Nearly two-thirds of supermarket baby foods are unhealthy, study finds

(CNN) — The supermarket baby food aisle in the United States is packed with non-nutritious foods containing far too much sugar and salt and misleading marketing claims, a new study found.

Sixty percent of 651 foods that are marketed for children ages 6 months to 36 months on 10 supermarkets’ shelves in the US failed to meet recommended World Health Organization nutritional guidelines for infant and toddler foods, according to the study, which was published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Nutrients.

Almost none of the foods met all of the WHO standards for advertising, which focus on clear labeling of ingredients and accurate health claims.

Of all the products in the study, 70% did not meet WHO’s guidance on protein content, and 25% failed to meet calorie recommendations, the researchers found. One in five baby or toddler foods contained salt levels above the organization’s suggested limits.

One-quarter of products contained added or hidden sweeteners, with 44% of the baby and toddler foods exceeding WHO’s recommendations for total sugars, said senior study author Dr. Elizabeth Dunford, an adjunct assistant professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Research shows 50% of the sugar consumed from infant foods comes from pouches, and we found those were some of the worst offenders,” said Dunford, who is also a research fellow at the George Institute for Global Health in Sydney, which created FoodSwitch, an app that contains nutritional information on thousands of products worldwide.

Sales of baby food pouches rose 900% in the US in the past 13 years, the study found, making pouches one of the fastest-growing market segments.

Added sweeteners in baby food pouches

The increasing demand is understandable, as the ease and convenience of pouches can make them irresistible to overworked, stressed parents and caregivers, said Dr. Mark Corkins, St. Jude Endowed Chair for Excellence in Pediatric Gastroenterology at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. He was not involved in the new study.

“These pouches are very worrisome,” said Corkins, who is also chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition.

“Children have to learn to chew, so they should be eating regular fruits, not pureed, sweetened things in a pouch,” he said. “Often, these blends are not natural and much sweeter than a real fruit, so the child’s being taught to only like supersweet things.”

Then there is the issue of texture, which must be learned at a critical age, Corkins added.

“We tell parents to gradually increase the texture of the foods during the introduction to real foods between 6 months and a year,” Corkins said. “If you don’t expose kids to a variety of textures with more chewing during that critical window, they can develop a texture aversion and will refuse anything but smooth, pureed types of foods.”

CNN reached out to several industry associations who represent various baby food manufacturers but did not receive responses before publication.

Lack of guidelines for infant and toddler foods

The study looked at over 650 products gathered in 2023 from the baby food aisle in 10 major US supermarkets. It did not analyze dairy or other refrigerated foods marketed for children.

The names and brands of the foods were not disclosed in the study.

The researchers applied nutrition and promotional recommendations for commercially produced infant and toddler foods made in 2022 by the WHO Regional Office for Europe. The WHO recommendations are an attempt to address the global disarray in nutritional guidance on foods for babies and toddlers, which happens to be worse in the United States than other Western countries, experts say.

The US Food and Drug Administration has implemented regulations on infant formulas and levels of arsenic in baby food, and it makes recommendations on food safety and handling.

“Are there regulations in different countries specific to infant and toddler foods? The short answer is no, but in Europe, the UK, New Zealand and Australia, where I’m from, there are broader regulations about how ingredients can be listed on the package that also impact foods fed to children,” Dunford said.

For example, if a savory food was made of 10% spinach, 8% beef and 2% potato, leaving the bulk of the product apples or pears — which are often used as sweeteners in baby foods — the name of the product in those countries would be “Pear, spinach, beef and potato pie,” she said.

Manufacturers in those countries are also requited to clearly identify percentages on the label, such as “spinach (10%) beef (8%) and potato (2%), leaving it obvious how much pear or apple is included,” Dunford said. “In the US, however, there are no such regulations, so it’s more difficult to understand what’s in the products you’re buying.”

Such hidden sweeteners may be a key reason only 31% of nonfruit pouches met WHO total sugar recommendations, Dunford said.

Misleading advertising

Nearly all — 99.4% — of the 651 products in the study contained at least one marketing claim that was prohibited by the WHO recommendations. Products displayed four or five such claims, on average; some had as many as 13, the study found.

Common claims included “non-genetically modified,” or GM (70%); “organic” (59%): “no BPA (bisphenol A)” (37%): and “no artificial colors or flavors” (25%) — the WHO frowns on such marketing claims because they may lead consumers to feel that the product is more nutritious than one next to it on the shelf, which may or may not be true, Dunford said.

“The reason we call it the Wild West when we talk about the baby food aisle is that manufacturers get to pick and choose which elements of their product they want to highlight,” Dunford said. “They certainly don’t highlight the bad stuff, right? If their product is high in sugar, they’re just going to say, ‘no added colors or flavors’ on the label.”

Countries like Australia, she added, require ingredients to reach a minimum nutrient profile: If a food or beverage doesn’t meet a baseline nutritional standard, the manufacturer is not eligible to make any specific health claim about that ingredient.

“If that product doesn’t meet the minimum nutritional profile for calcium, for example, they cannot put added calcium on their label,” Dunford said.

Some 62% of the products in the study made general health and nutrition claims, the researchers found, while 58% included claims about specific ingredients.

“Snack and finger foods often referred to fruit or vegetables in the product name, despite primarily being made of flour or other starches,” said study coauthor Dr. Daisy Coyle, a research fellow and dietitian at the George Institute for Global Health.

“The lack of regulation in this area leaves the door wide open for the food industry to deceive busy parents,” Coyle said in a statement.

Such claims create a “health halo” around these baby food products, experts say.

“One of the biggest concerns about baby and toddler foods are the often fictitious health claims on the front of products,” Corkins said. “Some of them are blatant, some are implied, and they may be misleading parents and guardians.

“A concerned, well-meaning parent will read claims like wholesome and nutritious and will not only buy those products but spend more money on them because of the claims,” he said.

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