While parents aim to give their small children a healthy meal when using packaged food for toddlers, a new report from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention shows that this doesn't tend to be the case, as the meals are usually packed with too much salt or sugar.
It seems that the majority of pre-packaged food for toddlers is actually damaging to the children's health, as further studies about child obesity show why are the tendencies on obesity epidemic on children so high in the country - now it seems there's one more factor to take into account.
According to Today, the new CDC study shows that most pre-packaged food for toddlers contains too much of either sugar, salt or both, which may lead to obesity and health risks later in life, with almost 80 percent of children between 1 and 3 years of age consuming more than the recommended daily dosage o sodium.
The Associated Press reports that around 700 of the 1,000 tested packaged foods for toddlers contained high amounts of sodium, far larger than is widely recommended, which would certainly account for the excessive amount of salt consumption in young children.
"We also know that about one in nine children have blood pressure above the normal range for their age, and that sodium, excess sodium, is related to increased blood pressure," said the CDC's Mary Cogswell to Medical Daily News. "Blood pressure tracks from when children are young up through adolescence into when they're adults. Eating foods which are high in sodium can set a child up for high blood pressure and later on for cardiovascular disease."
The research team gathered the data from a nutrient database from 2012 that included a little over 1,000 examples of packaged food and drinks for small children. In the study, they included categories of packaged food for toddlers such as fruits, dry cereals and juice drinks, without naming any brands.
