Misleading Marketing Claims on Baby Foods with Ada Lizbeth Garcia, PhD

Katie Ferraro (0s):

Checking in about CPR. Have you taken your infant refresher CPR course yet? Great idea. If you're just starting solid Foods, because there's no higher risk of choking with BLW compared to spoon feeding. But choking is still a very rare, but real risk, and knowing CPR can help save your babies life. So I'm always a stickler that anyone helps feed or watch my babies has to know CPR too. I know you guys all took CPR, but that was like before your baby was born six months ago. It might be time to brush up on your skills. So there's this online CPR course that I take each quarter and I recommend it for anyone else, who's starting solid foods soon. The online CPR course super affordable. It's like less than 50 bucks, but my affiliate discount code Katie 10 will take an additional $10 off that course. So If you head to the site https://bit.ly/onlinecprcourse, you can register the code katie 10, takes the extra $10 off.

Katie Ferraro (49s):

Good luck getting your CPR skills up to snuff. And once again, that website is https://bit.ly/onlinecprcourse And the $10 discount code is Katie 10.

Ada Garcia (59s):

My job as a researcher is, as you mentioned to be generating evidence. So I will not talk directly to the food industry because I really need to keep as much as possible independent and you know, outsider influenced.

Katie Ferraro (1m 13s):

Hey there I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietitian, college nutrition professor, and mom of seven, specializing in baby led weaning, here on the Baby Led Weaning Made Easy Podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. Hello and welcome back. Today is Dr. Ada Garcia. She is a researcher and senior lecturer at Glasgow university in Scotland. And Dr. Garcia's work focuses on commercial baby foods in the United Kingdom.

Katie Ferraro (1m 53s):

And I Don don't want you guys to be like, oh, this is just gonna be an episode where they talk smack about commercial baby food. Then there's a little bit of that, but I wanted to have Dr. Garcia Garcia on because she recently did a study looking at the impact of marketing claims on commercial baby foods. And what really kind of jumped out to me was that in this study, she found that in the United Kingdom, 72% of the snacks being sold to parents had BABY LED Weaning claims on the front of them. Now that's certainly not the situation in the United States. BABY LED Weaning is something that was originated with Jill Rapley in the United Kingdom. It means a little bit different the term Weaning in the UK versus the United States. And we've done lots of content and interviews with Dr.

Katie Ferraro (2m 33s):

Rapley on that here on the podcast. But I was just interested how the marketing of these products differs a little bit in the UK versus the United States. And some of Dr Garcia's findings are really very interesting. She's actually been in this field for about 13 years. Her own twins, which is why she got interested in this just turned 13 she said. So, she's sharing a little bit in the interview about the history of this research and kind of why she's been doing it, and what's been changing, and what doesn't change. And, why when parents go to the store, and they see these foods and they think it, it says, oh, great for little hands and good for growth and fine motor skill development. And, why there's absolutely no evidence to support any of those Claims. And so the intent of the episode is not to bash commercial baby foods.

Katie Ferraro (3m 15s):

I know that on occasion for convenience, for if you're in a pinch, you don't feel like cooking. You may be relying on commercial baby foods, but I think it's very important that we understand the marketing that goes into making you choose one product over another. And why oftentimes see there's a lot in food marketing. What you see is not really what you get. So with no further ado, I want to welcome Dr. Ada Garcia talking about Misleading marketing claims on baby foods. Here she is.

Ada Garcia (3m 47s):

Hi Katie, how are you?

Katie Ferraro (3m 48s):

I'm so good. I'm really excited to chat about your findings about like Misleading Claims on baby foods in the UK. And we can chat a little about how that compares to things in the us. But before we get into that, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and the type of work that you do?

Ada Garcia (4m 2s):

Yeah, sure. I am a nutritionist. I come originally from Guatemala in Central America, but I've been in the, in the UK for over 15 years and in Europe for about 20 years. I work as a researcher. I am an academic at university of Glasgow and my research focuses on infancy and childhood diets. I work both in affluent and less affluent context. So my whole idea is to generate evidence that informs programs, that informs recommendations. And I have done some work in the area of commercial baby foods here in the UK, thinking about the quality of commercial baby foods and recently about the extensive use of claims in commercial baby foods.

Katie Ferraro (4m 49s):

And I know we were chatting before the episode today, and you were saying that you are a mom of twins. They just turned 13, boy girl twins. I'm also a twin mom. So it's always nice to connect about raising multiples, but you had mentioned that you actually kind of got your start or your interest in commercial baby food as a result of them. So do you mind sharing any experiences about feeding your twins and how that might have informed your work today?

Ada Garcia (5m 12s):

Yes. Yes. Before I, I started working in this area. I wasn't really interested in baby food. I was doing more dietary fiber and other type of research with adults. But then I had the babies and I was traveling when they were around seven months of age or eight. We were going up to one of the islands here in the Hebrides in Scotland. And I didn't have homemade food with me because I ran out of it. So I went to the canteen or the cafeteria in the ferry and I got ... And I tried to give it to the babies and they will just not take it. They were absolutely in denial.

Ada Garcia (5m 52s):

And then I, I decided, okay, so I'm gonna give it a go and I'm going to try this, how it tastes. And I just then understood why they didn't like it. It was just a mix of different fruit and veggie, and it had a little bit of texture as well with beets and pieces. And it just didn't taste at all of anything that I would eat. And after that, I thought, well, this is interesting. What is in here? What, what ingredients are they using? How nutritious is this? You know, what type of flavors do they have? And that's how I came with this first idea of exploring the baby food market and trying to understand what the ingredients are and what the nutritional composition of this baby foods space, or we that's, that's the whole idea how it started.

Ada Garcia (6m 39s):

And, and after that, I, I just realized that it wasn't something that I, I, as, as a nutritionist and as a mom wanted to give to my children, because I just didn't like the flavors and textures.

Katie Ferraro (6m 51s):

One of the reasons why I originally contacted you is because I was interested in your most recent study, the study that is about the extensive use of unpack promotional claims on commercial baby foods in the UK. But then in talking to you, you told me that your first study was actually in 2013, we were kind of talking about the industry reaction to when you, you know, do an expose on, you know, what's in these commercial baby foods, et cetera. Could you share a little bit about that first study in 2013, how you kind of got settled formally working in commercial baby food from a research standpoint?

Ada Garcia (7m 22s):

Yes, yes. So we did a survey. Well, the format of our research is basically exploring all the baby foods that available in the, in the UK market. We go and visit supermarkets that and create a very comprehensive list of old ingredients, the nutritional composition as reported in the, in the foods. And the very first time I was quite interested on looking at the nutrient content, but also each of these baby foods has an age recommendation here in the UK. And I found out that it was starting from four months, which is going against the one health organization recommendations to prolong breastfeeding until six months of age.

Ada Garcia (8m 5s):

So that was the very first as you call it, expose that we did about the, the marketing and, and the age of recommendation and the, the way that these foods are then not promoting a lot, not supporting breastfeeding up to six months of exclusive breastfeeding and confusing parents about the age of introduction, which we know is around six months.

Katie Ferraro (8m 27s):

And that's a huge problem here in the US as well. We see that all the time with the recommendations for four months. And parents are like, but wait, you're telling me you should wait till six months. But of course, from a manufacturer standpoint, If you can expand the net of parents that you can capture to possibly purchase your product and confuse them into thinking either it's safe to offer these foods, which we know it's not, or it's nutritionally necessary, which we know it's not, it does end up being very confusing to parents. And that's definitely still a practice in the United States. Is it still the same in the UK?

Ada Garcia (8m 57s):

Yes, it is. But things have moved. So there are, we conducted a follow up survey back in 2017 to see how much the market has changed and to report whether there have been any changes. And we found that there are less products promoted for four months, so things are moving forward, but there are still products that are same, four is okay. And yeah, there is, there is a battle, but I think step by step, there has been more and more research being done just by myself, by other groups that are reporting the same issues. And we are trying to raise awareness that there is a need to change regulations to make it mandatory.

Ada Garcia (9m 38s):

So that there are no real problems with the understanding of the regulations by the baby food industry.

Katie Ferraro (9m 45s):

And I know that your more recent study is about the marketing and the use of these promotional Claims on commercial baby foods in the UK. Could you share a little bit about what your study was about and what you found regarding marketing these products with use of health claims?

Ada Garcia (10m 1s):

Yes. So what we did was, again, a survey. So we went and look at all the foods that were available in 2020. So that was during the lockdown. So the limitation was that we had to look at this through the internet. So we look at seven major supermarkets in the UK, and, but had to be two other stores that don't sell products online. And we also look at the products that were sold by Amazon. So that was, we look at all the major supermarkets in the UK and recorded every single information that was related to use of promotional claims, marketing claims.

Ada Garcia (10m 43s):

And we also checked that whether these were the type of foods that were being sold. So basically we have two major groups. One is dry foods, which includes snacks, and rusks, and biscuits, cakes, all dry type products. And then we also had wet. So these are spoonable ready meals that just spread to be given or in pouches, in jars. And with all information on the claims, we had to find a way to present all of these amount of information. And we decided to organize by themes and following some of their recommendations and promotion of claims that are not substantiated by evidence.

Ada Garcia (11m 29s):

That is a whole document that WHO the World Health Organization has already proposed to try and control the use of claims. So we use that as a background to try and classify all the claims that we found, and we divided them into themes, such as health claims. So those are for example, that a food is good for development of brain or nerve tissue, or good for, for bone health, that sort of claim that is related to health. Then we also had nutrient claims, such as contains omega3, or is high in calcium that sort of nutrient very specific nutrient claim. We also had composition claims such as organic, a hundred percent organic, no added additives, no added colors, no artificial ingredients.

Ada Garcia (12m 18s):

And then the larger group was to so called marketing claims. And that was, there were so many different things in there. And one of the things that we found within this marketing claims is ideals on feeding and lifestyle quality of the foods, texture paste, and within the feeding style, we found Baby Led Weaning. So as one of the teams that was coming up in the classification that we made.

Katie Ferraro (12m 46s):

And that really caught my eye, because I know the results of your study included that Baby Led Weaning claims were found on 72% of snacks. And then there was a significantly higher number of BLW claims on snacks compared to other product types, which is just ironic. If you think about, you know, the context of Baby Led Weaning, not offering your baby packaged and processed snack foods. So I think it's so interesting in the United Kingdom that they're using that as a marketing claim, because you definitely do not see that yet in the United States, I would say more in the home delivered meal space, you're starting to see a little bit of it, but it grossly misrepresents what a proper Baby Led Weaning food is. But uses, you know, the trending terminology BLW or Baby Led Weaning. So can you talk a little bit more about those Baby Led Weaning related claims and why are they so prevalent on snack foods in the UK?

Ada Garcia (13m 35s):

The thing is that we found in a previous survey that we did in 2020, that the marketing of snacks has just increased. So there is a massive amount of snack type products that are available in the aisles to be purchased. So that has been like the growth of the market has gone from ready made puree foods into this new area of snacking. So I think because of that, then that there is more room for using this sort of claims. So we found phrases or expression such as ideal finger foods, encourages self feeding, perfect for small hands, perfect for little fingers, great for your little hands finger foods, grab, hold, munch.

Ada Garcia (14m 25s):

There are other things such as related to hand and eye coordination. So great for development of hand and eye coordination, which is something that we know Baby Led Weaning approaches, aiming to do, learning how to pick delicious finger foods, self feeding, little fingers, finger biscuits, ideal for small hands to help babies feed themselves. So all of those sort of expressions, we managed to identify in most of the snacks that that were available in, in the market. And that's why we concluded that this is a very important way of promoting or marketing these snacks as to show that they can be used for self feeding and for Baby Led Weaning.

Katie Ferraro (15m 14s):

And of course, the importance about using the term Baby Led Weaning is to make sure from a research standpoint, I always talk about this with Jill Rapley, the pioneer and founding philosopher of Baby Led Weaning is, it is important that people understand what Baby Led Weaning is and what it is not, so that we can study it and research it using the same terminology. And so when people are throwing around terms, like I always laugh in the United States, there's one company that does a home delivered meal product for babies, and they call it Baby Led Weaning food. And it's literally very tiny, like frozen peas and carrots that you would find in the regular grocery store. And they put 'em into a yogurt cup and charge you $6 for the "meal". And that is not a Baby Led Weaning food that is not an appropriate size.

Katie Ferraro (15m 55s):

It does not have the appropriate nuture. And yet if you're just using the term indiscriminately, it denigrates all of the research being done. That's really supporting this as a real and emerging alternative to conventional spoon feeding. So I'm just curious if in the UK where you're researching and looking at these grocery stores, is there any regulations as to what constitutes a "Baby Led Weaning food"? I would assume not, but I just want to check.

Ada Garcia (16m 18s):

No, there are no regulations. So the, the whole marketing and, you know, promotion of infant foods and is, is quite open at the moment. There is no real structure on what can be done, and that is free, you know, space for writing, whatever you you want, if you want to promote these foods in one or another way.

Katie Ferraro (16m 40s):

In what many times is just a packaged and processed, refined grain product that doesn't have. You know, the same nutrition that an intact food would. And I know you also talk a lot about the healthy halo effect, and I'm curious how that plays out in the UK. I know in the United States, we have this over-emphasis on protein and adults overemphasize protein, and it gets this very undeserved health halo. And yet you see it trickling down to baby food where we know most adults get plenty, if not excessive amounts of protein and Babies certainly should not. We should not be prioritizing protein for Babies because of they're still developing kidneys, etc. So are there certain nutrients that kind of get this healthy halo effect in the UK that you've seen from your research?

Ada Garcia (17m 21s):

Yeah. Yeah, there are. So one of the main themes that we see is the use of fruit and veggie as one of the healthy, you know, connotations for a food when probably some of these foods are very high in sugar. So if it has one of five a day and is considered as a, you know, as a proxy of, of a healthy food. So fruit which is one of those is really common. The other one will be no added, or natural or curing sugar as that's another, because there is a, a big issue at the moment here with sugar, and they need to reduce the consumption of free sugar, not just from baby, but from the whole population approach.

Ada Garcia (18m 1s):

So there are a lot of so programs trying to get to reduce the amount of sugar in food chain. So that has been a major emphasis. I have not seen much in protein, but in baby foods, I haven't seen much, but in foods here is a big thing here.

Katie Ferraro (18m 17s):

And the sugar is an issue here as well. I know one of the areas I always again and not laugh, but you go to the grocery store, there's an aisle full of yogurt. There's actual baby foods for one of our major national manufacturers. The name everybody who's listening in the us would know, and they make a baby food yogurt, and it has added sugar in it. And it's like, how is this even legal? We know the guidance is no added sugars for babies until age two and babies can eat real full fat, whole milk, yogurt without added sugar. How are they allowed to market a product that says it's for babies? And if parents, I mean, I don't think they should be getting the nutrition information from major food manufacturers, but If you didn't know any better, you wouldn't realize, gosh, not only is this product more expensive, but it's actually nutritionally inappropriate to be offering to your baby.

Katie Ferraro (18m 59s):

And yet they continue to proliferate on our shells. And it's a multi-billion dollar industry.

Ada Garcia (19m 4s):

Yes, it is a massive problem because there are no proper, so there may be regulations and recommendations, but there is no monitoring and reinforcement of regulations. That is the issue. There are proposals and people know that, you know, these things should not be added here in the UK. You hardly find products, not with added sugar. So it is almost out of fashion. And there is a lot of concerns about what is in baby foods. So they have slowly removed most of the sugars that were before. When I started doing this research, that was one of the very first things that we looked at added sugars. And we found lots of products that were containing like proper, you know, added sugar, but now you hard find them, but has been happening is that they, what is accepted and is not really control is the use of concentrated juice or any sort of puree type of, you know, fruits that is adding extra sweetness to the, to the food.

Ada Garcia (20m 5s):

And that's why this idea of naturally or pureing sugars is something that they have been using because that is again, healthier and is helpful. And, and it is natural. So that natural is a big thing.

Katie Ferraro (20m 18s):

And we see that in the United States as well. A lot of this masking, especially the flavors of bitter vegetables, which is so important for babies to experience those on their own. And we'll have parents who go to the store and they're, you know, mom, my babies drinking a kale smoothie. Like, no, you're not, that's apple sauce with a very small amount of kale. Any of the bitter flavor compounds have been completely masked and bathed in concentrated fruit juice, which, you know, apples in and of themselves are fine. And I can show you how to make them safe for babies, but do all bitter compounds need to be, be hidden. You know, when you're just starting this unfortunate sequence of events where parents get in the habit of "hiding" certain flavors, and then what message is that sending to the child that there's something inherently bad about that.

Katie Ferraro (20m 59s):

And you're kind of perpetuating all of these messed up food myths. And a lot of it does actually start with some of these commercial products that appear to be healthy, certainly are just, I think, modifications of applesauce or pear concentrate.

Ada Garcia (21m 10s):

Absolutely. It's the same issue is this assumption that babies need to be sheltered from something that is bitter or acidic or sour, you know, it's is, is I think it's is an assumption that they can't really tolerate these flavors, which is lack of information about the way babies learn to develop their preferences for food very early during that period of, you know, first year, first two years, where they need to be exposed to these foods so that they learn to like them. And yes, the baby food industry is absolute disaster in that sense, because they don't sell these foods. If, if they're not gonna be sweet or, you know, appealing in terms of taste for a baby.

Ada Garcia (21m 52s):

But I think also there is, there are some issues with using vegetables that are high nitrates such as spinach and all of these green leafy vegetables. They are not good for processing for ultra processing. They Don don't work well. And there are also some, some regulations about the amount of nitrates that they are allowed in, in baby foods.

Katie Ferraro (22m 13s):

See, that's very interesting, cuz we do not see that so much in the United States. Could you expand there? The nitrates are not good for processing. You don't mean from a physiology standpoint for Babies and digestion. You mean from a food production manufacturing standpoint.

Ada Garcia (22m 26s):

From a food production manufacturing, they don't work well. They, they don't really. The structures don don't work well in the processing. And also it's, it's not allowed to have too high level of nitrate, so they have to get rid of them. So what they do is to not use them, basically they use very little amounts of spinach or broccoli plus processing. We know they, these are really, the cooking destroys completely the flavor and the smell changes completely. So you have higher, so production of compounds that are not so appealing in terms of smell or aroma and therefore they're not included basically. So you would not find your kale puree or your, unless they heavily combined with apple or pear or mango or whatever else, it's a problem from the food processing perspective.

Ada Garcia (23m 18s):

So what they do is we don't, they don't use it. They cannot control the total amount of nitrates that comes in in these vegetables, these green leaf vegetables. So prefer not to use them.

Katie Ferraro (23m 29s):

So with all of these marketing tactics that are always used to attract parents and to purchasing commercial baby foods. You mentioned earlier with all the proposed changes, it doesn't really matter because none of it is mandatory. Is there anything currently being done to end inappropriate marketing of these products in the United Kingdom? Anything you kind of see in motion that you're excited about?

Ada Garcia (23m 48s):

Yes. Well, there has been a lot of interest, not just from academics. There has been an interest from the World Health Organization. About five, six years ago, I attended a peak meeting in Vienna where we were discussing the proposal that WHO was preparing for regulations in terms of not just nutrient content, sugar content, and also claims. So to end the inappropriate marketing of baby foods in general. So that proposal is there. They have also developed recommendations for the food industry in terms of the things that have to be considered the amount of sugars that have to be considered for the formulation of baby foods.

Ada Garcia (24m 36s):

And it, there is a whole, you know, set of research already gone into this and people working on this. But, we had COVID in between and things just completely got out of touch. So probably things are gonna be retaking more to try and move forward. All of these recommendations, at least the steps have been made and there are some documents recommendations, some frameworks that are going to support the baby food industry to think about reformulation here in the UK that was already consultation with some of the baby food companies. It is voluntary and that is the problem that they are deciding to do it or not depending on whether they want to commit or not.

Ada Garcia (25m 18s):

Some of them are keen or silent, but there have been some things happening. It's just that it doesn't happen quick enough. We have on top of all of this here in the UK, as you might be aware, we had Brexit. So we left the European Union, and the regulations at the moment are still in limbo the sense of has not been decided how that is going to work at the moment. We are still working on their EU law in terms of regulations for the food industry in general. But I think that may change in the, in the near future. So there have been things.

Katie Ferraro (25m 54s):

I think it's interesting to hear that the World Health Organization is almost using the same framework and model that they use to kind of try to over the decades, tamped down inappropriate infant formula marketing as being coercive. And of course, interfering with the messaging about exclusive breastfeeding until six months of age, to see that kind of pop its head up in the baby food discussion. Because certainly if you're creeping in to the four and five month mark and encouraging parents to buy a non infant milk product, that's inappropriate, it's nutritionally inadequate. It's physiologically unsafe as far as choking hazards go. But once you hit six months of age, the reality is infant milk is no longer sufficient to meet the entirety of baby's needs.

Katie Ferraro (26m 36s):

So you could do really see how you can open up this window for some unscrupulous marketing practices, which we certainly see in the United States. And so it's kind of like misery loves company. I love chatting to you about this cuz sometimes you think in the us, oh my gosh, the situation is so dire here. But yet when you look at the World Health Organization documents and their proposals, you realize this truly is a global problem. Just like the problem of interfering with exclusive breastfeeding until six months of age is not a problem localized to any one part of the planet. It's a global issue.

Ada Garcia (27m 3s):

Absolutely. And, and I think you touch very important thing there. That is, this is a global issue. These companies are not just here or in the us. They are everywhere. So they are changing the way children or babies are being fed globally. And in the context of affluency. So we live in countries where we are lucky to have access to health services, to pay food. But these ways of feeding children are expanding everywhere and traditional ways of being traditionally being used to feed children are changing. So you can see that expansion expansion happening in, in areas where there economic growth.

Ada Garcia (27m 44s):

And it's going to really change the, the way children are being fed. If there are no regulations, if there is no control.

Katie Ferraro (27m 52s):

Dr. Garcia, we were chatting before, like in preparation for this interview. And I was kind of asking about, you know, what's the backlash or the pushback then from industry regarding your research. Cuz obviously you can, you know, surmise that they're not gonna be super happy that you're outing them and kind of doing an expose of the different compounds that are in foods that babies really shouldn't be have. And some of the unscrupulous marketing practices, If you are being pressured by industry. And I know they've approached you to work with you and you know, as a researcher, it's so important that you remain independent and not influenced by the companies. How can you use the findings from your research so that those companies can improve? Because at the end of the day, there's always going to be commercial baby food. And so that is a truth. And since it is a truth, how can we, as you know, leaders in our field of infant feeding and credentialed feeding professionals, how can we work with industry to help them improve rather than saying, well, we can't ever talk to them because we'll be influenced, but at the end of the day, they do need to make the products better.

Katie Ferraro (28m 46s):

And they sometimes do look to your research to do that.

Ada Garcia (28m 49s):

Yes. Well, my job as a researcher is, as you mentioned to be generating evidence. So I try and keep independent as much as possible. And I do not establish a direct dialogue with the baby food industry because there are certain rules that I need to follow. So it has been a learning experience for me to be able to disconnect from that. And my relationship will be with organizations such as the World Health Organization. There are other bodies here, like charity based organizations that are looking after the protection of infants or nutrition. So through there I do that kind of bridge into discussing the issues that are important, but I will not really, you know, talk directly to, to the food industry because I really need to keep as much as possible independent and you know, outsider influencer.

Ada Garcia (29m 44s):

Also, it can be a bit worrying and you have to think about the legal implications, but as a researcher, I am confident about the quality of information that I produce. We have very rigorous procedures to monitor and to have double or triple checking on the data that we produce. And yes. So in that sense, I am confident that whatever I am producing is going to be of high, the best quality that I can, but yes, you need to keep independent. But I do agree with you. We have to establish dialogue with the food industry, probably not me directly, but through some other mechanisms because they need to be on board. If we are going to expect a change, then it has to be a change that is going to be negotiated with everybody.

Katie Ferraro (30m 31s):

And if we're going to respect the scientific process and the quality of research coming out. Cuz it's a huge problem in infant feeding in the United States, especially with regards to allergen food products. So with this, the onslaught of these supplement programs for babies, we have a lot of our leading food allergy researchers who are in the pockets of these huge drug companies. It's like, I respect your research, work up to a point, but I also see through your disclosures that you're taking money and consulting with them. And their ultimate goal is to sell supplements to babies and you as a dietitian and a food researcher, you should be promoting foods for those babies. So it certainly is important to look for those overlaps because we want to continue to be able to trust the scientific process.

Katie Ferraro (31m 11s):

But we also know that the ultimate goal of a commercial entity like a baby food product and supplement companies is to sell their product. And oftentimes I think they do distort that scientific evidence that, you know, professional such as yourself are working on. So it's nice to hear that you're working hard to stay independent and then working through the constructs that are set up, such as the World Health Organization to help really impact change in a more meaningful way. Even though I think it probably could be depressing because how long things take great. Like you got interested in this when your twins were babies and they just turned 13 and like at the end of the day, it's kind of still the same thing.

Ada Garcia (31m 46s):

Yeah. It's quite depressing. When you think about the, the amount of time that it takes to, you know, bring a piece of research to life. The, the reviewing process, it's, it's a process that will take one or two years, you know, to develop something. And then you, I try to promote as much as I can with press releases and, and stories that are gonna hit the media. And then it becomes the, the point of discussion, but then it dies away. So you really have to keep it going. Yeah, but I think at least there, when I started this, there was very little in this area. There were almost no papers that were highlighting the issues and it has grown and it has grown in a, in a positive way because now we are more voices shouting the same problem.

Ada Garcia (32m 33s):

So at some point somebody's going to listen to us. I think. So I keep positive about that.

Katie Ferraro (32m 37s):

Okay. Let's stay on the positive trade here. So we don't everyone feeling sad about the outlook of commercial baby food, but there are so many products for parents to choose from and it can become overwhelming and oftentimes confusing because of those misleading claims that we see. It's not, it happens in the adult world as well. So it's just the same exact principles just applied to baby food. But for our parents who may, from time to time be relying on commercial baby food, especially for matters of convenience or if they're traveling or in a pinch, what should parents be looking for when they're purchasing these products for their infants?

Ada Garcia (33m 8s):

Well, the, the first one, my, my main recommendation will be not to do it, but yeah. Outside the discussion. Yeah. So I would say, look at things that are not just very sweet, not pouches, as you discussed earlier, pouches are a little bit of a risk if given directly to sock that is really bad for dental health. They are usually very, very high in sugars because the whole cellular walls have been completely or extra process, full trap process to make it more like a smoothie. So pouches, no sweet pouches, no mixed vegetables.

Ada Garcia (33m 49s):

So those that are claiming that they are high in whatever kale or look at ingredients list. If you have a little bit of time, then check sugar content. So anything that is higher than 10 grams in hundred grams of food is going to be high in sugar. Ideally something below five grams of sugar in hundred grams would be something to look for, but it is hard to find them. They are really very rare. And yes. So If you see that is good for babies, that if you see all of these claims such as, you know, good for tiny hands, good for eye development, good for hand coordination, these things are not supported by evidence.

Ada Garcia (34m 32s):

There are no studies are telling us, oh, yes, after, you know, doing a proper randomized control trial with a good design that we see better hand coordination, babies that does not exist. I have never come across any evidence that supports any of these claims so far. There are very few health related claims. So that was the, the least group of claims that we found because to have a health related claims here in the UK, you really need to have evidence that supports it. So they don't go into that way. But then there are all of these other messages that maybe Misleading or suggesting things that are not really happening. So yeah, don't believe in the claims because the claims are not really supported by proper research.

Ada Garcia (35m 17s):

So If you need baby foods, then you can use them. But in motivation, not, not basing the main meals of a child or of an infant with baby commercial baby foods.

Katie Ferraro (35m 28s):

And my concern too is especially for our parents unlimited incomes, that the value added claims that parents oftentimes will be paying more for what essentially is less well it's, it's more processing, more money, less nutrition, less texture experience, more further removed from real food is that it's not just a matter of personal preference. It it's a matter of access. It's a matter of If you have a limited amount of income, are you spending money on these products that you think are going to help your child from a developmental standpoint? And the reality is that I teach college level nutrition and we're teaching our students about marketing of nutrition products. It's like, you know what you see on the front of the package? That's just the commercial, that's the commercial, that's the thumbnail on the YouTube video and the click baby title to get you to click into it.

Katie Ferraro (36m 12s):

But the meat of what is in the product is really on the side, the nutrition fax panel in the United States, the ingredient list. And I think for baby food really narrowing it down, cuz it can be overwhelming. Look at the added sugars. It should be zero grams. Here in the United States, we don't list our food servings per 100 grams, but less than 100 milligrams of sodium proportion is a general good rule of thumb. And then look at the ingredient list. If it's yogurt, it should be cows milk and the name of the bacteria. If there's a bunch of other stuff in there, I including added sugars and I don't care if it's un-refined sugar. Sugar, sugar is sugar, your baby shouldn't be having it. And so If you don't recognize the words in the ingredient list, then maybe that's not the best product for your baby.

Ada Garcia (36m 52s):

Sure, sure, absolutely. Yeah. And I think it is maybe deifying idea that babies have to have very special foods. You know, they can eat as many foods as we eat in a house that are preparing a way that are, are not going to put them at risk of choking, which is really important. Soft. So vegetables are not completely too hard to chew that they can just choke on them, but we can't a piece of bread that is made at or bought without too much salt. These things are, are quite good. You know, pasta rice, there are so many different things that can be given to a baby that does not have to be something fancy or completely, you know, kind of sophisticated.

Katie Ferraro (37m 34s):

And that's kind of the premise of Baby Led Weaning, right? Is that babies learn to eat modified versions of the same foods the rest of the family does. And it's just crazy to see marketers really glomming onto that. Because as a practice, this is nothing new, right? This is a centuries old approach to feed your child. That certainly predates the advent of commercial baby food, which in the United States was just the earlier part of the 20th century. Like I always tell my parents, you know, what do you think cave mama fed cave baby back before there wasn't an entire aisle of pouches for you to overpay for what's essentially apple sauce like for. But from a marketing standpoint, Baby Led Weaning is sexy. Baby Led Weaning is new age. It's the modern parenting. It's just feeding your baby real food.

Katie Ferraro (38m 15s):

And I think if we get back to basics, what you said is absolutely correct that babies don't need fancy special baby foods. And yet parents are, are trained from a marketing standpoint to think that they do. And so I appreciate your work that just kind of sheds light. It's like the emperor has no clothes here, right? Like this is completely unnecessary. What's happening.

Ada Garcia (38m 35s):

Absolutely. And the next thing that we are working on, we haven't got the paper yet, but we are working on that is the emotional aspect of these claims, which I find fascinating because it really. If you are gonna have a company that sells something, you want these things to be solved in it, as many as possible. And, and they get really good support from people that know behavioral science, it's an important element to promote things. And we see, you know, all these emotions, these feelings about the way you're gonna be feeding your baby, not feeling guilty about things that are so many, you know, kind of nuisances or lines of things that are happening with the way the marketing is done.

Katie Ferraro (39m 22s):

So many value judgements on the front of a package. It's amazing. I don't, how did my concern is your research is so compelling, marketers are gonna find it and use it for evil, which is to sell more products, but let's hope that doesn't happen. I have so enjoyed chatting with you. Thank you for your time. Tell our audience where they can learn more about your work and the issue with promotional claims on baby foods that you and your research team are doing there in Scotland.

Ada Garcia (39m 46s):

Well, yes, I don't have a dedicated page for this because I Don don't have enough time. But if anybody wants to have some more detail, the university has prepared a very nice press with this story from this paper is found at the University of Glasgow. You can also contact me through my email, Ada.Garcia@glasgow.ac.uk. I have also a Twitter account and I tweet things from time to time on the @DrAdaGarcia. And yes. So if anybody's interested on reading all the detail and have a whole list of the different claims, I can also provide whoever wants to contact me.

Ada Garcia (40m 25s):

You can just type my name in any search engine on the Ada Garcia. And we will find.

Katie Ferraro (40m 32s):

You are actually not that easy to find. I have to admit. This episode took a long time to put together, but I really appreciate it. And I'm going to link all of your resources that you mentioned on the Shownotes page for this episode. If you guys go to https://blwpodcast.com/episodes/250, you can find all of Dr Garcia's or social stuff. And then the press releases from your university are really nice to, because you know, the research is so important, but sometimes it's very hard for parents to interpret that. So I appreciate you kind of breaking it down for us in a way that's easy to understand. And thank you again for the conversation.

Ada Garcia (41m 4s):

You are welcome. It was pleasure.

Katie Ferraro (41m 6s):

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that interview with Dr. Ada Garcia from Glasgow University in Scotland. She has some very interesting research. I mean, I am one who loves to just read this corse documents and I'm like, oh my gosh, I cannot believe that they found that many baby food products that said that on it. So she actually does have some really good summary articles, the press release from her university, the actual research findings. I'm gonna link to all of those on the Shownotes page for this episode. If you guys want to read more, you just have to promise you don't use it for evil purposes to sell more unhealthy baby foods. Oh, but that'll be all linked up for you at BLW https://blwpodcast.com/episodes/250. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.