Baby food pouches low in nutrients, testing finds

Baby food pouches from six of the UK's leading brands are failing to meet key nutritional needs of babies and toddlers - with parents being "misled" by their marketing - BBC Panorama has been told.

Laboratory testing of 18 pouches made by Ella's Kitchen, Heinz, Piccolo, Little Freddie, Aldi and Lidl found many to be low in vitamin C and iron, while some contained more sugar in a single pouch than a one-year-old should have in a day.

There are more than 250 of these products on the multi-million pound baby pouch market - they have become a staple for many households with babies and children up to the age of two or three. They are convenient and have long shelf lives.

Experts have told the BBC the products should only be used sparingly, are not replacements for homemade meals, and can cause children health problems if used as their main source of nutrition.

When we put this to the brands, the market leader Ella's Kitchen said it agreed with all three points.

All of the brands said their products were intended as a complementary part of a child's varied weaning diet.

The brands also told the BBC they are committed to infant health, and they provide quality, nutritional products that meet UK regulations.

Young children should be protected from commercial interests, experts told us - while the government said existing laws already set nutritional requirements for baby foods.

A laboratory approved by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service was commissioned by Panorama to independently test the nutritional value of a fruit, yoghurt and savoury pouch from each of the six leading brands.

Our investigation found:

• Savoury pouches, used by some families as replacements for main meals, containing less than 5% of the key nutrient, iron, that an infant needs each day
• A fruit pouch in which virtually all the vitamin C had been lost during the manufacturing process
• Fruit pouches marketed as having "no added sugar" containing about four teaspoons of so-called "free sugars" (created when fruit is blended) - something that experts say is "intentionally misleading"
• Pouches being marketed to babies as young as four months old, against the clear recommendations of the UK government and the World Health Organization (WHO)

"You think they are going to be nutritionally good for your child," said one parent, Hazel, during a focus group on baby food pouches at Leeds University.

"You trust the brands… it's really, really concerning."

However, public health experts have been unified in telling the BBC that no parent should feel guilty for using the products.

The nutritional claims of baby food pouches are misleading, according to Dr Alison Tedstone, who spent nine years as chief nutritionist to the UK government.

"You think as a parent it is a healthy product, and it just isn't," she said.

Many of the biggest brands use "halo-marketing" - surrounding products with healthy words or phrases - according to Dr Tedstone.

Ella's Kitchen, for example, describes savoury products as "perfectly balanced for growing babies", while Piccolo claims many pouches are "packed with goodness".

Some Little Freddie pouches come branded as "Good for Brains" and Heinz claims some of its fruit products are "as nutritionally good as homemade".

Piccolo and Little Freddie told us their packaging accurately represented the key ingredients and flavours contained in their products, while Ella's Kitchen said it "would never use" misleading claims. Heinz did not address our questions on marketing.

Savoury pouches are often used by parents as a main meal - but of the six such products sent for laboratory testing, none could provide a significant contribution to the 7.8mg of iron an infant needs in a day.

Iron is a key nutrient for a healthy immune system, growth and brain development - but levels are not shown on the products' labelling.

By seven months old, "babies' iron stores are starting to run out, so we now need to get that from food," explained Bahee Van de Bor, a paediatric dietitian from the British Dietetic Association.

Our lab results found that none of the pouches came close to the 3mg of iron that Ms Van de Bor would want an infant to be having from a main meal.

Of the four pouches that contained meat - known to be a good source of iron - Heinz's Sweet Potato, Chicken and Veggies contained the lowest, with just over 0.3mg of iron.

"That's really low. Very, very low," Ms Van de Bor told the BBC. "That doesn't meet even 5% of [an infant's] daily requirements."

The ingredients list on the back of the pouch says it contains 12% chicken - "so the iron-rich food is a very tiny amount," she said.

All the companies stressed they were committed to providing nutritious products for babies, and that their products were intended as a complementary part of a child's varied weaning diet. Little Freddie added that its products were not intended to be meal replacements for one-year-olds.

Alongside savoury products, companies also sell pouches containing only fruit, which are leaving dentists concerned about the potential for tooth decay.

The NHS says an infant should have as little sugar as possible, and that a one-year-old child should have no more than 10g of free sugars a day.

Free sugars occur when fruit is pureed, as is the case with the pouches. Unlike eating fresh fruit - which is much better for a child - pureeing releases sugar from inside fruit cell walls and can be absorbed much more quickly.

A recent British Dental Association (BDA) report, shared exclusively with the BBC, indicated that 37 of 60 fruit pouches found on supermarket shelves contained more free sugar than this 10g guideline.

The NHS says eating too many free sugars can also lead to weight gain.

Children who are "barely out of weaning" are coming to hospital for multiple tooth extractions because of tooth decay caused by their diets, said Eddie Crouch, BDA chief executive.

"It's obviously not all down to these pouches," he added. "But clearly, regular use and feeding with these pouches with such high levels of sugar cause serious problems to the general health of children as they're growing up."

Some pouches contain higher levels of sugar than some fizzy drinks. The highest found by the BBC was Ella's Kitchen's Bananas and Apples, which has 19.6g of sugar - equivalent to more than four teaspoons.

At the same time, Ella's Kitchen - as well as Lidl, Aldi, Piccolo and Heinz - label their products as containing "no added sugar".

While such claims are truthful and not breaking any guidelines, Mr Crouch believes "the wording itself is intended to mislead".

Piccolo said it develops "recipes that combine fruits with vegetables" to reduce sugar levels, while Ella's Kitchen said that, "the sugar content would be the same if you pureed the ingredients yourself at home" and that it has "a dedicated sugar reduction pathway for 2025".

Heinz, Aldi, Little Freddie and Lidl all said their products contained "no added sugars".

The BBC found that nearly all the vitamin C in one of the fruit pouches tested had been lost during the manufacturing process.

Vitamin C is important for immune systems and an infant needs 25mg a day, the government says. But the Pure Mango pouch from Piccolo had, in effect, no vitamin C left - less than 0.1mg. This is despite the same amount of fresh mango (70g) containing 18.2mg of vitamin C.

"That is a huge surprise for me," said paediatric dietitian Ms Van de Bor. What's left is "free sugars, sadly, and fluids", she said, plus a "small amount" of fibre.

Vitamin C is heat sensitive, which means it degrades because the food inside pouches is heated to ensure safety and increase shelf life.

We tested three separate production batches of the mango pouch, and all came back with the same result.

However, not all the pouches had low results. Heinz's Apple pouch - which has vitamin C added - and Ella's Kitchen's Bananas pouch tested high in vitamin C.

Piccolo said vitamins degrade during processing, so it boosts many of its fruit pouches with ingredients rich in vitamin C. Ella's Kitchen said it keeps the loss of vitamin C to a minimum.

None of the other brands commented directly on our vitamin C results.

We also found that the six companies had failed to implement some NHS, Public Health England and WHO recommendations.

Piccolo, Aldi and Ella's Kitchen currently promote their fruit pouches to babies as young as four months, despite the NHS and WHO saying babies should not be given solid food until about the age of six months.

Introducing products at four months old, added Dr Tedstone, is "a whole eight weeks of extra product sales".

"I think we should put our babies' health ahead of commercial incentives to sell more product," she said.

Dr Kremlin Wickramasinghe from the World Health Organization (WHO) told the BBC that companies promoting foods to parents of four-month-olds were acting "against the best interest of the babies".

Companies are now making changes to the age recommendations on their products. Since we began our investigation Ella's Kitchen has announced that by March next year it will only recommend pouches for babies older than six months to align with UK guidance. Piccolo told us it has begun relabelling all four-month packets to six-months. And since we contacted Aldi, it has said it will make that change too, "in line with other brands and retailers".

Baby food pouches are topped off with a little spout, but both the NHS and the World Health Organization say it should not be used to suck directly from the pouch. It means babies can eat too fast and it can cause dental decay.

None of the companies we looked at used front-of-pack labelling to advise parents against feeding children directly from the spout, despite this being a Public Health England recommendation made in 2019.

We also found that Piccolo was promoting the "convenience" of eating directly from the pouch on its website, which said: "There is no need for extra utensils because food pouches can be squeezed right into a baby's mouth."

Since the BBC contacted the company, this has been removed - but the brand does have multiple videos on social media showing children eating from pouches through the spout.

Piccolo didn't respond when asked about its social media images.

All the other brands say their labelling - on the back of pouches - either recommends parents use a spoon, or to not let babies eat directly from the spout.

Mandatory legislation is what is needed, said Dr Tedstone and the WHO's Dr Wickramasinghe.

The current UK regulations that cover baby food were written in 2003, before baby food pouches came to market. They provide some guidelines for labelling, prohibit the use of pesticides and set out the minimum and maximum levels of some nutrients. But campaigners say they are outdated and do not ensure products are nutritionally appropriate or stop them being promoted to four month olds.

"I would hope that ministers, when they think about the baby food industry, recognise that we need to protect our babies," said Dr Tedstone.

"[Businesses] are not going to [change] unless they are forced to."

Lidl said it welcomed clear government guidelines, while Little Freddie said it actively participated in policy consultations. Ella's Kitchen said it would "never, ever" put profit above the health of children.

Voluntary guidelines for manufacturers aimed at improving standards were drawn up for the government by Public Health England in 2020, but haven't been published by either the Conservative or Labour administrations.

Existing laws already ensure that the safety and quality of baby foods and the claims made on packaging are clear and accurate, the Department of Health and Social Care told the BBC.

It added that it was "committed to tackling the childhood obesity crisis and improving children's health through our Plan for Change".

Brands, said Dr Wickramasinghe "will always come up with the argument why we shouldn't introduce these regulations."

"But we never really quantify the cost [of inaction] to the children... and to the NHS."