Rose Prince - The Savvy Shopper

There should not be any salt in baby food. Babies up to 12 months need lg or less salt a day, which they will get naturally from their milk and meals without adding extra. Never add salt to food for a baby or a child under five.

It is always better to wean a baby on to home-made foods prepared from good-quality fresh ingredients. Only feed ready-made foods when there is a genuine time constraint, in which case look out for the following brands:

All Good Stuff, Chadwick House, Birchwood Park,Warrington WA3 6AETel: 01925 830500www.allgoodstuff.com

Not so much ready meals as simple fruit and vegetable purées, frozen in individual portions. Very good for newly weaned babies. Home delivery available.

Baby Organix, Knapp Mill, Mill Road,Christchurch, Dorset BH23 2LUTel: 0800 39351 Iwww.babyorganix.co.uk

Baby Organix was among the first British mainstream organic baby food manufacturers. The recipes are based on traditional home cooking. Available from most supermarkets, as well as independent shops.

Daylesford Organic Farm Shop, Daylesford, Nr Kingham,Gloucestershire GL56 0YGTel: 01608 731700www.daylesfordorganic.com

Organic fruit and vegetable purées for babies, cooked for a short time to retain nutrients, and free from additives, salt and sugar. Home delivery available.

Goodness Direct, South March, Daventry,Northamptonshire NN11 4PHTel: 0871 871 6611www.goodnessdirect.co.uk

Goodness Direct stocks some established imported brands, including Nanny Goat Milk Infant Nutrition and follow-on milk from New Zealand, BabyNat organic infant formula and bottled purées, Familia Swiss Baby muesli and the Hipp organic range. Home delivery available.

Hipp, 165 Main Street, New Greenham Park,Newbury, Berkshire RG 19 6HNTel: 0845 050 1351www.hipp.co.uk

Hipp converted its range to organic in 1995 and sells food, infant formula milks and follow-on milks. Available from all major supermarkets, or direct from the website.

Mini Scoff, Scoff Central, Unit 3a Midlands Industrial Estate,Holt, Wiltshire BA14 6RUTel: 01225 783221www.miniscoff.co.uk

Good ideas, including organic vegetable and pasta dishes, meat recipes, and even a dish with very mild chilli to galvanise young taste buds. Home delivery available.

Mums4 (by Mothers for Children), 58 Clarendon Street,Leamington Spa CV32 4PETel: 01926 771285www.mums4.com

Organic yoghurt sweetened only by the fruit and milk, the equivalent of one teaspoon of natural sugar as opposed to the 2–3 teaspoons of sugar added to conventional children’s yoghurt. Available from Tesco, Waitrose and home delivery from Ocado.

Plum Baby, PO Box 283, Lyndhurst, Hampshire S043 7WZTel: 0845 389 0061www.plumbabysuperfoods.com

Susie Willis’s new company makes Fairtrade-accredited mango and banana purée with quinoa; spinach, parsnip and basil; and blueberry banana and vanilla.

Truuuly Scrumptious Organic Baby Food,Charmborough Farm, Charlton Road, Holcombe,Radstock, Somerset BA3 5EXTel: 01761 239300www.bathorganicbabyfood.co.uk

Imaginative recipes, frozen in microwavable pots to retain the goodness in the organic raw materials. Puréed sweet potato or apple and raisin for young babies; sweetcorn chowder, salmon and broccoli for older ones. Home delivery available.

It should be so simple. Cover a fresh pork back or belly with salt and a little sugar, leave it to cure, then mature it in a cold, dry room and you have bacon. But simple it isn’t. Traditionally cured bacon is still available but the majority of commercial bacon is produced very differently – and much of it is imported from other European countries, a long way from our breakfast tables. The same issues apply to bacon’s raw material, fresh pork. This ranges from slow-grown traditional breeds with sublime flavour and superb cooking qualities (meaning less shrinkage and no seeping white paste during cooking) to characterless, pale, fatless joints that are as disappointing as they are cheap. It is worth bearing in mind that, due to the poor cooking quality of such pork, the cheapest pork is not always the best value.

Commercially made bacon is wet cured in brine with either phosphates or a derivative. Injected into the meat, phosphates encourage the absorption of water, which boosts the weight of the meat. This is the milky liquid that seeps from the bacon as it fries. Bacon cured this way will retain a higher level of salt – a matter of concern to anyone watchful of their diet.

It can be wet or dry cured. The former is placed in a brine tub with salt, sodium nitrite (E250 – note nitrite not nitrate) and potassium nitrate (E252, otherwise known as saltpetre), plus the spices, sugar or seasoning that give it its character. Dry-cured bacon is placed in a mixture of dry salt, sodium nitrate, potassium nitrate, seasonings and/ or spices. Nitrates give bacon its pink colour. Ordinary salt produces very unappealing grey bacon. Organic production permits the use of both. After curing, it is hung to dry and mature. With no injections of phosphates, traditional cures are less salty and the flavour of the meat more obvious. These two methods are well suited to traditional, slow-growing pig breeds.

Obviously excessive salt in bacon is not healthy but it is much better to eat bacon that has been dry cured or traditionally brined (the Wiltshire cure) than injected with brine and phosphates, as is sometimes the case with commercial cured pork. The preservative with the greater problem is potassium nitrite (E249), which is not permitted in food specifically made for infants and small children because it can affect the body’s ability to carry oxygen and is therefore a danger to asthma sufferers or those with respiratory illness. Just to confuse matters further, sodium nitrate (E251) and sodium nitrite (E250) can also be used in the curing process. The latter is controversial and some retailers will not permit its use because it is potentially harmful to children.

Britain, Holland and Denmark are major producers but bacon is also made in the Irish Republic, France, Germany and Spain. The majority of bacon eaten in the UK is imported, mainly from Holland and Denmark, and the figure is on the increase. Recently it was reported that imports have increased by 38 per cent to 300,000 tonnes, and that excludes fresh pork that is imported and cured in the UK.

It is largely a moral choice. Welfare for British pigs, especially breeding sows, is of a higher standard. It is estimated that two-thirds of breeding sows in other EU countries (apart from Sweden, whose welfare standards are more on a par with UK ones) are kept indoors, confined individually in small stalls all their lives. In the UK, indoor-farmed breeding sows are confined during birth and for four weeks after the birth in ‘farrowing crates’, which measure six feet by four feet (the pigs weigh about 250 kilos). The reason given is to protect the piglets, and British pig farmers say they are trying to design a larger, more welfare-friendly crate. Once the sows have mated again – about five weeks after the last litter – they are moved to pens where they are kept in groups for the duration of the pregnancy – about five months. They may be on straw bedding, which is good, but could be on slatted floors – not good. Young indoor-reared British pigs are loose housed in pens, about half of them on deep litter straw.