Should you be giving your child food in a pouch?

In a world where we know convenient food is not often healthy, this unique food space of infant food pouches has remained on a steady increase. Infact single serve food pouches with spouts for babies and toddlers, now make up more than 50% of the products available on supermarket shelves.

The worse reality it, IT’S NOT OUR FAULT we assume they are healthy, as the packaging is unregulated, and can say it is, even if, according to the World Health Organisation's basic standards, it's not.

We already had studies showing us that 59% of food pouches specifically, in Australia, advertised “no added sugars" despite containing free sugars, as per our blog.

However, the latest research has bluntly advised us that:

1. Every one of our commercially produced infant and toddler foods in Australia failed meet the WHO recommendations for product promotion, and
2. 78% of them failing to meet overall nutritional requirements,
3. Pouch products have the highest use of prohibited claims.

After more of a media spotlight on the Australian Food Star System and food regulation generally around Health Claims, much like our post from way back in July 2023 highlighted, I thought I might look at these WHO recommendations and couple these with some additional learnings about the rise of Food Pouches for babies and toddlers to share with you.

Pureed or Textured for Chew

Dietitians and health professionals always recommend, even for adults, to chew and eat your food, IF it’s safe and age appropriate and IF it’s possible.

Chewing and eating food, vs sucking and swallowing it, helps with:

1. managing weight by slowing your consumption: By chewing slowly and your body doing the breakdown work, you have time to register your fullness cues to stop eating. But when you are just swallowing food in puree or liquid form, it's harder to regulate this feedback loop.
2. offering a genuine eating experience: as it takes more time, it's an opportunity to eat with others and socialize or take a break in your day to sit in the sun and get some Vitamin D!
3. slowing the release of the macronutrients: typically, if a food requires chewing, it means you have a food selection that is less processed, so it may be lower in sugar release etc simply by going through the emaciation (chewing) and digestion process vs most of that work being done already via it being in liquid or puree form. This will depend heavily on what you are eating ofcourse!

For babies and toddlers there are clearly more benefits than for adults. IN addition to the above, they get to:

1. “See, feel and smell,” the foods, perhaps for the first time, individually vs all mixed up in a pouch.
2. Develop oral skills of chewing and swallowing safely: including different age-appropriate textures, which we covered in our blog on Introducing Solids
3. Have healthy mouth, jaw and teeth development: There is a reason we are recommended to stop the use of dummies for example, as the sucking action can impact normal oral growth, along with speech and breathing.  
4. Develop a healthy relationship with food generally: By not introducing actual food to children, they may develop fears or phobias and fussiness later when you try to wean them off pouches, depending on how reliant on them they have become.
5. Real mess: When you eat from a pouch, there is less mess. A great outcome for when you are on the run and out and about. But if your child gets used to no mess, what happens to a child when they do eventually get messy. It could go in any direction.

For allergy introduction it is also recommended to introduce foods one at a time, and this is more difficult when you have pouches containing a few flavours and foods.

WHO Recommendations including Pouches

The WHO report notes several times that we should be discouraging eating from spouts, which are on these pouches, and putting the food onto a spoon instead as long as this texture is age appropriate.
 
Specifically, the report summary on promotional (labelling and marketing) requirements were the following (and we have highlighted the lines that relate to pouches):

1. Minimum age recommendation of 6 months and products must not encourage (either implicitly or explicitly) early food introduction.
2. Maximum age recommendation of 12 months for puréed foods.
3. Front-of-pack indicator labels for high total sugar content:
   1. > 30% energy in fruit or vegetable purées, desserts and dry fruit snacks
   2. > 40% energy in dairy foods.
4. Product name clarity: indicate contents in descending order and not hide sweet tastes or high fruit content.
5. Ingredient list clarity: state proportion (%) of added water/stock, fruit content and traditional protein source.
6. Packaging with a spout should state clearly that contents should be decanted and not directly sucked.
7. Remove most compositional (nutritional), health and marketing claims.
8. Include relevant statements to protect and promote breastfeeding.

The WHO Report as it relates to nutrition requirements:

1. No addition of free sugars and sweeteners, including:
   1. all mono- and disaccharides;
   2. all syrups, nectars and honey;
   3. fruit juices or concentrated/powdered fruit juice (excluding lemon or lime juice); and
   4. non-sugar sweeteners.
2. Confectionery should not be marketed.
3. Flavoured or sweetened drinks should not be marketed.
4. Maximum 15% energy from total sugar in meals and snacks.
5. Limited use of fresh and dry fruit in some food categories.
6. Minimum energy density for dry cereals (80 kcal/100 g) and savoury meals (60 kcal/100 g). vii. Maximum energy for snacks is 50 kcal per serving.
7. Maximum sodium content 50 mg/100 kcal (or 100 mg if cheese is in the product name).
8. Minimum content by weight of named traditional protein sources in meals.
9. Minimum protein content for meals, and cereals/snacks made with milk.
10. Industrially produced trans-fatty acids are not permitted.
11. Total fat maximum 4.5 g/100 kcal for most products, except in some meals.

Plastics in Foods

As the evidence mounts for the impact of plastics in our food supply as an endocrine disruptor's, we need to moving more rapidly away from single use plastics as a bare minimum. 

Because of the mixed plastics in these pouches, they are also not recyclable. So, there is an environmental impact in their regular use also.

We have covered this important topic in another blog, so please check it out.

Expense of Single Serves

With the rising cost of food, it is not at all cost effective to buy single serve packages. Yoghurt, as one example is up to 450% more for a no added sugar variety that you may feed a baby, when you buy in a pouch vs tub. For struggling families, justifying these costs does seem irrational.

Again, we can support you in making good choices on less in another blog, Eating Well for Less, and also on our Free Resources Page where there is a website called "No Money No Time".

Summary of our Recommendations on Food Pouches

The protections from Govt around misleading food marketing is very limited.

The research is telling us that the claims and nutrition profiles of these products are just not ok, with an average of 5.8 prohibited claims on pouches alone. Pouches are also typically higher in the sugar allowances than recommended.

We know how incredibly convenient food pouches can be, but the inflated cost and known implications to your child’s health, not just nutritional health, but food/eating fussiness and oral development, does suggest you should have pouches as little as possible.

The mounting research around plastics in our bodies, through our food supply and other sources; does suggest that moving away from any possible direct plastic ingestion would be a smart move. 

Let’s save money, save the planet and our little one’s health by reducing our food pouch consumption!