Survey says some baby foods worse than junk food

May 4, 2:09 PMDenver Parenting ExaminerElisa Wiebe

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Some distressing, if rather unsurprising news out of Britain -- a recent survey revealed that some baby food is chock full of sugar and saturated fat. And while these are British products, some of them are made by Heinz and I doubt that they are much different over here. In fact, just a stroll down the baby food isle in the store the other day horrified me with the amount of processed food there. I haven't purchased baby food in probably a decade, and what I remember from back then was largely jarred produce and meat, and cereal. Now there are are all sorts of packaged foods that don't seem any different from Lunchables to me.

I dunno. I appreciate that sometimes a convenience food is a necessity in the life of a busy parent. Then again, I came to my crunchy, AP, natural parenting style largely through laziness. My babies slept with me, for instance, less because of child-rearing theories than because I realized I wouldn't have to get up in the middle of the night that way. It's also why my younger kids never ate baby food -- at some point I realized that while I could go out and buy special baby food, it was easier to just give them bits of whatever soft food I was eating. (Well, that and the fact that they refused to touch the stuff. But still.)  I also think that baby food is a throw back to outdated ideas of child rearing, and that there is no real reason to feed solids to infants who aren't old enough to eat real food. 

Be all of that as it may, this story just confirms for me that you should always read the ingredients list on everything you buy. If it has more than a handful of ingredients, if you can't pronounce any of the ingredients, and if it has much sugar or fat, or any High Fructose Corn Syrup or trans fat, don't eat it. And especially don't feed it to your baby -- she's perfectly happy just to smear homemade mashed potatoes around her high chair, anyway.