5 a day, 7 a day or 10 a day....

There's been a lot of discussion over the last week as to whether we should be eating 5 a day, 7 a day or even 10 a day! This is fruit and veg of course and if you have kids the thought of trying to get even more of the good stuff inside them is probably a daunting prospect.

In amongst the debates there have then been warnings about how much sugar fruit juices and smoothies actually contain. Some of the statistics are quite shocking but then the size of a coffee shop bought smoothie or juice can be anything from 250ml upto 610ml! That’s a lot of smoothie and a lot of sugar (albeit natural sugars). According to The Telegraph yesterday the large Red Berry Fruit Cooler at Costa Coffee contains 96g of sugars which is the equivalent of 24 spoonfuls of sugar!*

Obviously smoothies are a great way to provide you and your children with all the fantastic vitamins and nutrients that we require from fruit but portion control is required.

This is exactly the reason why we made our Nom Nom Kids reusable food pouches the size that they are. The pouch holds a maximum of 120ml and is a really comfortable fit for a 100g serving of smoothie or yogurt. Both items are high in sugar but they are also very good for your children so the Nom Nom Kids Pouch actually helps regulate the amount of sugar your baby or child is getting.

Another way to control the sugar content is to regulate which fruits you use and at what volume. As you would expect some fruits contain more sugar than others so in order to limit the amount of sugars that you give to your child it would be sensible to use lower volumes of the high sugar content items and more of the lower. You could also look at adding low sugar vegetables such as Spinach, Kale or avocado to your smoothies to add extra nutrients without increasing the sugar levels.

The below table lists the total sugar content in grams per 100g of fruit** and popular yogurts.

4g = 1 teaspoon

There is of course the age old issue of how to get a picky baby, toddler or child to eat fruit and vegetables. Pouches have defiinitely solved this problem for many families (don't ask me why but they work!) and now with reusable pouches being widely available we are all able to feed our little ones fresh, homemade food and smoothies in a pouch.

*Taken from The Telegraph

**Extracted from The Paleo Diet