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A team of public health experts from the George Institute for Global Health at the University of New South Wales in Australia found that about 60 percent of prepared foods for infants and young children sold in the United States do not meet international nutritional standards.
In their article, published in the journal NutrientsThe group describes how it analyzed nutritional data for 651 infant and toddler food products sold in the eight largest U.S. supermarket chains and what it found when it compared the data with internationally recognized nutritional guidelines.
The researchers began working on the new initiative when they discovered that, despite parents’ concerns about the growing popularity and health effects of commercial infant and toddler foods, there were no government nutritional guidelines in the United States. This led them to question the nutritional value of these foods.
To learn more, they traveled to the United States and purchased 669 baby and toddler food items from eight of the most popular grocery chains in Raleigh, North Carolina. They then scanned the barcodes on each food item using FoodSwitch to get a list of ingredients and nutritional information for each of the products studied.
They then compared the nutritional value an infant or young child would receive from consuming these products to the nutritional standards established by the World Health Organization in 2022.
When analyzing the data, the research team found that about 60% of the food products studied did not meet nutritional recommendations. Specifically, they found that 70% of them did not meet protein recommendations and 44% of them contained more sugar than recommended. Additionally, about 25% did not meet caloric needs.
The problem is compounded by food pouches, flexible pouches containing pureed foods with a teat on top that allow an infant or toddler to feed by squeezing the pouch rather than spoon-feeding. The research team found that only 7% of the products tested met sugar recommendations.
The research team also found widespread misinformation on packaging: 99.4% of products tested made at least one false claim, and some made as many as 11.
More information:
Daisy H. Coyle et al., An Assessment of the Nutritional and Promotional Profile of Commercial Foods Intended for Infants and Toddlers in the United States, Nutrients (2024). DOI: 10.3390/nu16162782
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