Updated 1133 GMT (1933 HKT) August 11, 2022
(CNN)Making baby food at home with store-bought products won’t reduce the amount of toxic heavy metals in the food your baby eats, according to a new report released exclusively to CNN.
“We found no evidence to suggest that homemade baby foods made from store-bought products are better than store-bought baby foods in terms of heavy metal contamination,” said Jane Houlihan, director of research for Healthy Babies, Bright Futures. , the paper. HBBF, a non-profit coalition of scientists and donors, which produced the report, has a stated mission to reduce children’s exposure to neurotoxic chemicals.
Researchers tested 288 foods purchased at stores and farmers’ markets across the United States — including grains, fruits, vegetables, snacks, teething foods, and household items that children eat, such as cereals and rice cakes — for lead. , arsenic, mercury and cadmium. These heavy metals are among the World Health Organization’s top 10 chemicals of greatest concern to infants and children.
“Toxic metal exposure can be harmful to the developing brain. It is linked to problems with learning, cognition, and behavior,” according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Researchers sifted through data from an additional 7,000 food tests reported in published studies and by the US Food and Drug Administration.
The results showed that 94% of manufactured baby foods, family foods and homemade purees made from purchased raw foods contained detectable amounts of one or more heavy metals.
Lead was found in 90% of manufactured baby food purchased by shoppers for the report and in 80% of store-bought family food and homemade purees. There is no safe level of lead, according to the AAP.
Arsenic was found in 68% of baby food bought in the store and in 72% of family food bought or prepared at home. Cadmium was found in 65% of purchased baby food and 60% of family foods, while mercury was present in 7% of store-bought baby food and 10% of family foods. (The highest levels of mercury are found in seafood, which was not tested in this analysis.)
The new report is a follow-up to a November 2019 report in which Healthy Babies, Bright Futures tested 168 foods purchased from major baby food manufacturers. That analysis found that 95% of baby food bought in the store contained lead, 73% contained arsenic, 75% contained cadmium and 32% contained mercury. A quarter of the foods tested that year contained all four heavy metals.
“After that report we saw so many people saying that you can get around this problem by making your own baby food at home, so we decided to check,” Houlihan said. “We suspected that we would find heavy metals in all kinds of food because they are ubiquitous contaminants in the environment.
“And that’s exactly what we found – there were heavy metals in foods from every part of the store,” Houlihan said. “What this says is that because the FDA is setting standards for heavy metals in baby food, they need to go beyond the baby food aisle.”
What is a parent or carer to do? Feed a child with as many different types of food as possible, said the pediatrician Dr. Mark Corkins, chairman of the Nutrition Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He was not involved in the study.
“If you spread out foods, and offer a wide variety of choices, you’ll have less toxicity,” Corkins said. “And nutritionally, that’s always the right thing to do to get the most micronutrients from the food you eat.”
Does buying organic help?
The report found that buying organic also did not reduce heavy metal levels, which was “not unknown or surprising,” said Corkins, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. To see also : New York State Law to Reduce Hunger and Food Waste – Food Tank.
“It’s the soil and the water that’s contaminated with arsenic and other heavy metals, so it doesn’t matter if it’s organic or conventional farming methods,” Corkins said. That would apply to locally grown crops or even backyard gardens, unless the soil was certified metal-free.
However, buying organic can help avoid other toxins that the new report did not consider, such as herbicides and pesticides, said Dr. Leonardo Trasande, director of environmental pediatrics at NYU Langone Health. He was not involved in the study.
“Eating organic food has other benefits, including a reduction in synthetic pesticides that are known to be just as bad for children, if not even more problematic,” Trasande said.
“We have seen that multiple studies show significant effects of synthetic pesticides on cognitive function in children as a result of prenatal exposure. We have seen images of the brain in which certain parts are smaller that are critical for higher order functioning after exposure,” he added. added. “It would be a simple step to just eat organic because whatever we’re talking about in this report, it’s good for you.”
Experts agree that tackling toxins in baby foods is a job for government organizations and they will need to work with growers, suppliers and manufacturers to establish regulations and safeguards. Meanwhile, parents can make a difference.
“Even one simple choice each day to lower a child’s exposure will make a difference, whether that’s staying away from rice-based snacks and serving a diced apple instead or choosing not to eat carrots and sweet potatoes served every day,” Houlihan said.
“With heavy metals and other toxins the risks increase over a lifetime,” she said. “So, even if a child is told some of these foods up to his second birthday, interest will start from there with lower exposure to toxins. Every choice is important.”
Least contaminated foods
Tested foods with low metal content contained one-eighth as much heavy metal contamination as foods with the highest levels, Houlihan said. See the article : Stats: U.S. The Motion of Will Holds Towards Even Inflation. These are foods that can be “eaten freely,” the report suggested.
Fresh bananas, with heavy metal levels of 1.8 parts per billion, were the least contaminated foods tested for the report. That’s an “82-fold difference in the average total level of heavy metals” from the most contaminated food, rice cakes, which tested at 147 parts per billion, according to the investigation.
After bananas, the least contaminated foods were grits, processed baby food meats, butternut squash, lamb, apples, pork, eggs, oranges and watermelon, in that order. Other foods with lower levels of contamination included green beans, peas, cucumber, and soft or lean home-cooked meat, the report found.
An infant formula made with lead-free tap water was recommended. Tap water that has been tested and is lead-free is always a good choice. Milk is also a good choice, except for babies 12 months and older.
According to the report, some healthy low-metal foods, such as yogurt, unsweetened applesauce, beans, cheese, hard-boiled eggs and grapes cut lengthwise, were good choices for snacks for babies.
Fresh and frozen fruit — including those used in homemade purees — were also options. But don’t use canned fruit if you can avoid it: “Tests find lead 30 times more often in canned fruit than in fresh and frozen fruit,” the report said.
Parents and caregivers can also lower their children’s exposure to heavy metals by making some smart substitutions, the report said.
Using a frozen banana for a teething baby instead of a rice-based biscuit or rice bran could lower overall heavy metal intake by 95%, according to the report. Another recommended teething aid: peeled and cooled cucumber spears.
Avoid or limit these foods
The most contaminated foods for children were rice-based: “Rice cakes, rice puffs, rice crispies and brown rice without any cooking water removed are highly contaminated with inorganic arsenic, which is the most toxic form of arsenic,” Houlihan said. To see also : The Food: Vegan Ice Cream.
Arsenic is a natural element found in soil, water and air, and because rice is grown in water, it is particularly good at absorbing inorganic arsenic. (“Inorganic” is a chemical term and has nothing to do with the farming method.) Brown and wild rice are the worst offenders, as the bran contains the highest concentrations of arsenic.
Previous research has shown that even low levels of inorganic arsenic exposure can affect a child’s neurodevelopment. A meta-analysis of studies on the topic found that a 50% increase in urinary arsenic levels was associated with a 0.4 point decrease in IQ in children aged 5 to 15 years.
HBBF tests found that rice cakes were the most contaminated with inorganic arsenic, followed by rice crispies, rice-based puffs and brown rice. The report recommended avoiding these foods completely, unless the brown rice is cooked with extra water added before eating (such as pasta). Doing so is best with all rice, including white and wild rice, the report said, as it can reduce arsenic levels by up to 60%.
Biscuits or toothpicks based on rice and white rice came next on the most contaminated list, the report said. White rice is milled to remove the outer layers, but experts say arsenic levels are still high enough to worry about, especially if rice is a daily staple.
“Inorganic arsenic averaged 100 parts per billion in brown rice baby cereal and 74 parts per billion in white rice baby cereal in our tests,” Houlihan said. “Baby food companies have taken brown rice cereal off the market because of its high arsenic levels.”
Parents and caregivers can help stay away from high-arsenic varieties of white rice grown in Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, or simply “USA” and instead choose low-arsenic basmati rice from California, India and of Pakistan, as well as sushi rice from the US, the report said.
Serve these foods rarely
After rice-based foods, the analysis found the highest levels of heavy metals in raisins, non-rice teething crackers, granola bars with raisins and oat ring cereals. But those weren’t the only foods of concern: Dried fruit, grape juice, arrowroot crackers and sunflower seed butter contained high amounts of at least one toxic metal, according to the report.
“Many foods have a unique kind of heavy metal profile,” Houlihan explained. “For example, we saw very high levels of cadmium in things like spinach, leaf lettuce and peanut butter.”
However, the human body does not absorb cadmium as easily as other heavy metals, and for that reason “it does not have as high a level of concern,” Houlihan said.
“There is not as much evidence that cadmium is neurotoxic to children, or at least the body of evidence is not there at the same levels as lead and arsenic,” she said. “Lead and arsenic damage is not reversible – these are permanent effects on IQ, learning ability and behaviour, so it’s a big deal.”
Root and tuber vegetables may have higher levels of heavy metals such as lead and arsenic because they grow underground. In fact, the investigation found that carrots, sweet potatoes, squash and many types of potatoes had high levels of heavy metals in children’s diets.
Even the same food can have different levels of toxic metals, according to the report. For example, a shopper in Raleigh, North Carolina, bought a sweet potato with 60.7 parts per billion of lead — 10 times more than the sweet potato puree she bought at the store. A Chicago shopper bought fresh carrots with eight times more arsenic than the ready-made carrot baby food she brought home, the investigation found.
But shoppers in Tennessee and California found the opposite — their fresh produce had minimal levels of heavy metals compared to the manufactured baby food brands they bought.
“As a parent, you don’t know what you’re picking out of the produce box,” Houlihan said. “Is it elevated because of the cultivar—the particular type of sweet potato or carrot? Or is it elevated because it’s grown in an area with naturally high levels of lead in the soil?
It will be the responsibility of government regulators and industry, Houlihan said, to answer these questions. The FDA, for example, has a Closer to Zero campaign that could address the issue.
CNN has reached out to the FDA for comment but has not yet received a response.
“And remember, if you are protecting the basic ingredients that parents use to make food at home, you are not only protecting babies and young children, you are also protecting pregnant women. Babies in utero are especially at risk toxins and the brain is growing so fast.”
With no way to know levels of toxic metals in the soil where produce is grown, parents and caregivers need to take one more step in their efforts to avoid these substances, Houlihan suggested. In addition to mixing up the variety of foods and not serving the same options every day, parents can “choose different brands or types of foods or shop at different stores from week to week to avoid a regular source of high metals .”
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