Of all the joys of parenthood, weaning comes pretty low on the list. You spend
all evening surrounded by Tupperware pots, bibs and slimy bits of fruit and
half-mashed vegetables, only to find that there’s nothing left for your own
supper.
Convinced that you are offering your child a nutritionally superior start to
life, you soldier on with late-night cooking sessions for the freezer and
prepare crudité-style snacks to be stashed in the buggy for the next day.
There is a simpler alternative. Stop off at a shop and stock up on those neat
little pots of food for babies. It’s expensive, yes, and you risk
disapproving looks from mothers who have been up since dawn peeling
butternut squash, but everyone resorts to shop-bought meals at some point.
But is there any reason to question the health implications of shop-bought
baby food? Not according to the organic lobby, which points to information
from the Government’s Pesticide Residues Committee that shows that residues
are rising in common weaning foods such as apples, pears and bananas.
“Cooking at home might control ingredients but it can increase exposure to
pesticides,” says Anna Rosier, managing director of the baby food company
Organix, which supports independent research into food quality and child
health through the Organix Foundation. “Unlike the raw foods you buy in
shops, there are strict limits on the levels of pesticides allowed in
manufactured baby foods, so they contain low levels of residues.”
It’s no surprise that Rosier is steering parents towards supermarket shelves
but her concerns are borne out by the committee’s research. Figures released
this summer indicate that 46 per cent of foods tested last year had
pesticides present, compared with 25 per cent in 2003. To put this in
perspective, the committee points out that the scope of the testing
programme has increased. “We can now look for more pesticides at much lower
levels,” says Dr Ian Brown, the committee chairman. And the committee did
conclude that “the vast majority of food available to UK consumers . . . is
not likely to pose a risk to health”.
Nevertheless, Nick Mole, a policy officer at Pesticide Action Network, says:
“Parents are right to be worried about children’s exposure to pesticides.
They are a vulnerable group, their bodies are still developing.”
In July, a study by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley,
reported in the Environmental Health Perspectives journal, showed
that children below the age of 7 had lower levels of an enzyme that protects
against the toxic effects of pesticides. “The enzyme, paraoxonase, helps the
body neutralise and eliminate organophosphate pesticides,” said the
scientists.
This may sound like a good excuse to ditch the blender and go shopping,
especially as UK legislation allows baby food manufacturers to use only
small amounts of sodium, sugar, glucose or honey. Main meals must include a
minimum protein content and no added colours, sweeteners or preservatives.
Even so, Mole says, cooking organic vegetables at home is still the superior
option for parents. Second best, he says, is learning which foods have high
residues. A list on the Pesticide Action Network’s website shows that citrus
fruit and pears are most likely to have high levels, while squash, broccoli
and courgettes do not.
“If you are worried about residues, then buying organic, even if just for your
baby, is probably a good option,” says Amanda Ursell, the Times
nutritionist. “I did buy some ready-made weaning foods for my daughter but I
made sure that she had “real” fruits and vegetables with them because the
heat processes used commercially to produce foods that can be safely kept on
supermarket shelves destroy a lot of the vitamin C and some of the B
vitamins. Fortunately the protein and mineral levels remain largely intact.”
But not all baby foods are equal. Meals from So Baby, an organic producer, are
heat-treated and then frozen, so they do not have to undergo the stringent
heat processing required of products that sit on supermarket shelves. The
company won the Baby and Children’s Food category in the Soil Association’s
Organic Food Awards 2009, sponsored by The Times.
Then we come to the haute cuisine of baby foods; fresh ready-meals produced by
Little Dish that can be found in the chilled cabinets at some supermarkets.
Their best-before date is only a week after they are made so there is no
need for for the ingredients to be super heated.
Earlier this year, Sustain, a food charity, warned about high levels of sugar,
preservatives and fat in some baby snacks. “We also looked at a range of
savoury pots for babies and toddlers, such as tuna and pasta, and we didn’t
find the same concerns,” says Christine Haigh, joint co-ordinator of the
Children’s Food Campaign run by Sustain.
This fits with the general picture that the new baby foods aren’t as bad as
parents might think. Even so, it is best to combine them with fresh food
prepared at home to ensure the widest range of vitamins. But the real
problem is that they encourage a culture of convenience eating. The idea of
weaning a baby is to introduce family food that you can all eat together,
not to have each person consuming their own ready meal. For this reason I’ll
be cooking my 11-month-old son’s food at home as much as possible. Anything
I can do to make him more likely to turn on the oven rather than dial a
takeaway when he’s older is worth the effort. You never know; in 20 years’
time, I’m hoping it’ll be him elbows deep in vegetable peelings, while I
recline on a sofa waiting for my three-course supper.
The top shop food for tots
Babylicious 10/10
We now recognise that frozen foods such as peas can be as nutritious, or even
more so, than their fresh counterparts. The frozen Babylicious range
provides a great alternative to foods from supermarket shelves. The
ingredients are cooked, puréed and quickly frozen to retain maximum
nutrients and flavours. They contain no additives and just need to be
defrosted, heated and served. Options include stage one products such as
carrot, parsnip and potato purée and pear and banana, a low allergen food
(£1.99 for ten frozen cubes making three to four meals). Available at Ocado
and Asda.com.
BabyDeli 10/10
A range of frozen weaning foods made from organic ingredients that can be
microwaved from frozen. The range includes organic cauliflower purée (£3.50
per 120g, ten frozen cubes), which introduces some cruciferous vegetables
into a baby’s diet, providing health-boosting super-nutrients known as
glucosinolates. The apple purée (£4 per 120g, 11 cubes) provides some
soluble fibre. Available from Ocado and www.kitchenmonkey.co.uk
Plum 9/10
A product from the supermarket shelf that comes in individual plastic pots.
Its beauty lies in being totally transportable and needing no refrigeration.
Plum’s sweet potato with lamb and carrot stage one purée gives a baby a good
mix of carbohydrate and protein. The potato and carrots are full of orange
antioxidant pigments that give the purée an appealing orange colour (£2.71
for two 100g pots). Available from Boots, supermarkets and Ocado.
Ella’s Kitchen 8/10
Another supermarket shelf product, the range includes sweet potato, pumpkin,
apple and blueberries (89p per 120g pouch), a stage one puréed weaning food
that is organic and comes in a resealable pouch. The sweet potato and
pumpkin gives babies the protective antioxidant super-nutrient beta
carotene, there are purple antioxidant pigments in the blueberries and, in
the apple, quercetin, another super-nutrient. Despite its brightly coloured
vegetable components, the combination of vegetables and fruits results in a
dull brown purée. The product is, however, convenient and transportable.
Available from supermarkets.
Hipp Organic 7/10
This is sold in jars off the supermarket shelf. The advantage is that you can
see the colour of the food inside, but the jar is heavier to transport and
risks breakages when out and about. The tender carrots and potato (60p per
125g jar) is good for protective carotenes needed to help see in the dark.
Available from all good supermarkets.
Amanda Ursell
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