60% of Toddler Food Doesn’t Meet Nutrition Standards

GROW YOUR OWN? –

Aug. 28, 2024 – “Dietary preferences are established quite young,” Dunford said. “Half of all the sugar that young kids are consuming through these commercial foods come from squeezed pouches, so that’s certainly an area we have to be more careful about.”

These foods often contain additives such as dyes, sweeteners and emulsifiers. Many of the add-ons are used to prolong shelf life of foods

bout 60 percent of packaged baby food sold in the United States doesn’t meet nutritional standards established by the World Health Organization, according to research published recently that opens a window into the role that inadequate diet poses in children’s health.

Researchers from the George Institute for Global Health, a medical research center in Australia, analyzed 651 commercial infant food products purchased from large U.S. grocery chains between March and May 2023. They used standards in the 2022 nutrient and promotion profile outlined by the WHO Regional Office for Europe as a benchmark for evaluating these products.