Is Stock ok for babies?

Choosing a supermarket stock for your family recipes.

You may have heard somewhere along the line that it's generally recommended to use low/reduced salt stock. This makes sense in theory as it's likely to have less added salt however in reality most mums of babies don’t have the time to be making homemade stock or broth. 

As far as priorities go it's probably not likely to rate highly on the list and honestly the last thing busy mums need is more pressure for perfection. There are plenty of options on the supermarket shelves and overall with the quantity used and the amount your little one consumes the difference is likely to be negligible, but we've compared the options available to help you choose the one that suits your family the best.

With so many products on the shelf, it can be overwhelming and time consuming to know which stock to pick.  That’s why we have done the hard work for you and listed the lower salt options alongside their price and sodium per 100g/100ml. Most of the products listed can be found at your major supermarkets.

We've included the sodium per 100g/100ml for each of the stocks, however keep in mind we don’t recommend counting or measuring your babies salt (sodium) intake.

You can read more information about salt in your baby’s diet in our post ‘Salt and Babies – What Do You Need To Know?’. This post also provides some guidance on reading food labels.

In general stocks are often going to be a higher salt (sodium) food in your baby’s diet. All the options listed below are considered either low or medium in salt (sodium) content.

For the sake of comparison, we have just included chicken stocks, compare the sodium content per 100g if buying alternative flavours such as beef or vegetable!

As you can see the prices and sodium ranges vary amongst the different brands.

By far the most affordable are the Coles and Woolworths own brands, they also have a very respectable sodium content which would be appropriate to include in recipes intended for your bub or to share as a family. These would be our pick if we were shopping for our own families as budget is an increasingly important factor in this climate.

The lowest sodium options were The Maggie beer and the Stock Merchant brands however at more than double and quadruple the price of the other options available, the cost just wasn't justified in our opinion, however if these ones fit in well with your families budget they are certainly a good option.

Did you find this resource helpful? Is there another type of product you would like us to compare for you? Let us know in the comments!