Hutchinson, J, Rippin, H, Threapleton, D orcid.org/0000-0002-5884-3372 et al. (16 more authors) (2021) High sugar content of European commercial baby foods and proposed updates to existing recommendations. Maternal & Child Nutrition, 17 (1). e13020. ISSN 1740-8695
Abstract
The aim was to determine whether commercial baby foods marketed within Europe (up to 36 months of age) have inappropriate formulation and high sugar content and to provide suggestions to update European regulations and recommendations as part of a nutrient profile model developed for this age group. The latter was produced following recommended World Health Organization (WHO) steps, including undertaking a rapid literature review. Packaging information from countries across the WHO European region was used to determine mean energy from total sugar by food category. The percentage of products containing added sugar and the percentage of savoury meal‐type products containing pureed fruit were also calculated. A total of 2,634 baby foods from 10 countries were summarised: 768 sold in the United Kingdom, over 200 each from Denmark (319), Spain (241), Italy (430) and Malta (243) and between 99–200 from Hungary, Norway, Portugal, Estonia and Slovenia. On average, approximately a third of energy in baby foods in these European countries came from total sugar, and for most food categories, energy from sugar was higher than 10%. Use of added sugars was widespread across product categories, with concentrated fruit juice most commonly used. Savoury meal‐type purees did not contain added sugars except in United Kingdom and Malta; however, fruit as an ingredient was found in 7% of savoury meals, most frequently seen in UK products. Clear proposals for reducing the high sugar content seen in commercial baby foods were produced. These suggestions, relating to both content and labelling, should be used to update regulations and promote product reformulation.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Authors. Maternal & Child Nutrition published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | commercial foods; complementary feeding; dietary guidelines; food packaging; infant food; nutrition policy; sugars |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Food Science and Nutrition (Leeds) > FSN Nutrition and Public Health (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number World Health Organisation 2016-606762 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 10 Sep 2020 15:23 |
Last Modified: | 03 Jan 2023 12:07 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/mcn.13020 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:165338 |