Heavy metals in baby food? What parents should know and do

If there is anything you can trust to be safe, it should be baby food, right?
Well… maybe not.
A report from the US House Committee on Oversight and Reform says that commercial baby foods are tainted with dangerous levels of arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury.
Which baby food companies are involved?
The report was based on information from just four companies that make baby food: Nurture, Beech-Nut, Hain, and Gerber. Arsenic, lead, and cadmium were found in baby foods from all of the companies; mercury was found in the food from the only company that tested for it (Nurture).
Of note, three other companies (Walmart, Sprout, and Campbell’s Soup) were asked to provide the same information about their baby food products, and did not.
And that is part of the problem: this is just one report, with limited information. It’s hard to know exactly what it means about commercial baby foods in general, but it’s a report that we need to take seriously, because all four of these heavy metals can affect the developing brain. And when you harm the brain as it develops, the damage can be permanent.
Do organic baby foods contain heavy metals?
It’s important to note that organic baby foods aren’t necessarily better, in no small part because many of them contain brown rice. Many rice plants naturally contain arsenic, and brown rice has more than white rice. Over the past few years we have come to understand the problem of arsenic in rice, and both the American Academy of Pediatrics ...

Source: Harvard Health Blog - March 5, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Healthy Eating Nutrition Parenting Source Type: blogs