The Wattie’s baby food range is designed to provide a variety of age appropriate ingredients, flavours and textures. The range introduces a wide variety of complementary foods, including fruits, vegetables, meat, milk and cereals providing a range of nutrients.
Wattie’s fruit based baby food products have a natural sweetness because they contain fruit ingredients.
Looking at the nutrition information panel:
The ‘sugars’ value in a nutrition information panel represents all the sugars found in the product, either through naturally occurring sugars found in some ingredients such as fruit or through added sucrose or other refined sugars. The sugars represented in most of Wattie’s baby food labels are from naturally occurring sugars mainly from fruit, vegetable and milk ingredients. The only exception in the Wattie’s baby food range is custards, which contain a small amount of sucrose (table sugar) for taste. The sugars value in our nutrition information panel for custards represents the total sugars which is made up of naturally occurring sugars in milk and the small amount of sucrose (table sugar) added. Custards can be used as a dessert or occasional treat.
Dietary Guidelines:
Fruit has nutritional benefits and is an important food group in an infant’s diet. The NZ Ministry of Health Food and Nutrition Guidelines for Healthy Infants and Toddlers (Aged 0-2) include recommendations and guidance on the introduction of a variety of texturally appropriate complementary food from the four food groups. Cooked and puréed fruit such as apple and pear or puréed soft fruit such as mango and banana can be introduced as first foods (from around 6 months) to provide a range of nutrients and flavours.
Fruit Ingredients:
Wattie’s baby food contains a variety of fruit ingredients and the level of naturally occurring sugars varies depending on the recipe. Some examples are:
| Wattie’s Pear & Banana (110g jar) | 11.9g/100g |
| Wattie’s Apple, Pear & Berries (120g pouch) | 11.1g/100g |
In comparison, the sugar levels* of some common fruits are:
| Apple (Royal Gala, unpeeled raw) | 11.1g/100g |
| Banana (Cavendish, peeled, raw) | 12.8g/100g |
| Pear (Pear, brown, unpeeled, raw) | 10.4g/100g |
* NUTTAB 2010 – Australian Food Composition Tables: Food Standards Australia New Zealand, Canberra
When your little one starts solids, introducing a variety of foods including fruits to your baby’s diet, is important to provide them with a range of nutrients and opportunities to explore new flavours and textures.
If you are after more information around reading an infant food label see here.
