You’re standing in the baby food aisle at 7pm with a toddler pulling at your leg, trying to work out whether the pouch that says “99% fruit, no added sugar” is actually a healthy snack or a dessert in disguise. It’s a fair question, and it’s one more Australian parents are asking as the research on commercial baby food catches up with what a lot of us suspected: some of the “healthy” pouches, rusks and snacks on supermarket shelves carry more sugar than a can of soft drink, gram for gram.

This isn’t about scaring anyone off convenience food altogether. Pouches exist because parents are exhausted and babies need feeding, and no one is judging you for that. It’s about knowing which categories of baby food tend to run high in sugar, how to actually read an Australian label so the marketing doesn’t fool you, and where Gerber baby food and other imported brands fit into a market that’s mostly dominated by a handful of local and NZ-based names.

Below is a practical, non-judgemental breakdown of what to look for, what the research actually says, and how to build a lower-sugar rotation without adding another 40 open tabs to your night.

Why sugar in baby food matters more than it looks

It’s not about one pouch

A single fruit pouch isn’t going to undo anything. The issue Australian dietitians and public health researchers keep raising is repetition: babies and toddlers who are given fruit-heavy pouches, biscuits and “toddler snacks” multiple times a day are being trained onto a sweeter palate at exactly the age their taste preferences are forming. Research out of institutions like The George Institute for Global Health has repeatedly found that a large share of commercial toddler snack foods sold in Australia are classed as discretionary, meaning high in sugar relative to their nutritional value, despite being marketed in the baby aisle next to genuinely nutrient-dense options.

Fruit concentrate is still sugar

This is the trap that catches even careful parents. A pouch can legitimately claim “no added sugar” under the Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) Code and still be sweet enough to eat like a treat, because the sugar is coming from concentrated fruit puree or juice rather than an added sweetener. Free sugars from fruit concentrate behave the same way in a toddler’s body and on their teeth as table sugar does, even though the label is technically accurate.

• Repetition matters more than a single serve: an occasional sweet pouch is fine, but several a day, every day, adds up quickly for a body the size of a toddler’s.
• “No added sugar” isn’t the same as low sugar: fruit concentrate, apple juice concentrate and pear puree all count as naturally occurring sugars, and they still show up on the sugars line of the Nutrient Information Panel.
• Texture trains expectations: smooth, sweet pouches fed well past 12 months can make plainer, less sweet family food a harder sell later.
• Dental health is part of the picture: frequent sweet snacking, including from pouches sipped over time, is one of the risk factors dentists flag for early childhood tooth decay.

How to actually read an Australian baby food label for sugar

Start with the Nutrient Information Panel, not the front of pack

Every packaged baby food sold in Australia carries a Nutrient Information Panel under the FSANZ Code, and specifically Standard 2.9.2, which governs food for infants and covers labelling, composition and claims. The front of the pack is marketing. The panel on the back is where the real number lives: total sugars per 100g.

What counts as “high” in a baby or toddler product

There’s no single legal cut-off that applies specifically to baby pouches the way there is for, say, the health star rating on general grocery items, but as a practical rule of thumb used by dietitians: anything sitting well above roughly 10g to 15g of total sugars per 100g in a fruit-and-vegetable blend is being carried almost entirely by the fruit, and a straight fruit-only pouch will often read even higher again. Compare that to a vegetable-forward pouch, which typically sits much lower because there’s less fruit concentrate doing the sweetening.

• Check the ingredients order: if apple, pear, banana or grape (or their juices/concentrates) are listed before any vegetable, the product is fruit-led even if the front of pack shows a vegetable.
• Look for the sugars line specifically: it sits under “carbohydrate” on the panel, and it’s the number that matters, not the kilojoules.
• Be wary of “dessert”, “custard” or “rice pudding” style pouches: these are the categories most likely to be genuinely high sugar, and they’re usually positioned as an occasional treat rather than a meal replacement, even though the packaging can blur that line.
• Rusks and teething biscuits deserve a second look: several popular teething biscuits and rusks carry more sugar per 100g than parents expect, precisely because sweetness is what makes a baby keep gnawing on them.

The categories and products that tend to run high

Fruit-only and fruit-forward pouches

Across the major Australian baby food brands, including Rafferty’s Garden, Heinz’s baby ranges and Bellamy’s Organic, the fruit-only pouches (think apple and mango, or banana and pear) are consistently the sweetest items in the range. That’s not a flaw unique to any one brand, it’s simply what happens when a product is made almost entirely from fruit puree.

“Toddler snack” biscuits, puffs and rusks

This is the category public health researchers flag most often. Many toddler biscuits, fruit straps and rusk-style teething products are sweetened enough to sit in the discretionary food category, the same bucket as lollies and packaged sweet biscuits for adults, even though they’re marketed alongside baby purees in the same supermarket aisle.

Dessert and custard pouches

Rice pudding, custard and “pudding” style pouches aimed at babies from around 6 to 12 months are, by design, closer to a dessert than a meal. They’re fine occasionally, but they shouldn’t be doing the nutritional heavy lifting of a lunch or dinner.

• Fruit-only pouches: highest sugar of the mainstream categories, best treated as an occasional add-on rather than a daily staple.
• Vegetable-forward blends: consistently lower sugar across most Australian brands, and a better everyday default when you’re relying on pouches.
• Toddler biscuits and puffs: check the ingredients list; several contain fruit juice concentrate or added sugar higher up the list than parents expect.
• Rusks and teething biscuits: worth comparing across brands, sugar content varies more here than in mains-style pouches.

Where Gerber baby food fits in the Australian picture

Gerber baby food, the long-running US market leader owned by Nestle, comes up a lot in Australian parenting forums, usually from parents who’ve seen it recommended by American friends or family, or spotted it while browsing overseas parenting content. It’s worth being upfront about the reality here: Gerber isn’t sold through mainstream Australian baby food aisles the way Rafferty’s Garden, Heinz or Bellamy’s Organic are. Where it does turn up in Australia, it’s typically through specialty international grocers importing US stock, which means US labelling rather than the FSANZ-regulated Nutrient Information Panel Australian parents are used to checking.

That matters for the sugar question specifically. US labelling rules and Australia’s FSANZ Code aren’t identical, and sugar content is reported and regulated slightly differently between the two markets. Gerber’s puree ranges have faced the same broad criticism in the US that Australian brands face here, particularly around fruit-heavy pouches and their snack puffs, which nutrition advocates in the US have flagged for sugar content relative to their marketing as a healthy snack. If you do come across imported Gerber product in Australia, the same rule applies as with any local brand: read the sugars line, check where fruit sits in the ingredients list, and don’t assume an imported label is automatically better or worse than what’s on the shelf at home.

Lower-sugar swaps that still fit a busy week

Rotate vegetable-forward pouches as the default

Instead of cutting pouches out altogether, which isn’t realistic for most working parents, dietitians generally suggest making vegetable-led combinations (think pea and broccoli, or pumpkin and lentil) the everyday default, and keeping fruit-only pouches for occasional use, similar to how you’d treat any other sweet treat.

Read past the front-of-pack claim

“No added sugar”, “99% fruit” and “organic” all sound reassuring, and none of them tell you the actual sugars-per-100g figure. That number is the only one that matters when you’re comparing two products side by side.

Use plain full-fat dairy and mashed fresh fruit where you can

Plain yoghurt with mashed banana, or steamed vegetable and lentil mash made in a batch on the weekend, will almost always land lower in sugar than a packaged equivalent, and it costs less over a week too.

• Check the sugars line first: before brand, before price, before the picture on the front.
• Favour vegetable-forward over fruit-only: as the everyday pouch, saving fruit-only for occasional use.
• Treat dessert-style pouches as treats: not meal replacements, no matter how the packaging is styled.
• Batch-cook when you can: even one session a fortnight of home-mashed veg and fruit cuts down reliance on the sweetest packaged options.
• Don’t panic about the occasional sweet pouch: consistency across the week matters far more than any single feed.

Frequently asked questions