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Panorama investigates how food specially marketed to parents as healthy meals for toddlers contains "high" levels of salt and sugar, on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ One tonight.

Annabel Karmel has made her name encouraging parents to cook healthy, home-made meals for their children. She's sold more than three million recipe books and now has her own best-selling range of ready meals for toddlers.

But Panorama: What's In Our Kids' Food? (Monday 25 January, 8.30pm, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ One) finds her toddlers' lasagne contains more than twice as much sugar as an ordinary supermarket lasagne [* see Notes to Editors].

Annabel Karmel says: "Children prefer sweeter foods to adults so that's probably why it's sweeter than an adult's lasagne but we have actually made a decision to take all of the sugar out of our meals because we have found a way to take the acidity out of the tomatoes by adding fruit juice, so that is something we've already been working on."

Panorama reporter Shelley Jofre also finds that six out of eight of Annabel Karmel's ready meals contain more than a third of the daily recommended salt intake for a child aged one to three years (two grams per day).

But Annabel Karmel says: "I spoke to CASH – and I have worked with them in the past, you know, the Consensus Action Against Salt (sic) – and we talked about ready meals and we talked about a main meal, and they thought that a main meal for a child of one to four with one gram of salt in it was absolutely fine."

She added that she expects that a one-year-old child would only eat half the ready meal.

However, Panorama spoke to CASH (Consensus Action On Salt And Health) who said: "Any meal should have a third or less of the maximum recommended intake."

Annabel Karmel asks: "Have you ever had a fussy child who won't eat? I deal with mums all the time who have children who won't, and in order to get a child to eat, it needs to taste good. Now this is not excessive levels of salt. Twenty-nine per cent of young children under the age of three have sweets and chocolates regularly. Now that isn't a good-quality food."

Asked if the chidren wouldn't eat the meals without salt, Karmel says: "I think if it was a very bland meal then the child won't eat it."

Panorama also explores the high cost of ready meals for toddlers.

Tesco's Finest lasagne costs £6.25 per kilo, while Annabel's toddler version works out at £10.41 per kilo. An ordinary supermarket version costs less than £4 per kilo.

Annabel defends her product: "Well, meals for children of this age are made under the strictest guidelines and you have to purchase ingredients which have an extremely, extremely, low pesticide level, so you have to purchase ingredients that are more costly than ordinary ingredients, unless it's organic so it's almost organic."

One child in five starts school already overweight and, according to the latest research, children who are fat by five are likely to stay that way.

Panorama investigates the food being dished up to pre-schoolers at nurseries and at home. Panorama: What's In Our Kids' Food?, Monday 25 January 2010, 8.30pm, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ One.

Notes to Editors

* Annabel Karmel beef lasagne – 5.4g sugar per 100g
Tesco Finest beef lasagne – 1.2g per 100g
Sainsbury's lasagne – 2.6g per 100g .

PR