Baby food jars are typically glass
When they're that age, you don't have time to make good financial decisions unless you're killing it or one of you gets to be stay at home. Even then it's rough.
I understand, my kid isn't that many years from when he was a toddler. These particular processed meals aren't any easier to prep than some cheese and crackers or portioning some from the parent's plate of food.
I disagree. I went back to work when my baby was 5 months old.
I have always, always been poor. However, my sister had gotten me a blender for christmas the year prior. I made, all my sons food. His diet was maybe 15% baby food pouches, over estimating this I think.
An example is, a sweet potato, a carrot and an apple, peeled, cooked and blended. There it is. I would see the pouches and what blends they were labled as, and just buy the whole produce and make my own. I was a single mom, worked 40, nursing on top of this, and I dont remember this being difficult, even poor and working full time. Its all about the parents' priorities.
To be more modern, those little mesh sucker things were great. I would freeze grapes or other fruit, and stick them in that mesh contraption for my baby. frozen fruit makes teething lil ones happy, the mesh part kept the choking hazards at bay, he could hold it himself and chew on frozen fruit. bloody magical tool.
I would agree that far too many take the "easy" path of just buying premade foods, but I take issue with the last comment:
I dont remember this being difficult, even poor and working full time. Its all about the parents' priorities.
"Poor" can often mean more than one full time job for a single person. The framing you're putting on this suggests that any parent has this kind of time, and it just isn't true. Its also especially worth mentioning that a person's income can change wildly at any time - someone doing well enough to be the stay at home parent while the other works could suddenly become a single parent. A single parent that would need to work multiple jobs just to afford to keep living in their home.
And I say this as a parent lucky enough to work from home, and my partner being able to dedicate full time to parenting before going back to part time work.
Yes, we made all of their food at home. Even baking the bread they eat during the week. Not everyone is lucky enough to make that happen, especially now.
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!
Oh, I'd argue strongly that the former is also a factor. For one thing, the whole idea of calories in-calories out is a highly flawed concept that whiffs a lot on how the body actually processes foods. Things like resistant starches and slow-digesting grains are key in absorbing food in a consistent manner that avoids glycogen spikes and delivers a smoother energy experience that helps cut down cravings and vicious junk-food circles, so to speak.
Also, the more processed a food is, typically the less vitamins, minerals, fibre, phytochemicals and so forth it contains, all things the body needs and even craves. And there's a natural tendency to eat when one feels a lack of something, which can be some or all of those things above.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification
"New classification", not "new system". The rest of your inference agrees with my understanding.
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.
So packaged foods contained emulsifiers and mould inhibitors like salt and sugar required to make them safe. Well yeah...
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.
I think this is state dependent. I've seen industrialized bread that lacked labeling and ingredient list.
It's a federal requirement.
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 )
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.
Same here in New Zealand. We have very tight restrictions on food additives, particularly with baby food.
way to miss the point
If that certain yellow die is linked to health issues in children, yes I'd rather not have that in food.
You can keep that in America.
You really don't know what you're talking about.
I bet you'd also argue that there is "free speech" in the UK, where a billionaire can still literally sue someone into poverty for accurately describing them. Or the same in Germany, where an advocate against the Palestinian genocide was arrested for "denying Israel"
The former. In about 75% of the world.
American unable to imagine a part of the world where things are better, typical
They're legally mandated to have a table for every type of nutrient ( fats, trans fats, carbohydrates - split into subcategories of carbohydrate and carbohydrate sugars, salts, etc) in every packet of things sold as a Edible Product in which it has 2 rows - in a serving, v daily recommendation. In all of EU, and also in the UK. Asia is if anything even more stringent about it then we are and culturally prefer things as unprocessed as possible.
We don't ban unhealthy foods as long as they're not literally toxic, but this makes it so everyone makes informed decisions, and over time it has effected sales for unhealthy food, they have worse sales than healthier options
They're legally mandated to have a table for every type of nutrient ( fats, trans fats, carbohydrates - split into subcategories of carbohydrate and carbohydrate sugars, salts, etc) in every packet of things sold as a Edible Product in which it has 2 rows - in a serving, v daily recommendation.
Ww have all of that in America as well. I had a great deal of confusion on this subject until the specific definition of one of the words involved was given to me. The problem in discussion here isn't labelling, or even ingredients, the problem is what's DONE to the ingredients before they get in the food. While some degree of processing happens to most food (Chickens are deboned, corn is nixtamalized, tomatoes are stewed) the issue here is the extreme level of processing rhe ingredients go through. Corn and Cardboard are both high in carbohydrates and fiber, after all, cardboard is mostly plant matter rendered down and cooked/shaped, but one is food and the other has been processed so thoroughly that it's not.
Many companies are rendering their ingredients so thoroughly before reassembling them that they're resembling "food" less and less and not doing great things for us nutritionally even though they still measure at certain levels on the packaging. Maybe Jaffa Cakes retain more of the base nutrtion level of the flour in them than twinkies do, but it's the same base processes occurring to both of their ingredients, just at different levels.
I've seen your ingredients lists.
We are legally required to resticker all American imports as they're lacking in all the necessary requirements for sufficient information.
Your version of it is a joke
Lmao. Ameribrain at work.
MATKETED to toddlers. Nobody is advertising apples and whole wheat.
What about the Big Apple?
Im more partial to human music
Ultra processed food isn't just an american thimg. It's normalised to take cgildren to a McDonalds and feed them garbage has also become normalized all over the place. Ever seen a menue in a average restaurant? The kids menu isn't just a smaller version of a normal menu, it's chicken nuggets and fries, hamburger and fries and something else that has been tortured and processed
It's normalised to take cgildren to a McDonalds and feed them garbage has also become normalized all over the place.
I didn't know going to McDonald's once in a blue moon was killing children.
The kids menu thing drives me fucking nuts. I'll be at a Mexican restaurant and the kids options are hamburger, hot dog, buttered noodles or quesadilla. My kid eats everything because I always just shared my food with him, at least have some flipping tacos on the kids menu.
The kids menu is cheap sisco crap. I've had the same exact kids menu chicken tenders in 10 different states, which was the same chicken tenders as on some bar menus.
Let's be honest: this does not end with a cultural change or miracle: this ends when so many of us start dying, that civilization collapses, and people have to start over
Why he eating the pizza backwards
Say that to Donatello (the ninja turtle)
What about a calzone?
If it's inverse they must eat it like reverse bread bowl. Eat only the crust then lick the contents off the plate. Or a spoon... If one were so civilized
I prefer my calzone without the shell.
Possibly stuffed crust
The baby has issues
Gotta get em young so they can later keep em dependant on the "health system".
In. The. States.
Maybe your kids do. Good luck! Thoughts and prayers!
Yes, as we all know, infants should be fed a steady diet of raw milk and steak. All the better if the steak is from road kill. And eat it directly from a toilet seat. Germs can only hurt you if you're afraid of them!
The problem is not new. Just that the stuff is more expensive than just steaming vegetables and meats then put them through the blender, and in some developing countries, for poor families it's rice or wheat gruel.
I think it is not only issue with the price but also with the time to prepare it. They do not survive using one salary to have more time to care of the children. Or lets say two salaries but 1/2 work time both.
Actually, there is no place on earth nowadays to have possibility like that, with one salary.
And people are wondering why young generations do not make children.
Gen Silent with one salary had 5 boomer children. I would love to have one salary and 2.5 children working half time
In other news, the definition of ultraprocessed remains all over the fucking place with little consistency and rooting in logic. It's a term that grew out of marketing and ended up being defined by non-scientists/non-doctors.
raw oats in a bag: unprocessed
rolled oats: processed
rolled oats spun in a blender, instant oatmeal: ultra processed
Cookies made from unprocessed ingredients: minimally processed put them in a bag and sell them on a shelf: ultra-processed
Same nutritional value. Doesn't require additives.
Raw Milk: unprocessed Fresh, pasteurized milk : "minimally processed"
Brown Sugar: unprocessed white sugar: processed
white sugar and pasteurized milk mixed together: processed
Freeze that mixture? Ultra processed.
Again, same nutritional value.
Going from raw to pasteurized, has a substantial change in nutrition, yet, it's minimally processed.
We need, as a society, for scientists and doctors to agree on processing and food values, not on the general public's consensus. Certainly, some foods lose their value or are handled differently by the body. Some things, like nitrates, earn an easy bad-for-you label.
As is stands now, home made cookies are seen as more healthy, than if put them in a bag and sell them. We need to trigger on nutrition loss, and added ingredients, not if wheat was put through a blender or berries were frozen unless it has a meaningful loss on actual health.
Really interesting. I often thought "what is actually so bad about processed food?" because in the end everything we eat is just chemicals in different mixtures, so as a nerd it makes me skeptical of most food health advice. There doesn't seem to be an easily explainable understandable theory or scientific model model behind this.
I could have sworn I read "hyperpalatable food" in the blurb but I can't find it now. Maybe I dreamed it lol. But that would be a good objective issue with ultraprocessed food, triggering the brain's reward system and encouraging excessive eating. The ability to split ingredients into separate parts and then recombine them to be too palatable, and/or not balanced enough in the sense that e.g. fibers or proteins or vitamins that would naturally occur in raw food.
I read the hyper-palatable thing when it came out. We can actually jam on it. To my memory, there are a couple of foods that really trigger that concept, one of them being Doritos. The other being Diet Coke.
The regular red bag of Doritos, it's not hard to sit down and eat an entire bag.
Getting used to Diet Coke even if you exclude the caffeine by getting it from other sources, still drinking a Diet Coke or two will trigger you to drink a lot more Diet Coke.
But I'd say the absolute vast majority of UPF is less palatable than other food. That pack of donuts with the waxy chocolate and they've done everything possible to extend shelf life on it. Doesn't taste as good as fresh donuts. (assuming you can even find fresh donuts anymore.)
All those snack cakes and shelf stable lunch items are unpleasant when compared with anything made fresh.
And the stuff they put on the Doritos, it's not the add-ons that make it good. I took a shot at making Dorito cheese once and was wildly successful. Try out some yellow cheddar and turn it into powder. Add garlic powder, onion powder, Salt, yeast flakes, except for the coloring being a little blonder than it should be. It's a dead ringer for Doritos.
I don't think that UPF foods that are borderline addictive are addictive because of the UPF. I think they're addictive in spite of it.
As of 2024, research into the effects of UPFs is rapidly evolving.... The specific mechanism of the effects was not clear.
This processed / nova label basically seems to be a crude scientific cudgel because we just know too little about the health effects of nutrition.
It basically bundles the influence of the food industry on food. Taken by the dark powers, tortured and mutilated. A ruined and terrible form of food lol.
All those snack cakes and shelf stable lunch items are unpleasant when compared with anything made fresh.
I don’t think that UPF foods that are borderline addictive are addictive because of the UPF. I think they’re addictive in spite of it.
I suspect the addictiveness is mostly about the hyperpalatable food. Maybe both a biochemical thing and a intensity thing.
"Hyperpalatable foods can stimulate the release of metabolic, stress, and appetite hormones that play a role in cravings and may interfere with the body's ability to regulate appetite and satiety."
For cigarettes vs vaping for example, nicotine vaporized by cigarettes immediately breaches the blood brain barrier and has an immediate effect. While vaping (non-nicotine salts) has a much slower and smoother and delayed absorption curve, similar to nicotine patches. And what makes cigarettes much more addictive is the intermediateness of the reward.
So just the optimization process to make some "donuts with the " palatable at all while minimizing cost involves so much tweaking that it sort of ends up optimized to fuel the biochemical and intensity addictiveness response. Basically the expected or predictable outcome of capitalism is cheap food sold at premium with addictive properties.
So while fresh made quality food is more tasty, this doesn't matter for the addictiveness. Of course I'm just speculating here.
I'd love to know if replacing sugars and salt partially artificial sweeteners or salt replacements has any real health benefits in this context. And I definitely want to make some Doritos air-fried soybeans lol
I think is true that the idea of ultraprocessed food is not totally well defined, but I think there are some clues that help to at least identify the most important or more ultraprocessed ones. I think one tip is: industrial manufactured ingredients that can't be find in a regular home would potentially fall in the ultraprocessed category, so from your list:
rolled oats spun in a blender, instant oatmeal: is processed not ultraprocessed, unless the instant oatmeal it comes with ultraprocessed ingredients.
Cookies made from unprocessed ingredients, put them in a bag and sell them on a shelf: processed. The problem here is a lot of cookies that say that they use unprocessed ingredients is just not true, but if we are talking about home made cookies with basic unprocessed ingredients they would fall as just processed.
*Raw Milk: unprocessed Fresh, pasteurized milk : "minimally processed"
Brown Sugar: unprocessed white sugar: processed
white sugar and pasteurized milk mixed together: processed
Freeze that mixture? Ultra processed.* Not true, the fact of freezing doesn't make it ultraprocessed.
I think the corporations are also trying to make this distinction more confusing to make the idea of ultraprocessed food les guilty, because if everything it may be ultraprocessed then none it is.
Not true, the fact of freezing doesn’t make it ultraprocessed.
Therein lies the rub; in some lists, it doesn't, in other lists, it does. Your list is handled in what you wrote here, it's not the same as everyone's list.
The concept that it's hyper bad for them to throw cellulose in with grated parm is insane. It's just some fiber to keep it from turning into brick. Or that any food preservative is detrimental, we're already wasting 40% of our food.
The entire processed fad has gone so far from reality that it holds no concrete meaning to actual health
That dough stabilizer in that bread that makes it stay soft instead of the starch crystallizing and turning it to trash in 3 days, can you point to an actual fact of how it hurts you?
There are plenty of things on the UP list that are allowed the world over. The whole thing is performance art at this point.
I used to really piss hippies by telling them that anything food put in a food processor is processed food. This includes your homemade hummus & raw smoothies.
It's so hard to find foods that are convenient and not ultra processed. I don't mean you can't find them in the grocery store. They're there, but just the actual integration of prepping and cooking those foods day to day is problematic. We do our best though.
Oh man, my brain left out “foods” in the title. Read it as “4 out of 5 toddlers are ultra processed”. This thread turned out WAY different than I was expecting.
The western world needs to reintroduce "home economics" back into the curriculum, nobody knows how to cook their own food anymore, managing a kitchen is half of it not just putting stuff onto a stove.
My Boomer mom microwaves water to make tea... with the teabag in it.
It's a wonder I survived to become the handsome and successful person I am.
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.
Again, I am glad I never procreated.
I'm glad I wasn't born in burgerland.
Same. In hindsight, my parents raising me on McDonald's was a terrible parenting choice.
Yes it was.
I'm sure they thought it wasn't a big deal because I've been athletic my whole life, but I had a serious weight problem as an adult and lost 150 pounds. Probably wouldn't have ended up that way if I didn't have a taste for fast food.
I found this creator to do an excellent job breaking down this topic if anyone is interested in more information.
by Kiana Docherty "Baby Food Is TERRIFYING Now"
A bit of a clickbaity title, but the content is interesting.
most baby food instore is either gerber or similar foods, or those fruit/veggie pouches, and baby junk food.
I just read the exact same headline about prison food. Assuming that's because 80% of food in Magastan is ultra-processed, I guess we're gonna get the same headline for every possible institution now over the coming days.
For prisons, my fellow Americans immorally view prisoners as less than human and not deserving of the basic elements of life -- poll a large swath of everyday Americans and I'm convinced 6+/10 will agree that prisons should serve intentionally unpleasant and non nutritious food as part of the punishment process. It's sad.
I think that's a global trend of humanity falling for populists, and morally back into the stone age (although I might be doing prehistoric humans injustice here). I really believe in the saying (paraphrasing because I don't recall the exact wording) that if you want to assess the degree of civilization in a society, you should look how it treats its prison inmates.
Regarding the "half that fail to meet one or more UN nutrition standards": I'd say that's the least of the problems here unless a child never gets anything else and is limited to one brand of food. Most food people eat have something missing - that's why people don't eat the same thing every day unless they have no other choice or have an eating disorder.
The high levels of sugar and sodium are by far more dangerous, because that is what will influence your taste for the rest of your life.
Sacre bleu!
Why feed your children that shit.
since when is raw meat considered ultra processed?
Maybe it depends on what processes call under "processed"? Like I could see a world where the way cows are treated counts as being processed (being pumped full of drugs and such)
"Ultra processed" is frankly a meaningless label in health discussions.
Raw milk is not healthier than "ultra processed" (i.e. pasteurised) milk for example. Ultra processed baby food is and should be the norm over raw, untreated baby food.
That's the problem though, there is no fixed definition for "Ultra processed foods" that doesn't include healthy foods. Its a label people slap onto unhealthy foods and then retroactively attempt to categorise.
Salami is not raw meat.
I think they were saying it's dumb for raw meat to be in the same category as salami.
also you wouldnt feed a baby raw meat anyways.
Any other country is just a copy of the usa with a 'slightly worse', or ' slightly better' modifier.
/s
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.
You also need the equipment at hand. I have one friend that grew up without a refrigerator.
For myself, I went through a couple months when I was taking care of a partner after surgery, working full time, and handling pet care. You better believe we relied on ready-made meals and paper plates during those months.
Even when I had the spoons to cook, there was no guarantee I'd be able to focus on anything complicated without interruption. Pasta and steamed vegetables were about my limit: things that could be abandoned while taking care of more pressing needs (like changing bandages or cleaning up a mess that comes with having an elderly dog).
Even if this is true, toddlers actually need to eat many times a day. My kid eats extremely clean at home, but if I ever want to leave the house, it's tough to feed them cleanly without access to a refrigerator and stove. You can make your baby a puree from whole foods, but you've got a very short window to eat it once it's out of the fridge.
Tough enough for me that it made me just stay home and isolate which in fact was worse for me and the toddler than just accepting that we were going to bring a store bought, shelf stable container of pureed green beans with us to be able to leave the house.
It gets easier when your kid has enough teeth to trust them to chew an almond, but not by much. People are just doing their best.
What's it feel like to be this out of touch?
thanks for using Leebra!
go to feed...
Let me see if I can translate this article to a less trendy version:
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