New Study Finds Toddlers Get Too Many Calories From Ultra-Processed Foods

​​Establishing healthy eating habits for our little ones can be a tremendous source of anxiety for parents. We know that, ideally, our toddlers should be eating loads of fruits and veggies along with wholesome whole grains and lean proteins. We also know that can be challenging for any number of reasons, from cost of produce to the fact that our kids favorite thing to do with all those veggies is throw them on the floor while screaming. And it’s not just Americans who struggle with this issue. A new study from University College London (UCL), published in the European Journal of Nutrition, found that toddlers in the UK get about half their calories from ultra-processed foods (UPF), a number that rises to 59% of children by age seven.

The study analyzed 3-day food journals of 2,591 children born in the U.K. between 2007 and 2008 between the ages of 21 months and 7 years of age. The study found a range of diets among children: for toddlers, their UPF constituted between 28% to 69% of their caloric intake for an average of 47%. By age 7, the average UPF intake was at 59% on average. The study’s senior author, Dr. Clare Llewellyn of UCL’s Institute of Epidemiology & Health noted that the more UPF a toddler ate, the more likely they were to eat a higher percentage of UPF by age 7. In other words: the food choices we make for our little ones will likely be carried into their older lives.

But it’s important to clarify what a processed or ultra processed food even is. For that, researchers used the NOVA system, which is recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) among other health organizations, though it’s important to note that there is vigorous debate among experts about how to classify foods in this way. NOVA sorts foods into four categories: Unprocessed and Minimally Processed; Processed Culinary Ingredients; Processed; and Ultra-Processed.

Unprocessed foods are those that come direct from the source. Vegetables, fruits, and meats that haven’t undergone any alteration are unprocessed. If you dry, ferment, pasteurize, or freeze that food, so long as you don’t add anything like salt or sugar, that is a minimally processed food. Cleaning food also counts as “minimally processed.”

Processed culinary ingredients are foods you’d rarely eat in isolation that are extracted by pressing, grinding, crushing, pulverizing, and refining natural foods. This includes things like olive oil, sugar, butter, and salt.

Processed food might be a bit surprising for some. Home-baked bread? Processed. Cheese — not even something like Cheez Wiz or American cheese, but an organic, award-winning cheddar? Processed. Salted meat? Processed. Canned beans? Processed. Basically if you add Processed culinary ingredients to an unprocessed or minimally processed food, it’s considered processed.

UPF are likely the foods one thinks of when they say “processed foods.” These are your frozen pizzas, store-bought donuts, and sodas. They’re made mainly from ingredients extracted from unprocessed foods, often in factories. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re entirely unhealthy. Flavored yogurts, cereal, sliced bread (including the whole grain, sprouted expensive bread some of us buy because we want to be healthy), and canned soups are considered UPF, and can have lots of nutritional value. Most of these foods, however, include more than the recommended amounts of sugar and salt.

“Ultra-processed foods are not all bad for our health, and the foods typically eaten by the toddlers in our study are ones that are seen as quite healthy,” co-author Rana Conway said in a statement. “However, some whole grain cereals and flavored yogurts have high levels of added sugar and salt, and our study found that toddlers who consumed more ultra-processed foods also had a higher intake of these ingredients.”

Of course this isn’t just a matter of lazy parenting or not knowing any better. There can be a lot of barriers to getting minimally processed food. Healthy foods are often more expensive than UPF. A pint of strawberries costs a lot more per serving than a box of Cheerios, to say nothing of the fact that fresh produce doesn’t last nearly as long and most Britons, like most Americans, only go grocery shopping about once a week. There’s also a matter of food deserts, where people have difficulty even accessing minimally processed foods: the University of Sheffield indicates about 1.2 million Britons live in such food deserts. (That number soars to approximately 54 million in America according to the USDA.)

So what’s to be done with this information? It’s important, of course, to realize that the decisions we make for our little ones echo throughout their lives. And with UPF being associated with poorer health outcomes, including higher rates of Type 2 diabetes, it bears acknowledging that a diet rich in minimally processed foods will ultimately benefit them. But it’s also important to realize that entirely eliminating UPF from anyone’s diet in the 21st century probably isn’t terribly realistic, at least until public policies can assist all citizens in accessing the healthiest and most wholesome foods.

But entirely eliminating UPF is also not strictly speaking necessary for good health: we’re pretty sure that whole wheat toast you fed your 3-year old for breakfast isn’t going to be the difference between a healthy life and an unhealthy one. In other words, pay attention to added sugars and salts, offer healthy foods to the extent possible to you, and do your best with the resources you have.