Baby food ingredients tested

REPORTER: Helen Wellings
BROADCAST DATE: July 13, 2004

Some baby food contains a lot of water.

Choice's latest tests show some baby food is mostly water and thickener with only a low percentage of the advertised ingredients. Here are the results. 

Baby food is convenient and easy. But it's hard to know what exactly is in tinned and bottled baby food - and how good it is for our little ones. 

Andrea Wise feeds her eight-month-old Lauren canned baby food five days per week. 

"It's easier to do that when I'm trying to get the older child's dinner ready," Andrea said. 

Choice's latest survey of 150 types of baby foods from five manufacturers included supermarket leaders Heinz and Golden Circle, along with Only Organic, Motherly Cubes and Babynat. 

And Choice's Clare Hughes found the test results disturbing. 

"We were concerned that some parents don't realise some of the baby food out there contained very little of the real ingredients," Clare said. 

"We found many of the foods had water as the highest ingredient, which concerned us a bit because it means if you've got water and thickeners in a product then you're taking out the real ingredient, the real nutrients for the baby." 

"It's often cheaper to add water to a product and thicken it up with maize starch or a thickener, or even ground rice." 

The supermarket brands do include some lines that are 100 per cent real food, but most Heinz, Golden Circle and Only Organic baby foods contain water with thickeners. 

Sometimes this accounts for up to 60-90 per cent of the ingredients. 

Meat and vegetable combinations usually contain around 10 per cent meat - some only five per cent. Tuna and pasta baby foods were just 2-2.5 per cent tuna. 

"In one, the main ingredients are water, skim milk, wheat pasta nine per cent, carrots, ground rice, butter and cheese," Clare said. "Compare that with Motherly Cubes - they blitzed the field with 40 per cent meat in their chicken and beef." 

Heinz Infant Feeding Advisory Service manager Anne Hillis says thickener is up to five per cent of her company's product. There's a lot of water in some baby foods but Ms Hillis offers an explanation. 

"What we do at Heinz is exactly what mums do at home," Ms Hillis said. "You cook in water - particularly something like pasta and rice."

Clare Hughes from Choice says it's hard for busy parents to tell whether they're buying nutritious foods. 

"Unless you study the ingredients list and the label - which takes a lot of time - mums and dads probably don't know which foods are the ones that contain a lot of the real ingredients and which ones contain a lot of water," Clare said. 

Heinz also offers an explanation for some baby foods having only two per cent tuna content. 

"If you have something that's too strongly flavoured the baby rejects it and mum knows that," Ms Hillis said. 

By comparison, the Babynat organic baby food contains no water or thickeners, and the product is steam cooked. 

A spokesperson for Motherly admits their company's food costs two to three times more than competitors' products, but says it's real food without thickeners.

"Frankly there are some baby foods out there that shouldn't be on the market. We shouldn't have custards at all. They're a poor excuse for real food." 

There was another shock in Choice's survey: all the supermarket banana custards contain just one per cent banana. Yoghurt desserts contain up to 80 per cent yoghurt - the average is 25 per cent, but the lowest is 14 per cent. 

Choice says that once heated up, the true yoghurt is killed off anyway. 

"We don't think that's good enough," Clare said. "They're little more than diluted, thickened milk with a touch of sugar and a touch of fruit in them." 

Both Heinz and Golden Circle says their products are nutritionally sound and formulated by paediatric dieticians to meet infant feeding regulations. As for their tiny amounts of meat and fish, the companies say babies can cope with only small amounts of protein - and thickeners help with consistency. 

Andrea's mothers' group is shocked at the findings. 

"I'm angry that the baby food manufacturers are doing this," Andrea said. "I think as a parent I feel that they have a market within the baby food industry, and that is their market and they should be responsible for putting in the nutritional values." 

Manufacturers only need to list the percentage of ingredients in the name of the product. With chicken and vegetables they are only required to list the percentage of chicken and vegies. But Choice is pushing for the percentage of all ingredients to be shown, so consumers know exactly how much thickener and water is in the product. 

Dietician Geraldine Georgiou warns parents against regular feeding of commercial baby foods. She says fresh is best. 

"They're quick and easy but don't forget - how hard or how quick is it to mash a banana?" she said. 

"Because babies and toddlers have got small tummies we need to have quality, not volume, because we need to give these children valuable nutrients, calories, protein, iron, calcium to name a few." 

"So it's quality of the nourishment of the foods that's most important." 

For more information visit the Australian Consumers Association at www.choice.com.au or email ausconsumer@choice.com.au