Study on the Establishment of Nutrient Requirements for Commercial Supplementary Foods for Infants and Young Children

Kim, Dong Yeon; Kim, Kyung Hee; Choi, Haymie

Abstract

This study was conducted to evaluated the nutrition quality of the commercial supplementary foods for infants and young children and to seek a solution to the establishment of standards of nutrient requirements for supplementary foods in Korea. Information on food ingredients, nutrient contents, claims about usefulness of food components and instructions for feeding preparation were obtained from the labels of 33 commercial supplementary foods manufactured by 4 different domestic companies. According to the standard of supplementary foods for infants and young children described in the Korean Food Code, the commercial supplementary foods were categorized into two different types, weaning food and baby food. All the commercial weaning foods were in powder form and mainly composed of cereals, whereas all the baby foods were mainly composed of fruits in the form of canned juice. The weaning foods contained more nutrients than the baby foods did, and the nutrient levels of the weaning foods expressed as nutrient density on energy basis were higher than the RDA for infants aged 5 to 11 months, suggesting that the commercial weaning foods provide adequate amounts of nutrients. If one followed the instructions for feeding preparation appearing on the label, however, recommended amounts of intake of the weaning foods would provide too much energy as well as nutrients. There were many differences in nutrient standards of weaning foods between the Korean Food Code and Codex international food standard. In conclusion, the establishment of standards for nutrient requirements for the supplementary foods requires significant scientific studies on what nutrients are the most inadequate in Korean infants and young children feeds and what levels of nutrients should be added to the foods in order to supplement their nutrition. In addition, it is very important to have a strong scientific basis to support our standard when discrepancies exist between our standard and the international standard.