FAQs

We don’t mind if you make a fuss!

Here are a few questions we are asked regularly. Please contact us if you have a question that’s not covered.

Why do Eat Fussy meals have a long shelf life?

The shelf life of ready meals is restricted to 10 days unless there are controls in place to prevent the growth of Clostridium botulinum. This is a particularly nasty bacterium which is rarely implicated in food poisoning, but when it does, it is often fatal.

There are various control mechanisms (e.g high salt) but the only one which is suitable for kids meals is a specific heat process (steam fresh cooking otherwise known as pasteurisation).

So because we pasteurise the Eat Fussy meals, botulinum is eliminated and we can allocate a shelf life of greater than 10 days.

How long can the product be frozen for?

The Eat Fussy products can be frozen for up to 3 months so long as they are frozen before the Use By date shown on the pack.

Why does the plastic film not peel off the meal?

This is to guarantee that the product is 100% food safe and cannot be tampered with prior to purchase, ensuring the integrity of the product is maintained.

Why are the meals not organic?

There’s a lot of fuss surrounding this topic, but we’ve done our research…

All British and European manufacturers of food for children under the age of 3 operate under very strict legislation controlled by the EU. The number of additives and permitted ingredients that can be used is tightly controlled and applies equally whether the food is non-organic or organic.

The most recent EU legislation specifies that non-organic baby food must now contain less than 10 parts per billion of food pesticide residue and in some produce 3 parts per billion. This is so infinitesimally small it is to all intents and purposes absent.  Interestingly a soil association accredited producer does not even work to these levels! Therefore to comply with the law, our food – whilst it’s not labelled organic - must have almost non-existent levels of pesticide residue.

So since there is very little difference between organic and non-organic (in relation to the amount of pesticide that can be present in the product for children of this age), we decided not to use expensive organic products. Instead, it has meant that I can include more meat, chicken or fish in the recipes and provide a high quality product at an attractive price.

We regularly test the ingredients we use at the government-approved Central Science Laboratory in York. Here, the advanced pesticide detection equipment ensures that I comply with the exacting standards of the legislation for foods manufactured for children under the age of 3.