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Why is mashed potatoes in sachets harmful for children: two reasons
This is, of course, convenient: the baby is hungry, sucked a portion of food straight from a soft package, like astronauts from a tube, and you can walk further. But you shouldn’t get carried away with this type of food.
Only mothers will understand what happiness it is when you don’t have to carry a whole bag of different food with you in case your baby gets hungry. And look for a kid-friendly cafe where you can feed your child not a cheeseburger and pizza, but something more appropriate, too. And all thanks to the purée bags.
They have a lot of advantages: you don’t need a spoon to eat it, you just need to squeeze it into your mouth and swallow it. The child is guaranteed not to get dirty, because it is very difficult to spill something from a tube-bag. Children like such purees very much, which is also important. And their composition seems very useful – at least at first glance.
But such a miracle food has its drawbacks. Children’s nutritionist Edwina Kennedy named at least three.
Minus 1: too much sugar
Even if no additional sugar is added to the puree, it is still there – in its simplest form, which is easily absorbed into the blood. The thing is that when processing fruits in mashed potatoes, fiber is destroyed, but sugar remains.
Some of the packaged purees end up with almost 10 grams of sugar. Such a portion can only be allowed to be eaten by a child from four years of age and older, but not by a baby. An excess of sugar does not lead to anything good: it spoils teeth, causes weight gain in excess of the norm, and in the long term leads to diabetes.
The amount of sugar children can eat per day depends on their age. For children from four to six years old, it should be limited to a maximum of 19 grams per day. Children from seven to ten years old can eat no more than 24 grams, and from eleven and older – no more than 30 grams. Popular baby treats contain killer amounts of sugar: one can of cola (35 grams of sugar) or one Mars bar (33 grams) already contains more than the maximum amount of sugar a child can eat in a day. And having eaten a plate of sweet cereals (24 grams of sugar) for breakfast, children already exhaust their daily limit without even leaving the house.
Minus 2: does not teach to vegetables
Pureed and natural vegetables are two big differences. The taste of vegetables in mashed potatoes is most often masked by fruit sweetness, so the baby will not feel the true taste. But his taste preferences will develop in the direction of craving for sweets.
The texture, smell, even tactile impressions of real vegetables will be completely different from puree. Therefore, a child may not even recognize an ordinary beet or carrot when he sees it in its original form. And why should he love them?
Experts recommend using fewer baby food bags and jars, as convenient as it is for busy parents, and balancing sweet, sour, and bitter tastes when you prepare meals yourself.
Minus 3: baby doesn’t learn to chew
It’s all about the consistency of the sachet food. You don’t have to chew it, you just need to swallow it. It’s so easy to eat too much without any effort. Of course, who wants to chew carrots themselves, if you can get them in an already chopped form. As a result, the forums where mothers communicate are filled with questions about how to teach a child to chew at least something that is not passed through a blender. Moreover, the nutritionist warns that the child may regress: he will stop chewing, even if he has already learned how to do it.
Chewing problems also have long-term unpleasant prospects. If milk teeth do not fulfill their function, that is, do not grind food, they may fall out prematurely. And this can already lead to various pathologies of a dental nature.
“Children all over the world are literally forced to eat high-carbohydrate foods. Even in the dairy kitchen, they serve out packaged juices, which are, in fact, a solution of sugar in water. You have to understand: sugar effects can be equated to substances that cause strong physical and mental dependence.
But if parents want to purposefully wean their child from sugar addiction, this is quite possible. It is necessary to give a tasty alternative, to demonstrate the correct eating behavior yourself. “