In the only country that exists inter world, US&A. Caus clearly no other counties exist.
What’s a toddler food.
“Ultraprocessed” includes raw meat
Why he eating the pizza backwards
Crust-first pizza eaters are sociopaths
What about a calzone?
Not a pizza. It’s the inverse, if you eat only the contents of the calzone and not the crust, you’re a sociopath
If it’s inverse they must eat it like reverse bread bowl. Eat only the crust then lick the contents off the plate. Or a spoon… If one were so civilized
And then they’ll tell you breastfeeding is bad.
I’ve never heard anyone say that.
Nestle
Is typically appeals to vanity. You’ll get saggy breasts. No teething issues. Etc.
… in the United States
This is the internet. Please consider the audience to be worldwide.
Unless your country has specific laws to the contrary or is too poor/civilized to have this sort of “lazy parent” food, presume that any of the factory-made shelf-stable food in your grocery aisle is as bad as the equivalent sold in the USA.
(And find out of your country’s food laws are actually better than the USA, or just “feel” better because the same exact product can just list fewer ingredients )
It isn’t.
That is not to say that the shelf stable food here in Europe is as good for you as a home cooked meal, but America allows ingredients which are literally illegal over here because they’re known to cause cancer or other health related issues.
It took the US until two years ago to finally ban titanium oxide as a food additive. You still use horrible foaming agents in your bread, and ingredients derived from processed petroleum byproducts are allowed in your food.
Same here in New Zealand. We have very tight restrictions on food additives, particularly with baby food.
Your junk and nutritionally empty food is not a better option to feed to children just because it doesn’t have a certain yellow die.
It objectively is, as the former has no nutritional value, and the latter is actively trying to kill you.
Again, I am glad I never procreated.
Aren’t we all?
Let me see if I can translate this article to a less trendy version:
.About 80% of the packaged foods marketed for children between 6 and 30 months include ingredients only used when creating packaged food at scale. Half of these either contained more fat, sugar, and salt than the WHO recommends or did not abide by the WHO’s advice to eliminate food coloring.
Those packaged toddler foods are expensive as well. I’d wager most parents are simply giving their toddlers portions of foods they eat themselves over buying this crap.
That’s how we fed kids before corporations convinced us that kids need packets of pureed veggies in a single use plastics
Baby food jars are typically glass
Most of the baby food in my area is plastic pouches
They certainly used to be. And probably fancier brands may still use glass.
Ideally yes. However some meals aren’t suitable for toddlers, others that simply don’t like. Particularly for exhausted parents, having a healthy, tasty fallback can be a sanity saver. Doubly so when on trips.
Treat them like the toddler equivalent of a McDonald’s. OK for 1 off meals, a problem when they become the default diet.
When they’re that age, you don’t have time to make good financial decisions unless you’re killing it or one of you gets to be stay at home. Even then it’s rough.
I understand, my kid isn’t that many years from when he was a toddler. These particular processed meals aren’t any easier to prep than some cheese and crackers or portioning some from the parent’s plate of food.
I disagree. I went back to work when my baby was 5 months old.
I have always, always been poor. However, my sister had gotten me a blender for christmas the year prior. I made, all my sons food. His diet was maybe 15% baby food pouches, over estimating this I think.
An example is, a sweet potato, a carrot and an apple, peeled, cooked and blended. There it is. I would see the pouches and what blends they were labled as, and just buy the whole produce and make my own. I was a single mom, worked 40, nursing on top of this, and I dont remember this being difficult, even poor and working full time. Its all about the parents’ priorities.
To be more modern, those little mesh sucker things were great. I would freeze grapes or other fruit, and stick them in that mesh contraption for my baby. frozen fruit makes teething lil ones happy, the mesh part kept the choking hazards at bay, he could hold it himself and chew on frozen fruit. bloody magical tool.
I would agree that far too many take the “easy” path of just buying premade foods, but I take issue with the last comment:
I dont remember this being difficult, even poor and working full time. Its all about the parents’ priorities.
“Poor” can often mean more than one full time job for a single person. The framing you’re putting on this suggests that any parent has this kind of time, and it just isn’t true. Its also especially worth mentioning that a person’s income can change wildly at any time - someone doing well enough to be the stay at home parent while the other works could suddenly become a single parent. A single parent that would need to work multiple jobs just to afford to keep living in their home.
And I say this as a parent lucky enough to work from home, and my partner being able to dedicate full time to parenting before going back to part time work.
Yes, we made all of their food at home. Even baking the bread they eat during the week. Not everyone is lucky enough to make that happen, especially now.
I probably wouldn’t mind the ubiquitous use of the “new system” from the University of São Paulo if I didn’t keep seeing it used incorrectly, with its added category treated as causal of poor health instead of correlated with poor health.
Americans aren’t overweight because of the “ultra-processed” portion of our high-calorie high-salt diet. Americans are overweight because our diet is high-calorie and high-salt!
It’s entirely possible to have a healthy diet that consists only of “Nova” category 4 foods. And entirely possible to have an unhealthy diet that consists only of “unprocessed” category 1 and “ingredient” category 2 foods.
(And unless it’s a damn acronym, “nova” should not be capitalized!)
Americans aren’t overweight because of the “ultra-processed” portion of our high-calorie high-salt diet. Americans are overweight because our diet is high-calorie and high-salt!
Oh, I’d argue strongly that the former is also a factor. For one thing, the whole idea of calories in-calories out is a highly flawed concept that whiffs a lot on how the body actually processes foods. Things like resistant starches and slow-digesting grains are key in absorbing food in a consistent manner that avoids glycogen spikes and delivers a smoother energy experience that helps cut down cravings and vicious junk-food circles, so to speak.
Also, the more processed a food is, typically the less vitamins, minerals, fibre, phytochemicals and so forth it contains, all things the body needs and even craves. And there’s a natural tendency to eat when one feels a lack of something, which can be some or all of those things above.
I don’t know what “new system” you’re talking about but “nova” just means new in portuguese. My guess is someone referred to it as “new [something]” and it stuck because foreigners didn’t understand it. And it can’t have been “system” because that would be “novo sistema”. My guess would be “nova piramide alimentar” since we have this “food pyramid” thing where we rank food based on how much you should eat of it. But this is just a guess, I haven’t heard of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification
“New classification”, not “new system”. The rest of your inference agrees with my understanding.
Is this information available to the public or is it kept secret?
In the United States anything meant for human consumption either has a health department regularly inspecting the kitchen where it is prepared for immediate consumption or is sold with labelling that conveys a nutritional profile and ingredient list.
The label is clearer now than it was when I was a child, and there is movement now to put the most relevant information on the front of the package.
Just looking at the first four packages in my dining room,.without getting the glasses I need for vision, I can tell you that “Stewart’s black cherry soda” is 160 calories for bottle, "Vernors black cherry* is 150 per can and a “hostess cup cake” is 170. All of which are high calorie treats I don’t mind since the kids are away.
So, no, not a secret. Provided for you at point of sale, in fact. (And for many chain restaurants and eaters, the same top-line numbers are available from their website.)
I think this is state dependent. I’ve seen industrialized bread that lacked labeling and ingredient list.
Now, I don’t want to give the impression that calorie counts by themselves are the key to health. Excess.fats, too many bad fats, too much sodium, and too little protein or vitamins will also lead to poor health.
But 170 calories with 2.5 grams of saturated fat and 19 grams of sugar wouldn’t suddenly be healthier if it came from a home-made honey and butter cake instead of a factory. Although the later might be more satisfying and thus encourage me to eat only one instead of two.
Oh man, my brain left out “foods” in the title. Read it as “4 out of 5 toddlers are ultra processed”. This thread turned out WAY different than I was expecting.
YSK: ultra-processed is not inherently bad. Bad food, though, is always bad.
In some ways it kinda is, though. The point of ultra-processing is either (a) to make the food easier to eat, which can be bad because the hard-to-digest parts like fiber are important for health too or (b) make it taste better, which can be bad because it encourages overeating.
This is why I think all babies should have dentures. That way I can throw them a chicken straight out of the yard and tell him to eat it as it, bones and all. The healthiest way. If you aren’t eating feathers you aren’t going to be healthy.
Four out of five foods sold for toddlers in the United States
MATKETED to toddlers. Nobody is advertising apples and whole wheat.
What about the Big Apple?
I’m not disputing that, just the article is specifically about the United States, which I think is an important distinction to make. Not everyone reading this is from the US.
It’s so hard to find foods that are convenient and not ultra processed. I don’t mean you can’t find them in the grocery store. They’re there, but just the actual integration of prepping and cooking those foods day to day is problematic. We do our best though.
Gotta get em young so they can later keep em dependant on the “health system”.
Regarding the “half that fail to meet one or more UN nutrition standards”: I’d say that’s the least of the problems here unless a child never gets anything else and is limited to one brand of food. Most food people eat have something missing - that’s why people don’t eat the same thing every day unless they have no other choice or have an eating disorder.
The high levels of sugar and sodium are by far more dangerous, because that is what will influence your taste for the rest of your life.
You can retrain your palate to like new things. It’s not easy to come down off a high sugar diet though.
Thats why kids have type 3 diabetus.
Maybe your kids do. Good luck! Thoughts and prayers!
I found this creator to do an excellent job breaking down this topic if anyone is interested in more information.
by Kiana Docherty “Baby Food Is TERRIFYING Now”
A bit of a clickbaity title, but the content is interesting.
