The Ulula team were struck at the recent Organic and Natural Products exhibition at Olympia by the increasing number of baby food manufacturers that are offering their products in those little plastic pouches. I’m sure you’ve seen them, they’re a small wallet size plastic pouch with a tube that the baby sucks the food out from. And did I mention that they’re made of plastic? Plastic that can’t be recycled and takes hundreds of years to decompose? Yuck!
It seems from my discussions with prominent members of the baby food trade that even more manufacturers are developing products that use plastic pouches as a ‘delivery system’. I was very pleased to have received firm reassurances from Holle that they do not intend to introduce them – now or in the future.
I have several concerns about these pouches. Firstly, I think I may already have mentioned that they are made of plastic. Plastic may be ‘modern’ but it is a hideously environmentally unfriendly petrochemical based material whose use should be minimised.
Baby food in glass jars may be ‘old fashioned’ but both the metal lids and the glass jars themselves can be readily recycled. Holle tells me that they would like to sterilise and reuse their jars (like milk bottles) but are prevented from doing so by strict regulations governing hygiene and baby food packaging.
My second major concern with these baby food pouches concerns the messages that they give to our children about food. When your little one wants a quick snack what do you do with these things? Twist off the cap, stick it in their mouth and let them suck away while you do something else. Notice anything missing in this ‘delivery system’? How about the rich mother/father and baby interaction that goes on when a parent feeds a baby? What a baby gains from that time together is invaluable.
It will also be interesting, in a terribly sad way, to see the impact of plastic pouches on the development of eating skills such as chewing and hand to mouth co-ordinaton.
And of course, these awful pouches are completely opaque – children never see the food they are eating. Aren’t modern children already so poorly ‘educated’ about food that large percentages of school starters don’t know where staples such as milk, bread and apples come from? These pouches seem to be taking this ignorance to the next level – who needs to know what an apple looks like when you can just suck it out of a plastic pouch with funny pictures on the front?
My disgust for these pouches is doubled when I see organic baby food being sold in them. It seems so contrary to the organic ethos of caring for both the environment and the person. Thank goodness some manufacturers, such as Holle, are resisting this shortsighted trend.
What do you think about this growing tendency to package baby food in plastic pouches? Do you give your baby food from these pouches, and what are the advantages for you? Do get in touch.
Mini Basket
