Research eases parent guilt over baby food

Home-cooked meals are not always better than commercially available baby foods, UK research has found.

Home-cooked meals are generally cheaper — unless organic ingredients are used — but they usually exceed energy density and dietary fat recommendations, according to research published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

The researchers wanted to assess how well homemade and commercially available ready-made meals designed for infants and young children met age-specific national dietary recommendations.

They compared the nutrient content, price and food group variety of 278 ready-made savoury meals, 174 of which were organic, and 408 home-cooked meals, made using recipes from 55 bestselling cookbooks designed for the infants and young children.

16% of the home-cooked meals were poultry based compared with 27% of the ready-made meals; around one in five (19%) were seafood based vs 7% of the ready-made meals; a similar proportion (21%) were meat based compared with 35% of the commercial products; and almost half (44%) were vegetable based compared with around a third (31%) of the ready-made meals.

Home-cooked meals included a greater variety of vegetables (33) than ready-made meals (22), but commercial products contained a greater vegetable variety per meal, averaging three compared with two for home-cooked recipes.

Home-cooked meals also provided 26% more energy and 44% more protein and total fat, including saturated fat, than commercial products.

And while almost two-thirds (65%) of commercial products met dietary recommendations on energy density, only just over a third of home-cooked meals did so, and over half (52%) exceeded the maximum range.

But home-cooked meals were around half the price of commercially available ready-made meals: £0.33/100 g compared with £0.68/100 g.