Why are most of your snacks for age 3+? Can my younger child eat them?Updated 10 months ago

In the UK, foods intended specifically for infants and young children must meet certain criteria in order to legally be declared as suitable for these ages. Under this law, ‘infants’ refers to children under 12 months and ‘young children’ refers to children aged between one and three years. 

These regulations mean that if a business wants to declare a food suitable for anyone under three years, it must meet a range of nutritional and compositional standards. The legislation, for example, sets out a legal limit for the amount of fat permitted, but no rule around the amount of sugar! This legislation is considered by some somewhat outdated, but as a responsible food business we are required to and continue to follow the law.

This means that some of our snacks cannot be explicitly marketed as suitable for children under three, as the fat content is higher than the permitted amount laid out in the legislation. This does not necessarily mean these foods are unsuitable for children within the age group, and it’s worth remembering that you probably pick up many foods items each week for your children that don’t have age range suitabilities added but form part of their balanced diet.

Our Children’s Dietitian, Lucy Upton, reviews every one of our products carefully, from ingredients to nutritional composition. Ultimately you as a parent are best placed to decide which of our products is appropriate for your child based on their age, the rest of their diet and needs, but we believe our snack range is a huge improvement on many of the commercially manufactured options currently available to parents.

It is worth bearing in mind that if we didn’t declare any age guidance on pack, then these rules wouldn’t apply to us. However, we made the decision to give parents guidance around age suitability for our meals to help them determine which size/style could be best for their child, and have followed the same format for our snack range. An unfortunate consequence of this is that we therefore have to declare some of our snacks as ‘3 years+’ while a high-sugar, commercial confectionery product, which carries no age guidance, can be viewed as suitable for any age.