Small-sized meals and snacks for infants and young children do not meet the standards of nutritional quality, according to researchers in Alberta.
Professor Charlene Elliott and his colleagues at the University of Calgary have analyzed 186 consumer products for toddlers.
Cereal bars, microwave dinners, snacks, jelly and fruit purée desserts were among the products selected for analysis.
They made an alarming discovery: 63 per cent of the selected products contained too much sugar and salt, and is responsible for promoting poor nutrition from an early age.
Unfortunately, parents assume that the products are healthy because they are intended for children, but this is not always the case, particularly with regard to desserts. The researchers point out that babies do not need to finish their meal with a dessert.
In the past twenty years, overweight and obesity rates have doubled among children between 2 and 17 years old.