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So why did you get them?Most likely, they didn't know what would happen. Sure, "everyone knows" this stuff is not the best choice, but also every parent knows that at least half of what "everyone knows" is pure, unadulterated, value-negative bullshit.
Or, perhaps their well-meaning friends or relatives got the first pouch.
> in rare cases you do whatever works to get them to eat anything. But most children can be reared without ever touching anything like that
Sure, until the first time they taste the stuff.
We held off with sweets until our older one was ~3 y.o., but this is a feat you can't repeat with a younger sibling, unless you run some kind of ridiculously efficient home prison. Our younger one got up to speed with everything in terms of food and entertainment with her older sister, by then 4 y.o., simply because the latter was always happy to share.
I mean, we probably could've stopped it if we really tried. But this stuff isn't even particularly dangerous, unless someone leaks lead in the production, which is a failure mode you can't avoid even with homegrown vegetables. Otherwise, there's only so much effort we'd want to expend over bullshit fear-mongering.
Oh, also, a funny thing: we tried early on to substitute the shop-bought pouches with DIY ones - making various forms of smoothies and sludges and putting them in reusable pouches. Guess what, neither of our kids would take more than one sip of anything we made like this. Not that I blame them - obviously anything home-made tastes like shit compared to commercial equivalent, and even a 1.5 y.o. is able to tell when you're trying to substitute something they want with a fake.
> Unless your partner isn't on the same page, you are in control, right? The toddler certainly isn't buying groceries.
I wanted to say, "tell me you don't have kids without telling..." but I see you do, so let's use this as a reminder that parenting is high-variability occupation. We both have kids at the same age, and where for you this is a perfectly reasonable remark, it made me burst out laughing. I mean, 4 y.o. is the age where whenever two kids meet for more than 5 seconds, chances are they're sharing whatever food they have on hand...