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CR Keep It Cleaner Tomato & Hidden Veg Pasta Sauce

Keep It Cleaner Toddler Tomato & Hidden Veg Pasta Sauce | Chewsday Review

By popular demand, this week I am reviewing Keep It Cleaner Toddler Tomato & Hidden Veg Pasta Sauce. Let’s find out if this product by wellness influencers Stephanie Miller and Laura Henshaw stirs up the pasta sauce market.

Ingredients

Tomatoes (85%) (Diced Tomato, Partially Reconstituted Tomato Paste), Vegetables (12%) (Onion, Carrot Puree, Capsicum, Zucchini, Celery) Garlic, Acidity Regulator (Citric Acid), Extra Virgin Olive Oil (0.1%), Basil, Paprika
This is essentially a tomato-based pasta sauce with a small amount of pureed vegetables. The tomato content of 85% is pretty much the same as other pasta sauces on the market.
The featured ingredients of ‘hidden’ vegetables make up only 12% of the sauce and olive oil a tiny 0.1%.
Reconstituted tomato paste is common in many pasta sauces to add extra flavour.
Allergens: nil.

Positives

With only 72mg of sodium per 100g, Keep It Cleaner (KIC) Toddler Pasta Sauce contains a quarter of the salt of Dolmio’s Hidden Vegetable Pasta Sauce, and actually a lot less than most pasta sauces on the market, which tend to range from 250 to 350mg sodium per 100g.
This pasta sauce has no added sugar. Most pasta sauces contain a small amount of added sugar to balance tomato acidity, but still fall within guidelines.

Negatives

At $4.50 for a 250g jar providing two servings, this pasta sauce isn’t cheap. You’re definitely paying the price for convenience, which in this case is more than twice the cost of a homemade vegetable pasta sauce.
The concept of a special toddler food suggests to parents that they need to prepare and serve a separate meal to their child, when what we’re really aiming for is a #samefoodsametime family meal.

Marketing

Keep It Cleaner products and recipes commonly include ‘hidden vegetables’, with this sauce claiming to be ‘packed full of healthy nutritious vegetables, pureed in the sauce so fussy eaters won’t pick them out!’. I mean, kind of. There’s 30g of ‘hidden’ veg in this jar. I’m always a little nervous about products that claim to hide vegetables or help you ‘sneak’ them in. If the veggies are ever ‘found’ your child is likely to be extra suspicious of all foods, which doesn’t help with confidence to ever like vegetables.
’12 months +’. This doesn’t contain any added salt or added sugar, so I actually don’t know why this couldn’t be offered to younger babies. If the texture was too lumpy for your baby, you could easily blitz or thin it down as needed.
‘Gluten free, dairy free, egg free, plant based, no thickeners’. True, but none of these are a groundbreaking feature in the pasta sauce market. I suspect these claims are being used to make the product appear ‘healthier’, but unless your child has an allergy this isn’t true.
There’s no doubt that this is a convenient sauce option to keep in the pantry, but I’m not sold on the suggestion that serving it with Keep It Cleaner Toddler Pasta makes a ‘deliciously healthy and wholesome meal’. Toddlers need sources of iron at main meals. I’d recommend adding or serving alongside an iron source, like beef mince, shredded chicken or legumes, or serving with a pulse pasta. You could also offer an easy vegetable option, like grated salad vegetables or green peas.
The label includes a QR code that links to ‘hundreds of workouts’. Clearly they’re trying to get parents to join their program, but it feels a bit strange on a jar of pasta sauce!

Alternatives

Overall, if you’re looking for a low salt pre-made sauce option for young children, KIC Toddler Pasta Sauce fits the (expensive) bill, but the ‘hidden vegetables’ aren’t going to make a significant contribution to your kiddo’s vegetable intake, or help them to learn to like vegetables in the future. You could easily use a regular jar of passata instead.
If you have the time and energy you could prepare, portion and freeze a large batch of home-made pasta sauce. It will be a lot cheaper and can include an iron source (like beef, chicken or legumes). A home-made sauce can easily be made allergy-friendly too.
If you’re looking for a quick whole dinner option, Annabel Karmel’s Bolognese Pasta Bake is an alternative that contains some iron and even a serve of veggies.