The harm caused by manufacturers of sweet processed baby foods is at last being exposed and prompting calls for transparency and regulation.

• Researchers from the University of Southern California (31.10.24) have found that cutting sugar in the first 1,000 days of a baby’s life – from conception to the age of two – appears to reduce the risk of developing significant health issues in adult life, with a 30% reduction in the risk of obesity among the sugar-rationed babies. The study took advantage of the “natural experiment” that occurred in the UK as it recovered from World War Two and food-rationing came to an end.  The impact of the end of sugar-rationing in the UK in 1953,  led to a rapid doubling in the amount of sugar consumed.
• A BBC report and investigation in the Philippines, The Sweet Divide, has prompted calls for regulation in the Philippines. Senator Imee Marcos, the sister of the current president and daughter of former president Ferdinand Marcos Snr,  is sponsoring a bill that would prohibit manufacturers of baby food manufacturers from adding sugar to  their products. A failure to comply could lead to a hefty fine, and imprisonment of producers and manufacturers for one to five years.
• The release in April of the Public Eye/ IBFAN exposé, How Nestlé gets children hooked on sugar in lower-income countries, showed how Nestlé markets its baby food products as  beneficial for child development, despite containing high levels of added sugar. The report prompted a drop in Nestlé’s share price in India to a 3-year low on 18th May (the day of Nestlé’s Annual General Meeting in Switzerland); enquiries by regulators in India, Nigeria and Bangladesh and a formal request to the Swiss Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) to bring legal action against Nestlé under the unfair competition act for “unethical and unfair business practices” in low and middle-income countries.