Therefore, baby foods are not suitable for babies

WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding until the age of six, and baby food supplements sold in stores should not be recommended to infants under the age of six months.

Good nutrition in infancy and childhood is the key to optimal growth and development, and to later life health, including the prevention of overweight, obesity and diet-related illnesses - quotes Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO Regional Director for Europe, on the organization's website.

The WHO has developed a draft of the nutrient profile of foods that can be recommended to babies aged 6 to 36 months, ie the amount and proportion of nutrients in each food. Based on this, you can determine which dishes are recommended for the age group.

A methodology has also been developed to identify commercially available baby foods and to collect ingredient and other information on labels, packaging and promotions.

This is the method used to collect 7955 food and drink items for infants and toddlers in 516 stores in four cities in the WHO European Region - Budapest, Vienna, Sofia and Haifa in Israel - between November 2017 and January 2018.

A significant proportion, 28 to 60 percent, of the products were sold to babies under six months of age in all four cities. While this is permitted under European Union law, it does not comply with the WHO rules and guidelines in this area, the organization says.

Both of them explicitly state that none of the commercially available complementary foods may be marketed as suitable for infants under six months of age.

In three of the four cities, more than 30 percent of the calories in the product came from sugars. One third of the products were listed as ingredients in sugar, juice or other sweeteners. These added sugars can influence children's taste preferences and increase their liking for sweet foods.

Although sugars are naturally present in fruits and vegetables suitable for feeding to infants and young children, the high proportion of so-called free sugars is a cause for concern. Free sugars are understood to mean monosaccharides (glucose, fructose) and disaccharides (sucrose, i.e., crystalline sugar) that are added to a food or beverage and are naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit juice concentrates.

(Source: marmalade.co.uk; MTI | Image: pixabay.com)