A new report released today (8th June) exposes how ultra-processed foods (UPF) exist across all product categories on the baby food aisle, and among many foods marketed specifically at pre-school children. UPF are widely consumed, from the first weeks and months of life, raising serious concerns about infant and young child health.
These findings have been published by First Steps Nutrition Trust in the report ‘Ultra-processed foods (UPF) in the diets of infants and young children in the UK: What they are, how they harm health, and what needs to be done to reduce intakes’. This report sets out how UPF-rich diets from infancy are likely to be contributing to obesity and other negative health outcomes.
Key findings in the report include:
- All commercial milk formulas are ultra-processed, and a high proportion of baby ‘finger foods’ (snacks) and baby cereals.
- The extent of ultra-processing is underestimated due to the need to review product labels for ingredients indicative of ultra-processing.
- By two to five years of age, UPFs account for nearly two thirds (61%) of the total mean energy intake of UK children – a higher proportion than their peers in the United States and Australia.
- A large and growing body of evidence now consistently links UPF-rich diets to a range of negative health outcomes – including obesity - from infancy through to adulthood.
- The mechanisms linking UPF-rich diets to a range of negative health outcomes include that; UPFs are typically high in fat, salt and sugar, promote overeating, disrupt developing taste preferences early in life, displace minimally and unprocessed foods, encourage unnecessary snacking, interfere with the healthy development of the gut microbiota, and have harmful effects due to contain certain additives and contaminants with known harmful effects.
- Aggressive and misleading marketing by the baby food industry is a key driver of high consumption levels.
- Despite ample evidence of the health and environmental harms of high levels of UPF consumption, the UK currently lacks a clear position on UPF; added to which efforts to reduce population-level consumption of high fat, salt, sugar foods inadvertently promote consumption of UPF.
- In contrast, at least 10 countries around the world have recently updated their national dietary guidance to try to reduce UPF consumption. Guidance from Brazil, Mexico, Israel and France includes specific recommendations to reduce UPF consumption among young children.
Dr Vicky Sibson, Director of First Steps Nutrition Trust, said:
“It is now commonplace that many babies and young children in the UK are being fed large amounts of ultra-processed foods from the start of their lives. There is robust evidence that this will be harmful to their health in the short and long term, including promoting excess weight gain. 2 The Government needs to do more to enable parents and carers to feed their children diets which support healthy growth and development - based on real foods - not dominated by commercial products marketed as ‘good’ choices. A first step would be to explicitly address the extent to which food is processed in public health recommendations. At the same time action to curb inappropriate and misleading marketing by the baby food industry is long overdue. The Government also needs to invest meaningfully in the health visiting service and other facilities and benefits to ensure that all families can get the independent, expert advice, guidance and financial support they may need to feed their children healthy diets”.