Study finds high sugar content in
packaged toddler and baby food
products
Fifty three percent of food products specifically
targeted to babies and toddlers in Canadian grocery stores have an
excessive proportion—more than 20 per cent—of calories coming from
sugar, according to a new study by University of Calgary professor
Charlene Elliott.
The study, funded by the Centre for Science in
the Public Interest Canada, examined sugar and sodium levels in 186
food products specifically marketed for babies and toddlers. Published
in the advanced online version of the Journal of Public Health, the
study also analysed four categories of baby/toddler foods against their
adult counterparts to reveal whether a ‘halo effect’ attributed to
baby/toddler food is warranted.
“There is a presumed halo effect
around baby and toddler foods because people expect these foods to be
held to a higher standard,” says Elliott, an associate professor in the
Communications & Culture department. “Yet this is not necessarily
the case.”
The study sought to draw attention to the new, and
expanding category of “toddler” foods available in the supermarket—which
include fruit snacks, cereal bars, desserts, and cookies—as well as
baby food products outside of simple purees of fruits and vegetables
(which could be classified as pure foods).
Products in the study
included pureed dinners and desserts, toddler entrees and dinners,
snacks (biscuits, cookies, fruit snacks, snack bars and yogurts) and
some cereals. Excluded were simple purees of fruits and vegetables,
juices and beverages, and also infant formulas and infant cereals
designed to be mixed with breast milk or water. The study also made
specific comparisons between four types of toddler food products—toddler
cereal bars, cookies/biscuits, fruit snacks and yogurt—and their adult
equivalents. It found that these baby/toddler foods were not
nutritionally superior to the adult equivalents when it comes to sugar
and in some cases fared worse.
“Assessing sugar levels in baby
and toddler foods is challenging because there is currently no
universally accepted standard,” explained Elliott. “While the American
Heart Association (AHA) recommends that adults should limit their
consumption of added sugars to six teaspoons a day for women and nine
teaspoons a day for men, these recommendations do not extend to children
or toddlers. In fact, the AHA has not published specific ‘added sugar’
recommendations for children or toddlers—even though high sugar foods
are deliberately created for them. Health Canada, similarly, offers no
direct recommendations—or cautions—regarding sugar intake or upper
limits on the intake of added sugar for very young children, or for
toddlers, per se.”
Given this, the study used established
guidelines that suggest foods are of poor nutritional quality if more
than 20 per cent of their calories derive from sugar. Over half (53 per
cent) of the products examined met these criteria. Forty percent of
products listed sugar—or some variant like corn syrup, cane syrup, brown
sugar, or dextrose)—in the first four ingredients on the label.
Nineteen percent listed sugar (or some variant) as either the first or
second ingredient.
“This draws attention to the, perhaps obvious,
need to carefully examine the ingredient list,” says Elliott. “While
some products derive their sugar content from naturally occurring fruit
sugars, many products also contain added sugars. It remains fair to ask
why it is necessary to add sugar to these baby or toddler products in
the first place.”
Elliott also observes that much of the
packaging, labeling and framing of such foods play to adult conceptions
and classifications of treats and of what it means to eat a meal. “The
study contained baby food desserts and ‘premium organic cookies’ for
toddlers—products that would be target adult tastes, as there is no
nutritional reason that babies should complete their meals with Banana
Coconut Cream Dessert puree or cookies, organic or otherwise. Equally
significant is the way such products steer our youngest consumers down
the wrong path in terms of reinforcing tastes for sweet foods.”
The
study “Sweet and salty: nutritional content and analysis of baby and
toddler foods” by Charlene Elliott is available on the Journal of Public
Health website at: http://jpubhealth.oxfordjournals.org (click on
Advance Access).