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Over the last few years, studies have come out showing that the majority of baby foods contain concerning, and frankly scary, levels of the heavy metals arsenic, lead, and cadmium. As parents who wants the best for our children, it’s important to know where we can find the safest baby food without heavy metals.
Unfortunately, you can’t always trust the big brands, like Gerber, Beach-Nut, and Earth’s Best, to be free of heavy metals. Studies have found high levels of arsenic in rice cereals and other baby foods, even the organic and homemade ones.
But here’s the good news — some baby food brands actively test for heavy metals to ensure they’re producing the healthiest baby food possible. Read on to learn more about heavy metals in baby foods as well as our recommendations for the best organic baby food without heavy metals that you can buy today.
How Do Heavy Metals Get Into Baby Food?
Heavy metals get into baby foods from the soil itself, since plants pull the metals up into their roots. Rain washes pollutants from places like animal feed lots, landfills, roadways, and factories into bodies of water.
Then, these pollutants travel out of lakes and rivers into groundwater. This groundwater serves as the source of the heavy metal pollution contaminating soil and crops grown in that soil.
Other heavy metals may occur naturally in soil or get added to it by the use of fertilizers and insecticides. Unfortunately, you can’t avoid heavy metals just by buying organic or growing your own food (unless your soil has been tested to be free of metals).
However, organic baby food is less likely to have come into contact with harsher fertilizers and insecticides, so it’s still worth trying to minimize heavy metal exposure.
What Is the FDA Doing About Heavy Metals in Baby Food?
In short, not enough! The FDA has only enacted some limits in infant rice cereal and juice (two of the biggest problem foods), but they haven’t done enough to limit them in all the other organic baby foods we feed to our kids. Just like with infant formula, Europe is way ahead of the U.S. in terms of using the strictest safety standards to keep babies safe.
What’s more, food labeling laws do not require manufacturers to label foods with warnings about heavy metals. Frankly, the situation is appalling, and the FDA needs to do a lot more.
There is currently a bill proposed called the Baby Food Safety Act of 2021 that calls for lower restriction levels of heavy metals. The bill “establishes maximum levels of certain toxic elements (cadmium, and lead, mercury, and inorganic arsenic) allowable in infant and toddler food, defined as food intended to be sold for children up to 36 months old.”
The Dangers of Heavy Metals in Baby Food
Because babies and toddlers are growing so rapidly, a small dose of any toxin can be harmful to their development. Small amounts of lead, for example, can cause damage to the brain and nervous system, can slow growth, and can cause learning, behavior, hearing, and speech problems.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, there is no safe level of these heavy metals. It’s a good idea to avoid foods that are higher in these heavy metals, as well as to filter your water with a filter that removes toxins from your drinking water.
Which Baby Foods Have the Highest Levels of Heavy Metals?
One baby food with the highest levels of heavy metals is rice (used to make baby cereal and snack puffs). Rice has been consistently found to be high in arsenic. This is because the rice fields are flooded with water that contaminates the soil in which it grows.
Other foods with high levels of heavy metals are:
- Raisins
- Soy
- Non-rice teething crackers
- Granola bars with raisins
- Oat-ring cereals
- Dried fruit
- Grape juice
- Arrowroot teething crackers
- Sunflower seed butter
All of these foods have been reported to contain high amounts of at least one toxic metal. You’ll also want to avoid canned fruits if you can, as tests have found 30 times more lead in canned fruit than in fresh or frozen fruit.
How to Avoid Feeding your Baby Heavy Metals
So, how can you avoid feeding your baby food that contains heavy metals? Here are some key steps you can take.
Choose foods that are lower in heavy metals
The foods lowest in heavy metals tend to be:
- Bananas
- Grits
- Butternut squash
- Green beans
- Peas
- Cucumbers
- Beans
- Eggs
- Soft meats
- Lamb
- Apples
- Pork
- Oranges
- Watermelon
- Yogurt
- Unsweetened applesauce
- Cheese
- Grapes
You should also make sure that any infant formula you use is made with lead-free tap water. Invest in a good water filter that will remove heavy metal contaminants to ensure this. Organic cow’s milk is also a good choice for babies over 12 months old.
Instead of a rice-based teething biscuit, try substituting with a peeled cucumber spear or a frozen banana, which have dramatically lower levels of arsenic than rice.
Avoid giving your baby juice, as well, which tends to have higher heavy metal levels and is generally recommended against giving to babies due to its low nutritional content and high sugar content.
Consumer Reports published a 2019 investigation, which found that many fruit juice drinks for children contain elevated levels of arsenic and lead.
Aim for variety in your baby’s food
Instead of feeding your baby just a couple types of food, which may be higher in heavy metals, aim for variety, which can help reduce the overall exposure to heavy metals in your baby’s diet. Don’t, for example, rely too heavily on carrots and sweet potatoes alone. It’s better to mix it up.
Avoid or limit certain foods
The most heavily contaminated foods are rice-based, including rice cakes, puffs, crisped rice cereals, and brown and wild rice. These all have high levels of toxic arsenic.
The other worst offenders for heavy metals are sweet potatoes and carrots (yes, even the organic ones).
Avoid giving your baby too many rice-based foods, sweet potatoes, soy, and carrots, which are known for higher levels of heavy metals than other baby foods.
Look for foods that aid in absorption of heavy metals in the body
There are some foods that can assist in limiting the absorption of heavy metals into the body. They are known as binders, and they bind themselves (thus the name) to heavy metals and help remove them from the digestive tract. Some binders include blueberries, tomatoes, and spirulina.
You can also look for blockers, which help block absorption of heavy metals into the body. Iron and calcium, along with vitamin C, which boosts iron absorption, can help block heavy metals from entering the body to begin with. Think of feeding your baby broccoli, beans, kiwis, papaya, peppers, and tomatoes to target these beneficial nutrients.
Try to add blueberries, tomatoes, spirulina, broccoli, beans, peppers, and fruits with high levels of Vitamin C into your baby’s diet to block absorption of heavy metals into their system.
Push lawmakers to pass the Baby Food Safety Act as soon as possible
The sooner the Baby Food Safety Act is passed, the better! Reach out to your local representatives and state senators and demand they support this act to create stricter legislation that protects our children from these dangerous contaminants in their food.
7 Safest Baby Food Brands Without Heavy Metals
I have compiled this list from organic baby food brands that are committed to creating baby foods that are free of dangerous levels of heavy metals. These baby food companies have earned the “Clean Label Project Purity Award” for avoiding heavy metals in their baby food. I also recommend looking up the specific products by each company that has earned the Purity Award to help you decide which specific foods to purchase.
The Clean Label Project tests products for heavy metals and other concerning chemicals and then ranks them. Products in the top-performing for each category (the top one-third) qualify for the Project Purity Award. While this is short of a guarantee, it’s a good start when searching for the best organic baby foods without heavy metals.
1. Yumi
Yumi is a pioneer in organic baby food that goes the extra mile to ensure their commitment to avoiding heavy metals. Yumi’s blends are tested for over 400 environmental and industrial toxins. While many companies only test ingredients, Yumi tests at both the ingredient and the final product level for heavy metals.
Yumi is a recipient of the Clean Label Project Purity Award. When I reached out to Yumi to ask about the levels of heavy metals in their brands, this is what they told me:
“We only select local and seasonal fruits and vegetables from our farms that do not use any pesticides and go through rigorous tests for heavy metals. We also look at federal data on soil contamination to find the best farms available. We test both our ingredients and final product weekly and do not use ingredients that are the biggest contributors to heavy metal contamination in baby food, such as rice, which is efficient at pulling arsenic from the soils.”
Yumi also was one of the first baby food companies to sign on to the Baby Food Safety Act, which is a promising move that I wish more baby food companies would follow.
2. Once Upon a Farm
Once Upon a Farm makes yummy organic pouches of baby food without heavy metals that are rigorously tested, both at the farm soil level and the product level of their foods. They require their organic suppliers to test for heavy metals, pesticides, and other contaminants.
They also test their products internally and again through the Clean Label Project, which awarded them the Purity Award certification. You can read more about their process for testing heavy metals on their website.
3. Serenity Kids
4. Little Spoon
Little Spoon, like the other baby foods on this list, is another Purity Award winner from the Clean Label Project. They are a USDA-certified organic baby food company that uses non-GMO ingredients source from farmers who conduct testing on their soil quality. This testing ensures that foods aren’t being grown in soil containing dangerous levels of heavy metals.
Little Spoon does not use rice in its baby food, due to concerns over its high arsenic levels. Instead, they use organic chia, hemp, quinoa, oats, and buckwheat. They also make several purees which contain flaxseed, kale, and broccoli. These ingredients are rich in calcium and iron that help reduce the body’s absorption of heavy metals.
5. Square Baby
Square Baby is another company that recognizes the importance of protecting babies from ingesting heavy metals through their food. Their commitment to testing for contaminants has awarded them the Purity Award for the lowest tested levels of heavy metals in their baby food.
With a focus on organic and whole food ingredients, Square Baby conducts meticulous testing to guarantee that their baby food is made without heavy metals and other harmful substances.
Square Baby was co-founded by a dietician who wanted to create healthy, balanced meals that are low in sugar for babies’ health. They also have several foods that introduce allergens, for the science-backed purpose of warding off allergies later on to those foods, which many baby food companies steer away from.
6. Cerebelly
Cerebelly is a USDA-certified organic baby food company that takes extensive measures to ensure the safety of their organic baby food. For the farms they source their food from, they review soil and water tests, and they monitor the water at their manufacturing facility.
For ingredients like carrots and sweet potatoes that are susceptible to absorbing more heavy metals from the soil, Cerebelly requires their farmers to test ingredients and adhere to low heavy metal specifications.
Cerebelly sends samples from each batch of produce to a third-party certified lab for testing lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic. Furthermore, after each batch of the product is made, random samples are taken and sent to the third-party lab for testing to ensure that Cerebelly’s baby food is free from heavy metals.
7. Baby Gourmet
Baby Gourmet makes a wide variety of yummy snacks, purees, and other baby foods, including baby cereal without heavy metals, that are certified organic in Canada. They have removed high-risk ingredients like rice and soy, which are known to absorb elevated levels of heavy metals from the soil, from their baby foods.
Baby Gourmet also requires testing of its products for heavy metals by accredited third-party labs. Baby Gourmet also collaborates with Clean Label Project, from which they also earned the Purity Award for lower levels of heavy metals than many other baby food brands.
Final Thoughts on Organic Baby Food Without Heavy Metals
In order to find baby food that is free of heavy metals, look for the Clean Label’s Purity Award label on the jars and containers of the baby food you’re considering buying. You can also look up which particular foods have been awarded the award at the Clean Label Project’s website. Finally, you can aim for variety, choose foods for your baby that are known to have lower levels, and avoid high-risk foods like rice, carrots, soy, and sweet potatoes.
At this point, this is all we can really do to avoid heavy metals in baby food pouches, cereals, and formulas here in the U.S. The FDA has fallen far behind Europe and other nations in monitoring baby food and enacting stricter standards for heavy metal levels. It’s time for parents to get active, reach out to their representatives, and insist on passing the Baby Food Safety Act as soon as possible to protect our children from these hazardous pollutants.
Check out our guides to the best non-plastic dinnerware sets and sippy cups for toddlers and kids. We also review where you can find baby and kids‘ clothes and pajamas made from organic cotton and the best car seats and strollers made without flame retardants.
