save parents a lot of time, they shouldn’t be the choice of baby food. Home made foods are so much better for the babies’ health.

Nutrition in baby food- the commercial/industrial sort were only half as nutritious as the homemade. A baby had to consume twice as much manufactures food to get the same nutrition as the food prepared at home. Protein, fat, carbohydrates, energy, salt, sugar, iron, calcium were all examined thoroughly.

As for weaning (withdrawal from breast milk) foods sold commercially and are expected to provide additional nutrients to the child during this transition, their contributions were found to be almost identical to those of breast milk.

The baby formulas sold in supermarkets are often too sweet and with little nutritional value. So should you be giving the food preparations to your baby from 4 months onward? Probably not a good idea. This is what comes up from the study in the Archives of Childhood Diseases.

In this study, the British team has focused on the foods offered from weaning. At this age, children are experimenting with new textures and flavors. Commercial foods offered are believed to increase energy and nutrient intake of children. To find out if these products meet the expectations, the researchers analyzed the nutrition in baby foods that can be used at weaning in the UK.

The results are very clear:

• Ready -to-eat savory food with a spoon have a much lower nutrient density than small home-prepared dishes that could be given to a child from 6 to 12 months. Only the iron content is an exception.

• 50g of home made food is the equivalent of a 100 g ready-to-eat in terms of nutrition.

• The average energy intake of ready -to-eat with a spoon is 282kJ/100g is similar to the energy content of breast milk (283kJ/100g) and milk powder (281kJ/100g).

• Sweet foods ready -to-eat with a spoon are comparable to small home-prepared desserts that could be given to a child from 6 to 12 months for nutrient density, but with lower levels of proteins.

• The biscuits or rusks commercially available are on average more energy dense than desserts or compotes prepared at home, while containing high amounts of iron and calcium, but are very high in sugar.

462 products studied included: Meals, meal powders to be mixed with milk or water, cereal breakfast foods to eat with fingers … 79 % could be eaten with a spoon, and 44% were for children aged 4 months and older. Almost two-thirds were sugary foods. But exposure to sugar in childhood, your child develops a preference for sweet foods and could increase the risk of obesity and diabetes.

Foods to eat with fingers were more energy dense, but they also contained high levels of sugar. Meat-based foods had higher iron content, without exceeding the infant formulas. At the end, most of the products had a similar energy content to breast milk, they did not reach the goal of increasing the nutrient density of foods.

In conclusion, commercial baby foods are often too sweet and provide little nutritional benefits compared to breast milk and baby foods prepared at home. Although this study focused on products sold in the UK, it is likely that the results are comparable anywhere in the developed world.

Some of the foods tested were for 4-month-old babies, an age at which, children should continue to be breastfed. In addition to the food most suitable for this age, breast milk enhances the immune system of the baby, as well as their intestinal health.

In conclusion, it is better to consider the ready food as the food that provides energy intake similar to breast milk but not for nutritional density and diversity of nutrients and tastes for the infant. Finally, rather than using expensive and not so nutritious ready meals for young children, parents will be better off cooking and preparing their own baby foods at home. For example, stewed fruit or vegetable purees can be prepared in large quantities in advance and frozen to save time at mealtime.

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