Most health associations have focused on ultra-processed foods and adult eating habits, but taste preferences are established in childhood.
Although many baby and toddler foods contain few or no additives, snacks, such as puffed grains and extruded products made primarily from cornflour, are often ultra-processed and have replaced more nutritious snacks, such as fresh fruit or a simple sandwich.
Dr Sally Mackay, Registered Nutritionist and Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland, said that one of the biggest changes was that many foods are now sold in pouches.
She highlighted research by Otago University, which found that infant food pouches were similar in energy and two key nutrients (iron, vitamin B12) to foods in other packaging forms, but were higher in total sugars.
At the same time, she mentioned rising concerns about diets being low in iron, particularly if babies have a lot of commercial foods, especially pouches.
In her study, Nutritional Aspects of Commercially Available Complementary Foods in New Zealand Supermarkets, she found that the claims can often be misleading. For example, a product can be free of preservatives, colours, etc., and made with real fruit, but the fruit could be a sticky fruit paste with flour as the main ingredient.
Some product names can also be misleading. One would expect the first ingredient to be present in the highest amount, but her research found this was not so in more than half of savoury meals, such as lamb and vegetable casserole, which contained only ten percent beef, and vegetables are the main ingredient. Or showcasing an image of fruit on the package, when the product contains very little fruit.
Given the rise in pouch foods and sweetened pureed fruit and vegetables, children with commercial foods in their diet have limited exposure to bitter flavours, which can shape their future preferences, particularly a dislike of bitter-tasting vegetables.
The increase in pouches has also led to softer-textured foods becoming very common. The NZ Healthy Eating Guidelines for Babies and Toddlers has acknowledged that over-reliance on commercial baby foods may reduce the variety of flavours and textures in a baby's diet.
It has been recommended to progress from soft foods at six months to mainly eating family foods by one year (being mindful of choking hazards), so a proliferation of soft foods does not help.
Dr Mackay's advice to manufacturers was to ensure there is a range of foods with chunkier textures to assist in feeding skills development wherever possible. She added that FSANZ has been exploring possible regulations on the composition of baby foods, texture, packaging, and claims, and hoped that, if approved, these regulations would encourage healthier eating.
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