I am suspicious that the repeated comparison to standards for water here aren't really fair. Heavy metals are a natural occurrence in pretty much all foods that we eat, regardless of environmental pollution (though pollution does have a notable impact).
For instance, it's incredibly common for even the highest-quality 'organic' produce to contain levels of heavy metals such as lead in amounts that drastically exceed California's prop 65 standards. Things like avocados and watermelons often have close to 10x more lead than what prop 65 considers acceptable. Spinach, wines, cruciferous vegetables and nuts tend to be even worse. Even when grown in relatively unpolluted soils with 'natural' lead levels (50-400 ppm range), many such produce items STILL drastically exceed prop 65 standards.
That said, I'm not a food safety expert or toxicologist, so I might have an incredibly bad take on this.
Honestly, the whole thing reads like a hit piece. There are published standards for exposure levels in foods but the committee intentionally used inapplicable standards such as the much more stringent standard for purified water. Their reasoning is, "It is not sound logic to say that water is unsafe to drink if it contains over 5 ppb lead, but candy and fruit juice can be ten and twenty times higher than that limit."
The report is also full of frankly offensive conjecture. You'll find statements like, "Whether due to evasion or negligence, Sprout’s failure to respond raises serious concerns about the presence of toxic heavy metals in its baby foods," about any company that didn't respond to the committee in the way they felt appropriate.
They also repeatedly state that the levels of heavy metals in baby foods are unsafe but they never actually make a case for it. They just take it as truth and titled the report as such.
Finally, I would keep in mind that this is a congressional oversight committee staff report. This wasn't made by scientists. Nobody involved in the creation of the report has working knowledge of food safety or testing procedures. All testing in the report was provided by the companies in question. This report was made by a team of people working for the House as the foundation for proposing new laws and regulations and as such it's an inherently political report.
Frankly, after the publishing of this report it's doubtful that any company will be willing to work with this subcommittee ever again and they would be right to refuse.
> Honestly, the whole thing reads like a hit piece.
To me it reads like cognitive dissonance. They write multiple damning statements (yes based in science) but conclude with 'voluntary changes' and 'more research'.
I'll mention that the piece speaks about FDA not needing baby food manufacturers to test the final product of the food, only the ingredients. Multiple independent studies confirm that the manufacturing of baby food products is outrageous, in terms of what is allowed. Compared to adult food, it's a double standard.
Instead, baby foods should be held to a higher standard. But this Democrat Committee is okay with 3 companies (of 7) not responding to their inquiry, only 'suggesting' private changes, and kicks the can down the road with a cop-out like 'more research needs to be done by the FDA'.
It's a long document but corruption and negligence is bipartisan [1].
[1] - This is b/c the report condemns Trump for hiding hazardous facts about baby food products but then with those facts they/Dem-led only commit to lip service.
With our child we weren't able to breastfeed. We had to use formula. All the U.S. brands like Gerber, Enfamil, and others gave the baby terrible colic.
We did extensive research (my wife's waking hours were consumed with this). We found Hipp Combiotic milk, and it was wonderful. It was a German brand, and adhered to EU standards for child health. Colic: gone. Within a month or two our child hit the 98% percentile for size and weight and stayed there.
Shortly after the baby switched to solid food, the U.S. began to "crack down" on imported formula that "didn't meet FDA standards." The EU standards for food safety are generally higher than FDA standards. I'm so glad we were able to get that formula before the government interfered.
I went through a similar thing with my son. The best part was when an acquaintance recommended the “easier on the stomach” variant of one of the popular formula brands. I checked the box, first ingredient: corn syrup!
For what it’s worth, it’s very hard to be sure switching brands is the causation of a better outcome vs just a correlation. Babies change rapidly so it’s possible that unrelated development is there true source of recovery. But it was definitely a dramatic difference for us exactly when we switched formulas too.
For us it was night and day with the different formula. We even tried going back to old formulas see if it really was the new formula. Immediate problems.
Hipp didn't have corn syrup, and did have the right nutrients for each stage.
Height and weight early in a child's life has more to do with nutrition than with genetics. Our child was physically healthy and strong. No obesity, just good growth and physical development. Crawling, walking, running all in line with normal ranges.
Kiddo is in first grade now, still the size of a child roughly two years older, no fat, just healthy.
My baby is similarly large for her age. Eventually she'll probably hit a growth plateau and approach the mean. But for now it means a lot less worrying about her nutrition than if she were bouncing around the fiftieth percentile.
My baby just started eating solid food. It's really easy to make that kind of baby food at home. Baby formula, on the other hand, is designed for younger babies and is much harder.
Baby had a tongue-tie and didn't properly develop the motion for nursing. The tongue-tie was corrected on day 2, but nursing never worked. Latching went OK, but drawing the milk out didn't and the baby would give up and wail. One or two missed pumpings and the milk dried up, because it never fully came in.
We tried for three months. My wife was reaching the end of her rope, emotionally (PPD is a horrifying thing). Formula that worked was a godsend.
This was our first child. We took the classes, even selected a hospital based on their success rate with natural childbirth. We had intended for no drugs, breastfeeding, all the ideals of caring for an infant...
The baby was a few days late. We went in for an ultrasound, as we had to do daily at that point. As the ultrasound completed, the nurse told us we'd have to stay. When the baby is getting ready to come out, it drinks the amniotic fluid, so there's much less of it. That should have coincided with the beginning of labor, but it didn't. We had to induce.
I went home to get our bags for the hospital stay. When I came back, they began to induce labor with pitosin. It was an agonizingly slow process, and it was failing. After 60+ hours of labor, with the back of the baby's head pushing against my wife's spine ("back labor") my wife chose an epidural for the pain.
It didn't work. At 72 hours of inducing, at maximum recommended doses of pitosin, the baby's heart rate was indicating distress, and dilation was still insufficient.
We had a C-section. Later, the baby couldn't nurse properly. We used formula.
We'd wanted to do what was natural, had planned to do it. If that had been all we had, we'd have lost both mother and child in childbirth. If, in another age, we'd not had the means to hire a wet nurse, we'd have lost the child even if it had been born properly.
I'm so glad that we were able to get all the care we needed.
As a parent who has been feeding her 9 month old son various baby food products for the past few months, I'm not sure how to respond to this news. Here are my thoughts:
1. If the baby food companies are correct and the contamination is coming from the soil, isn't it safer to buy baby food that's at least tested than feeding my son homemade food when I don't know which farms it comes from?
2. Is this heavy metal soil contamination new? Babies have been fed manufactured purees for several generations already, so you would think we'd be able to observe results of heavy metal consumption in the older population.
3. The report's only recommendation to parents is that they stop feeding foods with heavy metals to babies, but they don't provide a complete list of products to avoid, which any recall would. Why?
I definitely wanted to throw away all my baby food when I read this, but now I feel like it's pointless. Unless I fed my baby a vegan diet from fruits and vegetables I grew on soil I personally tested, I don't think it's possible to avoid these heavy metals entirely. Am I wrong?
1. Home made food can be home grown food and you can test your own soil. I would think the toxic levels would be higher in a factory farm setting vs a small farm.
2. No and levels may be lower now compared to years ago when we had more heavy industry.
3. It's a hit piece and shouldn't be taken at face value.
I don’t have good answers to your questions, but you can still order European baby foods like the Dutch version of HiPP at some smaller vendors like littlebundle.com. We have been feeding this to my infant son for over a month now and he has been doing great.
So as someone who trys to follow food safety, high levels of Arsenic in rice based products is entirely not surprising to me.
Consumer reports[1] (and others) have been discussing the high levels of Arsenic in all Rice grown in the US (even organic). Its in the soil from previous growing methods (older pesticides I believe).
On the other hand, lead, mercury and cadmium in these foods is news to me...
I’m very skeptical of this. Do “adult foods” have similar levels of heavy metals? I’m guessing they do. The alternative would be that all these manufacturers are conspiring to use some kind of special high-toxin supply chain just to poison babies.
I have not researched this deeply, but it's my understanding that infants and young children are generally more sensitive to toxic chemicals, heavy metals, radiation, etc than humans. So while it may be the case that the levels in baby and adult food are similar, it may only be a cause for concern in baby food.
This is what’s wrong with globalization. Key parts of the supply chain have been outsourced. Landed companies have deniability when issues like this arise and face very little in consequences.
The food we’ve been feeding our babies has 10-30x the legal limits of what is allowed in our drinking water. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m very tempted to go buy a pitch fork.
But once you have your pitchfork, what's next? Most produce contains levels of heavy metals due to soil conditions that in many cases cannot be remediated without extreme expense that renders farming economically unviable, but even then, even relatively pristine soils still yield produce with eyebrow-raising levels of lead and other questionable substances.
Not attempting to defend the food industry here, but I also don't really see an obviously viable path to remediating the situation.
It doesn't lesson the problem if this is to be expected from our farm practices. The title of the report says "Tainted with Dangerous Levels", so we have a problem or congress is being unnecessarily political.
If nothing else it is evidence of a societal issue that has pushed mothers away from breast feeding (where presumably the human body is able to filter background levels of heavy metals) towards consumer products harvested with no evidence for quality controls.
Babies are at much higher risk than adults are. High amounts of lead as a child can significantly cripple your brain, while the same exposure as an adult has reduced (but considerable) effects.
I get that. The question is whether there are the same high levels on all foods, or there is something very wrong on baby food pipelines only. And which food types are the most affected, which I didn't manage to understand from a cursory look at the document.
Readit News
For instance, it's incredibly common for even the highest-quality 'organic' produce to contain levels of heavy metals such as lead in amounts that drastically exceed California's prop 65 standards. Things like avocados and watermelons often have close to 10x more lead than what prop 65 considers acceptable. Spinach, wines, cruciferous vegetables and nuts tend to be even worse. Even when grown in relatively unpolluted soils with 'natural' lead levels (50-400 ppm range), many such produce items STILL drastically exceed prop 65 standards.
That said, I'm not a food safety expert or toxicologist, so I might have an incredibly bad take on this.
The report is also full of frankly offensive conjecture. You'll find statements like, "Whether due to evasion or negligence, Sprout’s failure to respond raises serious concerns about the presence of toxic heavy metals in its baby foods," about any company that didn't respond to the committee in the way they felt appropriate.
They also repeatedly state that the levels of heavy metals in baby foods are unsafe but they never actually make a case for it. They just take it as truth and titled the report as such.
Finally, I would keep in mind that this is a congressional oversight committee staff report. This wasn't made by scientists. Nobody involved in the creation of the report has working knowledge of food safety or testing procedures. All testing in the report was provided by the companies in question. This report was made by a team of people working for the House as the foundation for proposing new laws and regulations and as such it's an inherently political report.
Frankly, after the publishing of this report it's doubtful that any company will be willing to work with this subcommittee ever again and they would be right to refuse.
To me it reads like cognitive dissonance. They write multiple damning statements (yes based in science) but conclude with 'voluntary changes' and 'more research'.
I'll mention that the piece speaks about FDA not needing baby food manufacturers to test the final product of the food, only the ingredients. Multiple independent studies confirm that the manufacturing of baby food products is outrageous, in terms of what is allowed. Compared to adult food, it's a double standard.
Instead, baby foods should be held to a higher standard. But this Democrat Committee is okay with 3 companies (of 7) not responding to their inquiry, only 'suggesting' private changes, and kicks the can down the road with a cop-out like 'more research needs to be done by the FDA'.
It's a long document but corruption and negligence is bipartisan [1].
[1] - This is b/c the report condemns Trump for hiding hazardous facts about baby food products but then with those facts they/Dem-led only commit to lip service.
We did extensive research (my wife's waking hours were consumed with this). We found Hipp Combiotic milk, and it was wonderful. It was a German brand, and adhered to EU standards for child health. Colic: gone. Within a month or two our child hit the 98% percentile for size and weight and stayed there.
Shortly after the baby switched to solid food, the U.S. began to "crack down" on imported formula that "didn't meet FDA standards." The EU standards for food safety are generally higher than FDA standards. I'm so glad we were able to get that formula before the government interfered.
For what it’s worth, it’s very hard to be sure switching brands is the causation of a better outcome vs just a correlation. Babies change rapidly so it’s possible that unrelated development is there true source of recovery. But it was definitely a dramatic difference for us exactly when we switched formulas too.
Hipp didn't have corn syrup, and did have the right nutrients for each stage.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/parenting/baby/european-f...
Wouldn’t you want to be on 50th percentile?
Kiddo is in first grade now, still the size of a child roughly two years older, no fat, just healthy.
We tried for three months. My wife was reaching the end of her rope, emotionally (PPD is a horrifying thing). Formula that worked was a godsend.
This was our first child. We took the classes, even selected a hospital based on their success rate with natural childbirth. We had intended for no drugs, breastfeeding, all the ideals of caring for an infant...
The baby was a few days late. We went in for an ultrasound, as we had to do daily at that point. As the ultrasound completed, the nurse told us we'd have to stay. When the baby is getting ready to come out, it drinks the amniotic fluid, so there's much less of it. That should have coincided with the beginning of labor, but it didn't. We had to induce.
I went home to get our bags for the hospital stay. When I came back, they began to induce labor with pitosin. It was an agonizingly slow process, and it was failing. After 60+ hours of labor, with the back of the baby's head pushing against my wife's spine ("back labor") my wife chose an epidural for the pain.
It didn't work. At 72 hours of inducing, at maximum recommended doses of pitosin, the baby's heart rate was indicating distress, and dilation was still insufficient.
We had a C-section. Later, the baby couldn't nurse properly. We used formula.
We'd wanted to do what was natural, had planned to do it. If that had been all we had, we'd have lost both mother and child in childbirth. If, in another age, we'd not had the means to hire a wet nurse, we'd have lost the child even if it had been born properly.
I'm so glad that we were able to get all the care we needed.
1. If the baby food companies are correct and the contamination is coming from the soil, isn't it safer to buy baby food that's at least tested than feeding my son homemade food when I don't know which farms it comes from?
2. Is this heavy metal soil contamination new? Babies have been fed manufactured purees for several generations already, so you would think we'd be able to observe results of heavy metal consumption in the older population.
3. The report's only recommendation to parents is that they stop feeding foods with heavy metals to babies, but they don't provide a complete list of products to avoid, which any recall would. Why?
I definitely wanted to throw away all my baby food when I read this, but now I feel like it's pointless. Unless I fed my baby a vegan diet from fruits and vegetables I grew on soil I personally tested, I don't think it's possible to avoid these heavy metals entirely. Am I wrong?
2. No and levels may be lower now compared to years ago when we had more heavy industry.
3. It's a hit piece and shouldn't be taken at face value.
Consumer reports[1] (and others) have been discussing the high levels of Arsenic in all Rice grown in the US (even organic). Its in the soil from previous growing methods (older pesticides I believe).
On the other hand, lead, mercury and cadmium in these foods is news to me...
1. https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-muc...
Companies such as Walmart refused Congressional inquiry.
The food we’ve been feeding our babies has 10-30x the legal limits of what is allowed in our drinking water. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m very tempted to go buy a pitch fork.
Not attempting to defend the food industry here, but I also don't really see an obviously viable path to remediating the situation.
We still use lead in many aircraft fuels.
If nothing else it is evidence of a societal issue that has pushed mothers away from breast feeding (where presumably the human body is able to filter background levels of heavy metals) towards consumer products harvested with no evidence for quality controls.
Are only babies at risk, or are we all?