Several more children sickened by fruit pouches tainted with lead, FDA says
More children were apparently sickened by apple puree pouches recently recalled due to dangerous lead contamination, the Food and Drug Administration said.
The agency has received 52 reports of elevated lead levels among children who reportedly consumed the products, which is up from 34 cases reported last week. The reports span 22 states and involve children between the ages of 1 to 4, according to the FDA’s online update on the investigation.
The pouches were marketed to parents and children under three brands: WanaBana apple cinnamon fruit puree and Schnucks and Weis cinnamon applesauce pouches. They were sold by national grocery chains, including Dollar Tree, and online retailers such as Amazon.
The FDA said it is still working with Dollar Tree to get the recalled products off of shelves in several states.
A banana texture raw vs a raw apple are very different. Toddlers need most of their food softened/chopped to small bites depending on teeth. No condescension but also just not the same thing at all.
Okay, I meant "give them a banana instead of apples" but if they must have apples then just scoop apple sauce out of a bulk tub or can or jar! A single use foil pouch is both wasteful and dangerous - not just because of this lead story, but kids chewing on foil can cut their mouth up. Also, again, emphasis on wasteful.
You want your kids to have a world to live in when they grow up, right?
Not a parent, but the obvious difference to me is single use pouches are way more portable, and probably a bit less messy.
Have a few small portable jars that the bulk applesauce can be transferred to.
"Oh but that's slightly more work"
Yeah okay, fair. Let's collectivize child care and stop making parents do all of this shit by themselves.
You've got a good point. If a parent wants to switch to reusable containers for their kid but doesn't have the time/energy, that's a problem. People in general, but especially parents, are under a huge strain these days.
But yeah, glass jars is probably a good solution. Again I don't have kids so idk lol, but I imagine it would be, especially bc they sell baby food in little glass jars shrug. Certainly safer than the pouches, it seems.
The issue is less that it's impossible to make time for something like that, the issue is that
a) you aren't as firmly in control of your day, so planning that sort of thing is just one overflowing diaper away from not coming to fruition.
b) there are a lot of little things like this to be done throughout the day. From sterilizing pacifiers to preparing snacks to recharging the baby monitor, running the washing mashine again because someone has drooled carrot-puree all over their socks again and you don't even know how it got on nothing besides the darn socks, but in the end, you are officially out of fucking socks now and need to wash some, etc. Those add up rather quickly.
While each of them can be seen as "not a big deal", one needs to consider that the parent doing all of those little things has a child that will demand attention in uncontrollable intervals for uncontrollable reasons, so things can take way longer than they should (It took me well over an hour to type this because my son has trouble staying asleep today).
So, since only so many todo-list-items can get done in a day and parents have the same 24 hour day as the rest of earth, parents usually find themselves in a situation where they can't do all the things they want to do for their child. So having those products instead of homemade stuff is usually just a result of parents not being able to prepare enough homemade things by the time they are needed. So they do something else for their child and buy those packages instead. This is ignoring that children can have pretty peculiar tastes and might just not eat fresh fruit for no reason at all or eat only the bought stuff, no matter how similar the homemade tastes.
Sorry for the long and rambly answer, I'm too tired for a shorter one. I hope I could somewhat convey why many parents see it as ignorant when non-parents just tell them "yeah, you just need to do this additional thing, you are not an ideal parent otherwise and worthy of judgement. This one thing is really not a large thing, so just do it, alright?" while blissfully ignorant as to why doing just "one little thing more" might actually not be in the parent's or even the child's interest. I'd rather have a child eat those packs and have a parent with just that little more time to actually be with the child than the other way around.