Full Disclosure About Nutrients in Baby Food? : Labeling: Gerbers, Heinz and other companies feel it may be misleading.

The message seems simple: Feed your baby like a baby, not like an adult.

Everyone--from baby food manufacturers to medical doctors--agrees that parents shouldn’t give their babies skim instead of whole milk, take away sweet or salty snacks or pump up fiber in the diet. The reason: babies under age 2 need fat and calories or growth and development may be stunted.

But not everyone agrees what nutritional information should be on a baby food label.

Gerber and Heinz, two of the major baby food manufacturers, say that they should be allowed to keep the amount of fatty acids (saturated fat and unsaturated fat), cholesterol and fiber off the label because well-meaning parents may be misled. The companies are lobbying for an exemption from proposed federal bills that would require more information on all food labels.

The critics of their policy, including the doctor who did the study that Gerber uses to prove parents are feeding their babies like adults, insist secrecy is not the right answer. What we need, they say, is full disclosure of nutrients plus a warning message on the label.

Gerber Products Co., the company with more than 70% of the baby food market, has been the most vocal on the issue. During the past year, the company has distributed 1.5 million free booklets to physicians, dietitians and parents. The full-color, 20-page booklet, “Dietary Guidelines for Infants,” uses the format of the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” to compare the dietary needs of children under age 2 with adults. Gerber also paid the organizers of the International Food Media Conference a $5,000 sponsor fee so it could bring its message on the labeling exemption to the press.

“My concern as a nutritionist is that nutrition labeling of fatty acids, cholesterol and fiber on a baby food label can mislead parents with the implication that babies’ dietary needs are the same as those of adults,” said Sandra Bartholmey, manager of nutrition at Gerber’s research division.

“If we label the saturated fat, cholesterol and fiber content, parents who look for these things in the adult food aisles will continue to look for low-fat, high-fiber and low cholesterol in the baby food aisle where it is really not appropriate.”

Ida LaQuatra, director of nutrition services at Heinz, agreed. She said that her company supports mandatory cholesterol and fatty acid labeling on all food products except baby foods.

“A parent might not want to feed their child pureed liver because it is high in cholesterol,” Ms. LaQuatra said. “Since heart disease is a No. 1 killer and baby boomers are getting into prevention they may try to put their whole family on a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet.”

But the critics insist keeping the information from parents will not solve the problem.

The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly favors nutritional labeling of baby foods, but does not endorse the use of health messages on the labels, said spokesman Ray Koteras. Baby food labels should include protein, fat and carbohydrates listed in grams as well as the percent of calories they constitute in the food, according to the academy. Components of fat--saturated, monosaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids--also should be listed.

“Parents need information to make wise food choices for their children,” says the academy. “Food labels offer an excellent opportunity to have such information available at the time of purchase.”

Likewise, the American Heart Assn. supports mandatory nutritional labeling for all foods, including baby foods, according to spokeswoman Vicki Anderson.

“You don’t educate consumers by hiding information from them,” added Bonnie Liebman, staff nutritionist with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit consumer group in Washington.

“If they (the baby food companies)) are worried about consumers cutting their babies’ fat intake, then they should explain on the labels that anyone under age two should not restrict fat and cholesterol intake. If you want to educate consumers, you give them more information, not less.”

The baby food companies say that the warning would be a good idea, but the small labels have little room to provide additional information.

But beyond the labeling issue, just how big is this under-feeding problem? Are we starving our children to make them healthy?

Gerber’s press releases point to “studies, such as the one by Dr. Fima Lifshitz,” which show that infants placed on a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet may not grow and develop normally. A Baltimore Sun computer search of the medical literature shows that long-term studies are lacking, and the Lifshitz study is the only study on the so-called “failure to thrive syndrome” that features middle- and upper-class families who are feeding their babies like adults.

The Lifshitz study, published in the August 1987 issue of Pediatrics, described the experience of treating seven infants, ranging from seven to 22 months old. All weighed less than 95% of normal babies of the same height and some had stopped growing.

After looking at typical causes such as disease and neglect, the doctors found all the infants had been given less food than normal and only raw vegetables as between-meal snacks, if they were allowed to snack at all. Some received only low-fat dairy products, such as skim milk.

Lifshitz, associate director of pediatrics at North Shore University Hospital-Cornell University Medical College, on Long Island, N.Y., said that he has now seen about 16 infants who are failing to thrive because of inadequate diets based on current health beliefs. In these cases, he said three factors were present--parents were trying to keep their children from becoming obese, they were feeding them diets low in fat and cholesterol and they were avoiding feeding their babies junk food.

Lifshitz said that he has heard of and read reports of the failure to thrive syndrome in children of health-conscious parents, but even he doesn’t know how widespread the problem is. It’s hard to count the victims, he said, because pediatricians see growth problems, suggest diet changes and the babies recover.

Keeping nutritional information on fats, cholesterol and fiber won’t solve the problem, he added. Although Gerber uses Lifshitz’ research to prove its point, he, himself, does not endorse its labeling policy.

“I believe that everything should be labeled and the public should be educated to read those labels,” he said. “Foods should be labeled for scientific purposes and not just for propaganda. Maybe they could include a caveat indicating the diet appropriate for babies. I do not believe in withholding information from the parents.”

Gerber’s public relations effort has promoted the results of two surveys of parents of children under age two who called the Gerber hot line. The callers were asked: “Does adult nutrition information influence what you feed your baby? If yes, how?” In March 1989, 48% of the 1,002 parents polled said they were feeding their babies like adults. This year, the percentage dropped to 37% of 902 parents. Eight out of 10 of the last group said they limited or avoided fat or cholesterol, sugar or sodium or combinations of these nutrients in their child’s diet.

When questioned about the scientific validity of the survey, Bartholmey admitted that it was a random rather than scientific survey, based on a self-selected group of people who called the hot line with questions on baby food.

Other experts are skeptical that the problem is as widespread as the picture Gerber paints.

“I am not sure that I believe that one-third of all parents are feeding their infants too little fat,” says Ms. Liebman of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “My guess is that 37% of parents are not feeding their children skim milk instead of whole milk. I don’t have any reason to think that masses of 1-year-olds are malnourished because their parents are feeding them too many vegetables. There is certainly no evidence that’s the case.”