THE world's largest baby food manufacturer has said an increasing number of adults are turning to its pre-cooked, pureed meals because they find them easier to swallow and digest. About a quarter of those who eat the Bavaria-based firm's 100 varieties of pulped meals — from apple and cranberry breakfast to vegetable and beef hotpot — are adults, it says.

Claus Hipp said in recent years his firm's products had grown in popularity, particularly among elderly people, with stewed apple said to be a favourite.

He said the 50-year-old company — the world's largest producer of baby food, with 46 per cent of the market — was increasingly turning its attention to the adult market rather than babies as Europe's population ages.

“Not so long ago, we had twice as many births as now, and that, of course, has a knock-on effect. As our society gets ever older, baby food is showing that it has a future in the adult market,” Hipp said at a company birthday celebration.

Despite the fact that birth rates have dropped in most European countries, most notably in Germany, the company's profits rose by 90m euros last year to 500m euros.

A million and a half jars of baby food come off the Hipp production line every day. It said calorie-conscious new mothers saw the meals — which are low in fat, sugar and salt — as a way to help them lose weight after giving birth and were among new customers it had won in recent years. Sportsmen and women looking for a light meal are believed to favour the jars, too.

The company, which recommends its organic meals to babies “at the start of weaning to three years of age”, and makes no mention on its packaging of anyone above that age, said it had no intention of relaunching the products for a separate market.

“Older people can often cope with the mashed baby food better than regular meals, but we're not planning to change our advertising to target them ... we want to keep our baby image,” said Hipp, whose father, Georg, started putting baby food in jars in 1960. Eileen Steinbock of the British Dietetic Association, said pureed food could benefit people whose ability to swallow had been greatly reduced through old age.

— The Guardian, London