… in the United States
This is the internet. Please consider the audience to be worldwide.
Unless your country has specific laws to the contrary or is too poor/civilized to have this sort of “lazy parent” food, presume that any of the factory-made shelf-stable food in your grocery aisle is as bad as the equivalent sold in the USA.
(And find out of your country’s food laws are actually better than the USA, or just “feel” better because the same exact product can just list fewer ingredients )
Consumer protection laws are really alien to folks from the states it seems.
Holy shit, the propaganda has really done a number on your perspective and I’m tired to pretend it didnt.
It’s you, not the rest of the world, that is different.
It isn’t.
That is not to say that the shelf stable food here in Europe is as good for you as a home cooked meal, but America allows ingredients which are literally illegal over here because they’re known to cause cancer or other health related issues.
It took the US until two years ago to finally ban titanium oxide as a food additive. You still use horrible foaming agents in your bread, and ingredients derived from processed petroleum byproducts are allowed in your food.
Your junk and nutritionally empty food is not a better option to feed to children just because it doesn’t have a certain yellow die.
way to miss the point
It objectively is, as the former has no nutritional value, and the latter is actively trying to kill you.
In the only country that exists in the world, US&A. Cause clearly no other counties exist.
Good lord how much hand holding and coddling do you need?
Let me see if I can translate this article to a less trendy version:
.About 80% of the packaged foods marketed for children between 6 and 30 months include ingredients only used when creating packaged food at scale. Half of these either contained more fat, sugar, and salt than the WHO recommends or did not abide by the WHO’s advice to eliminate food coloring.
So packaged foods contained emulsifiers and mould inhibitors like salt and sugar required to make them safe. Well yeah…
Those packaged toddler foods are expensive as well. I’d wager most parents are simply giving their toddlers portions of foods they eat themselves over buying this crap.
That’s how we fed kids before corporations convinced us that kids need packets of pureed veggies in a single use plastics
Baby food jars are typically glass
Most of the baby food in my area is plastic pouches
Ideally yes. However some meals aren’t suitable for toddlers, others that simply don’t like. Particularly for exhausted parents, having a healthy, tasty fallback can be a sanity saver. Doubly so when on trips.
Treat them like the toddler equivalent of a McDonald’s. OK for 1 off meals, a problem when they become the default diet.
I probably wouldn’t mind the ubiquitous use of the “new system” from the University of São Paulo if I didn’t keep seeing it used incorrectly, with its added category treated as causal of poor health instead of correlated with poor health.
Americans aren’t overweight because of the “ultra-processed” portion of our high-calorie high-salt diet. Americans are overweight because our diet is high-calorie and high-salt!
It’s entirely possible to have a healthy diet that consists only of “Nova” category 4 foods. And entirely possible to have an unhealthy diet that consists only of “unprocessed” category 1 and “ingredient” category 2 foods.
(And unless it’s a damn acronym, “nova” should not be capitalized!)
Americans aren’t overweight because of the “ultra-processed” portion of our high-calorie high-salt diet. Americans are overweight because our diet is high-calorie and high-salt!
And with so much entertainment comes increasingly larger sedentary lifestyles.
Is this information available to the public or is it kept secret?
In the United States anything meant for human consumption either has a health department regularly inspecting the kitchen where it is prepared for immediate consumption or is sold with labelling that conveys a nutritional profile and ingredient list.
The label is clearer now than it was when I was a child, and there is movement now to put the most relevant information on the front of the package.
Just looking at the first four packages in my dining room,.without getting the glasses I need for vision, I can tell you that “Stewart’s black cherry soda” is 160 calories for bottle, "Vernors black cherry* is 150 per can and a “hostess cup cake” is 170. All of which are high calorie treats I don’t mind since the kids are away.
So, no, not a secret. Provided for you at point of sale, in fact. (And for many chain restaurants and eaters, the same top-line numbers are available from their website.)
Now, I don’t want to give the impression that calorie counts by themselves are the key to health. Excess.fats, too many bad fats, too much sodium, and too little protein or vitamins will also lead to poor health.
But 170 calories with 2.5 grams of saturated fat and 19 grams of sugar wouldn’t suddenly be healthier if it came from a home-made honey and butter cake instead of a factory. Although the later might be more satisfying and thus encourage me to eat only one instead of two.
Again, I am glad I never procreated.
YSK: ultra-processed is not inherently bad. Bad food, though, is always bad.
In some ways it kinda is, though. The point of ultra-processing is either (a) to make the food easier to eat, which can be bad because the hard-to-digest parts like fiber are important for health too or (b) make it taste better, which can be bad because it encourages overeating.
This is why I think all babies should have dentures. That way I can throw them a chicken straight out of the yard and tell him to eat it as it, bones and all. The healthiest way. If you aren’t eating feathers you aren’t going to be healthy.
Thats why kids have type 3 diabetus.
Maybe your kids do. Good luck! Thoughts and prayers!
Sacre bleu!
Most people have time to make at least their evening meal at home from fresh food. They just don’t make that a priority. They’re holding the instructions in their hands, but instead of learning basic cooking skills, they’re ordering delivery and watching TikTok.
Yes, I’m blaming the parents for what they feed their kids. Big shock, I suppose.
Just having time in the evening to cook isn’t enough to get home cooking done. You need the energy to do it too, availability of fresh ingredients, and consistency in your schedule to allow planning ahead so that it’s actually economical to cook at home.
I say we blame the system for these problems. Parents can always do more, but it’s never clear if the outcome outweighs the cost, so I wouldn’t blame them for making the choices they do.
