We need a society that supports parents and makes good food choices achievable \u2013 not more lecturing of exhausted mums<\/p>\n
Like many modern mothers, I have on occasion piped cold bolognese directly from a pouch into my small child\u2019s open mouth and, radical though it may seem, I refuse to feel guilty about it. There is a lot of panic about ultra-processed foods<\/a> (UPFs), and baby food pouches, with their high sugar content<\/a> and dubious nutritional value, are the latest targets. Researchers at the University of Leeds School of Food Science and Nutrition found that<\/a> 41% of main meals marketed for children had sugar levels that were too high and that 21% of ready-to-eat fruit products, cereals and meals were too watery and not providing adequate nutrition.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not great. But is it news? No parent picks up something called \u201cHeinz fruity banana custard\u201d believing it a fantastic alternative to actual mashed banana, yet this is being treated as the Watergate of the under-4s sandpit crowd. I\u2019m starting to wonder if people have lost their collective minds over processed food. I even saw one comment calling for the death penalty for baby food producers. Baby pouch hysteria is the perfect new addition to the maternal guilt industrial complex.<\/p>\n Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist. The Republic of Parenthood book will be published this summer<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We need a society that supports parents and makes good food choices achievable \u2013 not more lecturing of exhausted mums Like many modern mothers, I have on occasion piped cold bolognese directly from a pouch into my small child\u2019s open mouth and, radical though it may seem, I refuse to feel guilty about it. There … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}