Following a shock BBC Panorama investigation into shop-bought baby food pouches, a busy mum has offered her top tips for making homemade pouch meals your little one will love, and it could help with fussiness in the long run
A busy mum swears by making up her own baby food pouches, and insists they’re more cost-effective than the shop-bought variety.
As highlighted on last night’s episode of BBC’s Panorama, an investigation into baby food pouches found that six leading UK brands had “misled” parents by selling products which are currently failing to meet babies’ and toddlers’ key nutritional needs.
The testing of 18 pouches 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. Cookbook author Rebecca Wilson, who regularly shares her top tips and recipes on her popular Instagram page, isn’t surprised by the findings.
Rebecca told the Mirror: “I think this investigation is fantastic for opening up an understanding of what’s on the market. Maybe it’ll help parents who maybe hadn’t realised, to start looking at what the nutrition content is on the back of the package a bit more, rather than trusting straight away what is on the market.”
Many time-pressed parents have long relied upon the convenience of readymade pouches, meaning this recent investigation may prove to be somewhat disheartening. However, you needn’t be a top chef to prep your own pouches as part of your weekly routine, and it could well save you pennies.
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Mum-of-one Rebecca, whose weaning cookbook, Easy Weaning, will be published in June, advised: “I completely get the whole time-saving aspect, and especially the pouches can be really useful if you’re giving your baby’s food on the go.
“My biggest tip would be to buy those reusable pouches. So if you are making a family meal, like a shepherd’s pie or a spag ball, you can blend up, put it in the pouch, and you can take that out and about with you, and it will last for a couple of days in the fridge.”
As explained by Rebecca, “any meal that you make for yourself as an adult can be served to your baby from six months old”, and so you don’t necessarily have to make up multiple family meals in one go. If it’s too dry, then she suggests simply adding some water or some of your baby’s usual milk to loosen up the consistency.
However, there are some things to bear in mind. First of all, it’s important to leave out the salt when sorting your baby’s dinner—and advises adding it to the main pot afterwards for the rest of the family. This is especially true for children under the age of 12 months, who can only have up to one gram of salt per day. And this may come from sources that you haven’t considered.
Rebecca clarified: “Now that’s not added salt, that’s salt in all foods. So, say you’re adding cheese to a meal, that can be salty. You know, there’s naturally occurring salt in our food. So it’s combined. And so don’t add salt to food. If you want your food to be a bit salted, I always salt my own plate at the table.”
When it comes to chilli in food, Rebecca also urges caution. She said: “Chilli isn’t like a bad thing for little ones. It can just be a bit distressing for them. And you know, if it’s really spicy and they don’t enjoy the meal, it can put them off from eating in the future.”
You also need to be careful with sugar when it comes to your baby’s food, and this includes sugar from natural sources. Although she acknowledges that fruit is “fantastic food” for babies and children, when blended up, the natural sugars can be bad for their teeth, and so this should be minimised.
All this aside, however, Rebecca believes that “babies should be exposed to a variety of flavours” from the start of their weaning journey, and has encouraged fellow parents not to “shy away from seasoning food with lots of different spices and herbs.”
She added: “Make food exciting, make it flavoursome so that they enjoy food and that you enjoy the food so that you can eat together as a family because that has so many benefits of eating together.”
When it comes to her own daughter, who is now seven years old, Rebecca believes she has developed a much better relationship with food in the long run, thanks to being introduced to a variety of homemade foods early on as opposed to pouches.
As noted by Rebecca, the smooth texture of food sold in shop-bought pouches is quite different to that of homemade food, even when pureed. This means that when it’s time to transition to proper food, the texture and need to chew can feel quite strange for little ones, potentially resulting in “more fussiness and more refusal.”
Nowadays, more than ever parents are looking to make the budget stretch, and making your own pouches could be a great way of making those additional savings.
Rebecca advised: “Quite often, if you’re making a big pot of spag bol, and then you blend it down, the price equivalent of buying those ingredients to the same amount of money that you spend on the same quantity of pouches, you’re going to be saving money in that if you’re making family meals and then using some of the extras for weaning on the go or saving some for the freezer.”
When shopping for ingredients, there are also small but effective ways to trim your grocery bill in this regard. For example, Rebecca has suggested opting for chicken thighs over chicken breast, which, as well as being cheaper, are also less dry, making them better for weaning.
Of course, there is a reason why pre-made baby food pouches are so popular. Parents have limited time, and every second counts, especially if you’re someone who doesn’t take enormous pleasure in cooking. On this note, Rebecca said: “Plan ahead. Think about something that you feel like your kid is most likely to like because you don’t want to go through the effort of making something, filling up reusable pouches, and doing the homemade thing straight away, jumping into it for the first time and then for it to be rejected.
“That can feel quite disheartening. So stick with something simple, something that you feel like is going to be really enjoyed. And maybe get the kids involved as well, and make an activity of it, and do it together so that it doesn’t feel like it’s another thing you added to the list, another job. It’s something that you’re doing as a family, it is a kiddie activity.”
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