Baby Brain, Ross on Wye (2025)

12/06/2025

New research out about perceptions of baby food 🍏 🥕 👶

💻Research spotlight: Estimating the Impact on Parents’ Infant Feeding Choices of Increasing Age Guidance and Adding Sugar Warning Labels to Commercial Infant Foods: A Mixed-Methods Study by Rana Conway and colleagues at UCL

Key findings:

When participants were asked to imagine they were buying for a 5 month old baby, similar numbers of participants selected products labelled ‘6 months+’ as they did for ‘4 months+

Participants thought that the age labels on products and their wide availability meant they were recommended, and felt they were misleading

Most participants were aware of guidance to start complementary feeding at around 6 months, less than half followed this guidance with their own babies

Only 15% of participants knew that babies under the age of 1 do not need snacks

Melty textures and utility for self-feeding made interviewees feel that snacks were suitable for young babies, and providing infants under 12 months with multiple daily snacks was the norm

Around 30% fewer participants chose commercial baby food desserts containing sugar warning labels

These findings highlight how parents’ misplaced trust in the baby food industry and unchecked misleading marketing is leading them to choose commercial baby food products which are not age appropriate and which are high in free sugars.

But importantly, it also shows that there are acceptable solutions which could change behaviours for the better, across socio-economic groups:

Ensuring minimum age guidance of 6 months + on commercial baby foods and 12 months + on commercial baby snacks could shift feeding behaviours toward closer alignment with government feeding advice.

Adding front of pack sugar warning labels and removing “contains natural sugar” could support a reduction in sugar intake.

To coincide with the BBC Panorama documentary ‘The Truth on Baby Food Pouches’ which aired on April 28th, we wrote a briefing on commercial baby and toddler foods. It outlines our policy asks of Government, which are in line with the recommendations of this research.

See links in our bio for more

11/12/2023

A helpful reminder that it doesn’t matter which first stage formula you buy!

There’s an article online at the moment that is promoting the idea of the ‘best’ formula milk for your baby. It’s basically an advertising piece and includes some of the most expensive formulas suggesting they are better for your baby.

I’m not going to link to it (and am 😵‍💫 it’s been published under advertising laws) but wanted to remind anyone who is worried that they can’t afford the ‘best’ formula for their baby or is feeling pressure to afford it, that there’s simply no evidence that more expensive milks are better for your baby.

All infant formulas suitable from 0 - 12 months are nutritionally equivalent and there’s no evidence that any provide better nutrition or outcomes compared to the others. They are all regulated to have very similar ingredients and the ones on sale for £9 (or whatever the lowest price is this week) will support your baby in the same way that the ones double the price will.

When you look at the ingredients list of different priced formulas they are very similar. The companies openly admit in published research to targeting different worries in their advertising of their products ie making parents think that some milks are more scientific and developed than others even though they know that this isn’t true.

Please buy whatever milk suits your budget, is most most easily available or even suits your kitchen colour scheme - which is more relevant than any advertising claims are!

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