Are fruits and vegetables used to sweeten commercial baby foods in the U.K.? (393.2)

Abstract

A majority of UK commercial baby foods contain fruit and/or vegetables. We aimed to investigate the fruit and vegetable (F&V) content of commercial baby foods and how these contribute to sugar content.All foods produced by 8 manufacturers for the UK market in May 2013 were surveyed and 329 foods with F&V in the name identified. Food labels were used to determine which F&V were included and their sugar content.The most frequent first‐listed fruits were apple (22% of products), banana (12%), mango (7%) and strawberry (5%); the most frequent vegetables were tomato (9%), carrot (6%), sweet potato (6%) and squashes (5%). The total F&V content varied from <20g/100g for 37 (11%) foods to 105 (32%) with >80g. Most foods (84%) were spoonable purees, 44% had names suggesting they were savoury and 51% sweet foods (5% unclear). The 128 sweet purees had a mean ± SD (g/100g) sugar content of 10.9 ± 2.6 while the 39 sweet finger foods had 25.7 ± 17; the 133 savoury purees had sugar content 2.7 ± 1.3 and the savoury dry foods 6.9 ± 3.7. For all foods F&V content was significantly related to the sugar content, and this explained 33% of the variance in sugar content for the spoonable savoury foods and 65% for sweet finger foods.The vegetables used in baby foods are predominantly sweet and will not encourage preferences for non‐sweet vegetables. F&V contribute significantly to sugar content, suggesting that they are primarily used to sweeten baby foods.Grant Funding Source: Supported by University of Glasgow