Prepackaged baby food makes things far easier for parents. They don’t have to cook and puree their food constantly and when they are done there is no mess aside from whatever dribbled out of the baby’s mouth. But apparently what everyone assumed was safe for consumption doesn’t even meet the standards of our drinking water. A recent report shows numerous baby foods contain levels of lead and other heavy metals that could seriously hinder a child’s development.
“Ingredients in many baby foods, including some organic fare, are contaminated with heavy metals like arsenic, lead and cadmium at levels that are far higher than those allowed in products like bottled water, congressional investigators said on Thursday.”
“This is an endemic problem that’s been swept under the rug and never addressed,” said Tracey Woodruff, director of the program on reproductive health and the environment at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the preparation of the congressional report.
The report, by a subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, drew on data from four companies that responded to requests for information about testing policies and test results regarding their products.
Investigators reserved their harshest criticism for three other companies that did not provide the requested information: Walmart, which sells Parents’ Choice and Parent’s Choice Organic products; Sprout Organic Foods; and Campbell Soup Company, maker of Plum Organics baby foods.
Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, Democrat of Illinois, who is chairman of the subcommittee, said the failure to provide the requested information “raises the concern that perhaps they have evidence of even higher metallic content in their baby foods, compared to their competitors.”
“The Food and Drug Administration limits bottled water to 10 parts per billion (ppb) for inorganic arsenic, 5 ppb for lead and 5 ppb for cadmium. The Environmental Protection Agency has capped mercury in drinking water at 2 ppb.
“To this day, baby foods containing toxic heavy metals bear no label or warning to parents. Manufacturers are free to test only ingredients, or, for the vast majority of baby foods, to conduct no testing at all,” the congressional report says. “FDA has only finalized one metal standard for one narrow category of baby food, setting a 100 ppb (parts per billion) inorganic arsenic standard for infant rice cereal. But this FDA standard is far too high to protect against the neurological effects on children.”
The report notes that Nurture’s HappyBABY had as much as 180 ppb inorganic arsenic while more than 25% of its products before sale contained over 100 ppb of this metal.
Hain’s Earth’s Best Organic reportedly sold baby products with as much as 129 ppb inorganic arsenic and typically only tested its ingredients and not its finished products.
Beech-Nut had ingredients that tested as high as 913.4 ppb arsenic, while Gerber reportedly used rice flour that tested over 90 ppb.”
“In the meantime, parents can protect babies by not feeding them infant rice cereal or other products like snacks made with rice flour. Healthy-sounding snacks like Nurture Happy Baby’s apple and broccoli puffs, or its strawberry and beet puffs, contained high levels of arsenic, according to the report.
Though rice cereal is often one of a baby’s first foods, both white and brown rice contain levels of inorganic arsenic that are up to six times higher than some other cereals made from grains like barley, oatmeal, organic quinoa, wheat or buckwheat, according to the nonprofit group Healthy Babies Bright Futures.”
“Parents should not give babies juice to drink, the group says, and should provide a variety of fruits and vegetables, so as to minimize exposure to carrots and sweet potatoes, which may be high in lead and cadmium.”
Looks like it’s back to the oatmeal and blending. These companies really should be held accountable for stupifying the nation if they have been feeding our babies lead at concentrations known to be toxic. This is a huge deal and will likely lead to a trial.
dan