Poorly marketed baby food: added flavorings and sugars could also affect the health and development of little ones' taste preferences.
Don't store avocado like this: it's dangerousBaby food, biscuits and juices: A high percentage of baby food is marketed incorrectly as suitable for babies under 6 months of age. In fact, many of these foods contain inadequate levels of sugar.
This is the alarm launched by the WHO which in a new analysis proposes to ban added sugar in all foods on the market intended for children up to 36 months. The reason? Apart from the concrete need for breastfeed babies for at least the first 6 months, good nutrition in early childhood - say from the World Health Organization - remains essential for ensure optimal growth and development of the child and better health in the future, including the prevention of overweight, obesity and diet-related noncommunicable diseases.
The nutritional quality of the products
WHO has developed a draft nutrient profile model (NPM) for children aged 6 to 36 months to guide decisions about which foods are inappropriate for this age group. In addition, it developed a methodology for identifying commercial baby foods available at retail and for collecting data on nutritional content on labels and other packaging, labeling and promotion information (including claims).
This methodology was used to collect data on 7955 food or beverage products marketed for infants and children from 516 stores in 4 locations in the WHO European Region (Vienna, Sofia, Budapest and Haifa) between November 2017 and January 2018.
In all 4 cities, a substantial part of the products, ranging from 28% to 60%, were put on the market as suitable for children under 6 months of age.
Even if these are terms permitted by European Union law, fails to comply with the WHO International Marketing Code on Breast Milk Substitutes nor the guidelines of the organization itself. In fact, both explicitly state that commercial complementary foods should not be marketed as suitable for infants under the age of 6 months.
“Foods for infants and young children are required to comply with various established nutritional and composition recommendations. Nonetheless, there are concerns that many products may still be too high in sugar, ”says João Breda, head of WHO's European office for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases.
In 3 of the cities, half or more of the products provided more than 30% of the total sugar calories. About a third of the products list sugar, concentrated fruit juice, or other sweetening agents as ingredients. These added flavors and sugars could influence the development of children's taste preferences by increasing their predisposition, dangerous, for sweeter foods.
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Germana Carillo
