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Fruits and vegetables (F&V) are often featured in names of commercial baby foods (CBFs). We aimed to survey all available CBFs in the UK market with F&V included in the food name in order to describe the amount and types of F&V used in CBF and their contribution to total sugar content. Food labels were used to identify F&V and total sugar content. Fruits were more common than vegetables in names of the 329 CBFs identified. The six most common F&V in the names were all relatively sweet: apple, banana, tomato, mango, carrot and sweet potato. The percentage of F&V in the foods ranged from a median of 94% for sweet-spoonable to 13% for dry-savoury products. Fruit content of sweet foods (n = 177) was higher than vegetable content of savoury foods (n = 152) with a median (IQR) of 64.0 g/100 g (33.0-100.0) vs. 46.0 g/100 g (33-56.7). Fruit juice was added to 18% of products. The proportion of F&V in CBF correlated significantly with sugar content for all the food types except dry-savoury food (sweet-spoonable r = 0.24, P = 0.006; savoury-spoonable r = 0.65, P < 0.001; sweet-dry r = 0.81, P < 0.001; savoury-dry r = 0.51, P = 0.06) and explained up to two-thirds of the variation in sugar content. The F&V content of CBFs mainly consists of fruits and relatively sweet vegetables which are unlikely to encourage preferences for bitter-tasting vegetables or other non-sweet foods. F&V contribute significantly to the total sugar content, particularly of savoury foods., (© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Objective: To assess how the baby food market in the UK has changed between 2013 and 2019.Setting: United Kingdom.Design: A cross-sectional survey of all infant food products available to buy in the UK online and in-store collected in 2019. Nutritional content and product descriptions were recorded and compared with an existing 2013 database.Main Outcome Measures: Change in the proportion of products marketed to infants aged 4 months, proportion classified as sweet versus savoury, spoonable versus dry (snacks) average sugar content.Results: Fewer products were described as suitable for infants aged 4 months in 2019 (201, 23%) compared with 2013 (178, 43%; p<0.001), while the proportion for children in the 6-7-month age range increased (2013: 135, 33%; 2019: 369, 43%; p=0.001). The proportion of sweet and savoury products was unchanged; sweet spoonable products showed a small but significant decrease in sugar content (6%) between 2013 and 2019, but savoury spoonable products showed a 16% increase. Sweet snacks remained very sweet (~20 g/100 g median sugar at both time points). In the 2019 dataset, concentrated juice was added to 29% (n=253) of products and 18% (n=80) 'savoury' products comprised more than 50% sweet vegetables or fruit. The number and proportion of snacks increased markedly in 2019 (185, 21%) compared with 2013 (42, 10%; p=0.001) while the proportion of wet spoonable foods decreased (2013: 326, 79%; 2019: 611, 71%; p=0.001).Conclusions: Fewer foods are now marketed to infants aged 4 months, but there has been no overall reduction in the sweetness of products and the increase in snack foods and the sweetness of savoury foods is a concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]