Moving on from milk to solids is a huge milestone for any new baby (and its parents).
And naturally, we all want to make sure we are feeding our babies the very best and most nourishing food there is. However; a new US study released earlier this week just gave us another thing to worry about as mums and dads: What exactly is in the food we are feeding to our babies?
The study, conducted by the Clean Label Project, found an alarming number of popular baby food and formula products contained lead, arsenic and BPA—yep, that’s right, mamas. Arsenic. In your baby’s dinner. Yum.
To demonstrate the scale of the problem: a whopping 80 percent of infant formula tested positive for arsenic. And it didn’t stop there. No, pollutants and toxins were discovered in anything from baby food to toddler drinks and snack.
In fact, 65 percent of all of the products tested positive for arsenic. In addition, 36 percent tested positive for lead, 58 percent for cadmium and 10 percent for acrylamide. And worryingly, 60 percent of products that claimed to be BPA-free actually tested positive for—guess what—BPA.
It might be needless to point it out, but all of these chemicals can have detrimental effects on our health, and certainly on that of an infant. When it comes to arsenic alone, the World Health Organisation states that it can lead to developmental defects, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, neurotoxicity and even cancer.
One product that is particularly at risk of containing arsenic is rice-products (which are heavily marketed towards toddlers and younger children). As for lead, this is also bad news, as studies have shown that even exposure at low levels can be linked to lower IQs, hearing issues, anaemia and behavioural problems.
Jaclyn Brown, executive director of the Clean Label Project, hopes the results of this study will prompt parents to be stronger advocates for more transparent food labelling. This is what she had to say to USA Today about the findings:
“The baby industry needs to do a better job in protecting America’s most vulnerable population.”
