Kiddylicious Veggie Straws | Chewsday Review
They’re Veggie Straws, or are they baby chips?
Ingredients
- Veggie straws (Potato starch, dried potato (30%), salt, tomato powder, kale powder, spinach powder, red beet, firming agent (calcium chloride), turmeric,) AND vegetable oil.
- The way this ingredient list is written makes my ‘bulls@#t radar’ fire up. It is formatted so that veggie straws are one ‘ingredient’ and vegetable oil is the second ‘ingredient’. In the brackets after veggie straws it includes the ingredients of the actual straws. This makes me suspicious, because ingredients have to be listed in order from the ingredient in the greatest amount to the ingredient in the smallest amount. I suspect that if they hadn’t grouped the veggie straw ingredients together, the first ingredient (in the greatest amount) would be oil!
- Common allergens include: may contain traces of soy.
Positives
- Saturated fat content within healthy guidelines at 2.1g/100g (aim for less than 3g) BUT this is high for a product like this. It suggests that the ‘vegetable oil’ contains a fair amount of saturated fat which usually indicates with a cheap and poor quality oil. This is actually more fat and saturated fat than Red Rock Deli chips.
- Sodium content is within healthy guidelines at 360mg/100g. But, remember that this is creeping up towards our upper limit. One packet of these (only 12g) provides 20% of a baby’s daily salt limit.
- Awesome texture for babies practicing biting and chewing skills. The ‘bite and dissolve’ nature of these straws is really helpful, especially if your little one has been slow to take to finger foods.
- Convenient!
Negatives
- High fat content of 29.3g/100g (general guidelines suggest aiming for less than 10g/100g). This isn’t a huge concern for kiddos, but comes totally from the vegetable oil.
- No description of fibre content, and that’s most likely because it’s low. The main ingredient of potato starch (which is a very refined starch) isn’t going to be particularly high in fibre (unlike actual whole potato).
- ”Veggie” straws are a bit of a stretch. Again, this is clever marketing because by calling them ‘veggie’ straws they don’t technically have to disclose how much of each vegetable (ie/ the kale) is in the product. Instead they can just disclose that 30% comes from potato powder.
- At $150/kg, these are EXPENSIVE!
Marketing
- ”Tomato, Kale and Spinach flavoured potato snacks” Flavoured, yes. Containing actual vegetables? Hardly.
- ”Ideal finger food”. It’s definitely helpful for learning biting and chewing skills, especially for those little ones who have had some setbacks and are needing some kind of feeding therapy or support.
Alternatives
- These are very expensive puffed air with a bit of oil. They have a nutritional profile fairly similar to regular potato chips, but with a bit less salt. They’re not a necessity for babies. They’re also not a source of vegetables!
- Instead, young babies can use real foods, like steamed potato wedges, for a much cheaper and more nutritious option.
The composition of food products changes regularly. The nutritional values of the products in this Chewsday Review were correct at the time of publishing.
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