Snacks and foods made with rice and sweet potatoes continue to have concerning levels of arsenic, cadmium, and lead, according to new tests by Consumer Reports
By Kevin Loria
Data visualizations by Andy Bergmann
While the amounts of lead, arsenic, and cadmium in baby foods appear to be getting lower, the overall risk hasn’t changed much in the last five years, according to new tests by Consumer Reports.
The last time CR tested baby foods, in 2018, 33 of the 50 foods were associated with potential health risks for kids due to combined exposures from those three heavy metals.
Since then, there has been a steady stream of pressure on baby food manufacturers to make products safer, and the Food and Drug Administration has announced plans meant to lower the levels of heavy metals in the food.
As part of CR’s new analysis, we retested seven baby foods that had concerning levels five years ago, mostly items that CR’s experts recommended consuming less than one serving a day of. For three of those products, heavy metal levels declined, so children can now eat more of those foods. But for three others, the levels of certain heavy metals increased, so they should eat less. The daily limit for one product didn’t change.
We reached out to the baby food companies with products in our tests. All but Hot Kid (owned by Want-Want), which makes Baby Mum-Mum products, responded. Beechnut, Gerber, and Earth’s Best said they test both the raw ingredients in their products and the final products for heavy metals, and Happy Baby said they test their final products.
But our new results show that the industry still has a way to go, says James E. Rogers, PhD, CR’s director of food safety research and testing. “In some of the products, declines in certain heavy metals were offset by increases in others, so there was little change in the amount of the foods babies could eat. And we still found worrisome levels in foods that our last tests showed to be the most concerning, namely rice, sweet potatoes, and snack foods.”
Skip Ahead
• What CR Found
• Putting the Risks in Perspective
• Rice and Sweet Potatoes Are Still Risky
• The Trouble With Snack Foods
• Some Heavy Metals Went Up, Others Down
• Why Levels of Heavy Metals Remain High
• What the Industry and Government Can Do
• Caregivers Have Many Healthy Options for Feeding Babies
What CR Found
CR’s latest tests included 14 products, representing a mix of fruits and vegetables; meals and entrees; and snacks, such as bars, puffs, and teething wafers. We tested at least three samples of each product.
We focused on products that had concerning levels in our tests five years ago. Seven of the products were ones we had tested in 2018; the other seven were similar to products that we had previously tested but that are no longer on the market. Read more about how we test baby foods for heavy metals (PDF).
To determine how many servings of each product a child could eat per day, CR’s food safety experts considered how much of that type of food kids typically eat, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Then they assessed the risks posed by the combined exposure to arsenic, cadmium, and lead in that food. The chart below shows CR’s recommendations for the products we tested. (Our findings were a spot check of the market and should not be used to draw definitive conclusions about specific brands.)
Putting the Risks in Perspective
In looking at the results, consider that parents feed their children many foods a day. “Because heavy metals are so pervasive in foods—and because they tend to accumulate in the body—small exposures from multiple foods can add up," says Eric Boring, PhD, a CR chemist who oversaw our testing. “And feeding your child amounts close to the daily serving limits leaves little room for exposure to heavy metals from other foods.”
Long-term intake of heavy metals may increase the risk of a variety of health and developmental problems in young children, including a lower IQ and behavioral issues, as well as ADHD, autism, and other issues. “Early development is a really sensitive period of time,” says Maya Deyssenroth, PhD, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “Organ systems are developing and are particularly vulnerable.”
At the same time, Boring says, “While concerning, these results are no reason to panic.” He points out that the risk comes from repeated exposure over long periods of time, not from eating a food just once or even several times. “An occasional serving of even one of the foods with the highest levels is generally OK,” he says. “Just remember to mix up what your kids eat.” See more advice on safer baby food below.
Rice and Sweet Potatoes Are Still Risky
In our 2018 tests, products made with rice, sweet potatoes, and, to a lesser extent, carrots tended to pose the biggest risks. Our latest tests had similar results, especially for sweet potatoes and rice.
For example, for all three of the products that contain sweet potatoes, CR’s experts recommend consuming less than one serving a day; for two of them, Beech-Nut Naturals Sweet Potato and Gerber Sweet Potato Turkey with Whole Grains Dinner, the recommendation is less than half a serving.
Similarly, they recommend consuming less than 1.5 servings a day of five of the seven products made with rice. For Gerber Chicken Rice and Turkey Rice Dinners, the limit is less than half a serving.
By contrast, kids could eat up to 3.5 servings a day of Gerber Natural for Baby Pear Carrot Pea product.
In response to our test results, a spokesperson for Gerber said: “We work with our farmers to prioritize growing locations for optimal climate and soil conditions, approve fields before crops are planted based on soil testing and rotate crops. Additionally, we’re continuing to invest in new research to help inform future improvements. For example, we’re working with public land-grant universities to conduct on-farm research to identify soil and varietal variables that may reduce uptake of heavy metals from the soil by carrots and sweet potatoes.”
The Trouble With Snack Foods
The heavy metal content of baby snacks, namely teething wafers and puffs, is concerning because children eat a lot of these foods.
For one thing, many of them are made with rice. Puffs are particularly problematic. “Rice-based puffs are a stand-out for heavy metal contamination,” says Jane Houlihan, research director for Healthy Babies Bright Futures, a nonprofit group that works to reduce chemical exposures that harm babies’ brain development. “Puffs can be a significant source of exposure, especially when they are a family’s go-to snack.”
That’s partly because the manufacturers’ serving sizes for these products can be much lower than what many parents assume. As a result, kids can end up consuming a large amount of these foods, and of the heavy metals they contain.
For example, our daily limit for the Hot Kid Baby Mum-Mum Banana Teething Wafers is less than 2 servings a day, but 5 percent of kids eat 3.5 servings of this kind of food daily, according to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Or consider Happy Baby’s Organic Superfood Puffs: CR’s daily limit is less than 1.5 servings, or around 75 puffs. That may sound like a lot, but each puff is only about the size of a Cheerio. “Parents may give puffs and wafers to kids as a snack several times a day,” says Amy Keating, RD, a nutritionist at CR.
So it would not be hard for a child to end up eating far more than what CR’s experts say is the upper limit.
Finally, many of these foods just aren’t very healthy to begin with, Keating says. In addition to having heavy metals, they don’t have much nutritional value, she says. For example, though some are fortified with vitamins and minerals, they are mostly made from white rice flour, and have no fiber or protein and some have added sugar, which shouldn’t be given to children under 2 years of age.
And note that while some of these baby foods are organic, that doesn’t necessarily make them healthier. While organic foods are less likely to have pesticide residue, they are just as likely to have heavy metals, our tests show.
Some Heavy Metals Went Up, Others Down
CR’s tests found that while the amounts of certain heavy metals dropped in some products compared to our tests five years ago, that didn’t always translate into less-risky products overall. That’s because while, say, arsenic levels may have dropped, lead levels may have gone up.
For example, in Gerber Chicken Rice Dinner, arsenic levels dropped by 22 percent, and the levels were so low that we didn’t test for inorganic arsenic—the most harmful type. But we detected lead this time, where we hadn’t in our 2018 tests. That may be because the technology for detection of heavy metals has become more sensitive, but the lead we detected in our new tests was enough to change our daily limit from less than one serving per day to less than half a serving per day. (Because we can now measure lower levels of lead than we could in 2018, we can’t say whether the levels of lead in this product increased or decreased.)
Similarly, for Happy Baby Organics Superfood Puffs, Purple Carrot & Blueberry, cadmium levels declined by 34 percent, and inorganic arsenic levels dropped by 45 percent. But those arsenic levels are still comparably high, and lead levels increased by 60 percent. Our daily limit for these changed only slightly, from less than a serving per day in 2018 to less than 1.5 servings a day.
A spokesperson for Happy Family, the manufacturer of Happy Baby, said the company “follows all applicable federal standards for its products. In the absence of federal standards for all products, Happy Family sets internal goals relying on guidance from FDA and other international bodies, implements best practices from industry and experts, and presses our suppliers to find farms globally with levels of these elements in the soil that are as low as reasonably achievable.”
One product, however, did improve dramatically: Earth’s Best Organic Sunny Days Bars, Strawberry. It went from less than one serving a day five years ago to less than 4.5 servings a day now. That’s because lead levels dropped 91 percent in this product, and while we found some inorganic arsenic in 2018, total arsenic levels dropped by enough that we believe it wasn’t necessary to test for inorganic arsenic this time around. (From a nutritional standpoint, however, Keating says, 4.5 servings would be far too many.)
We asked Hain Celestial, the owner of Earth’s Best, what they did to reduce the heavy metal levels in this product, and they said: “We are continuously improving our internal standards and we employ a rigorous program to test the quality and safety of our products.” (We also tested the company’s Sweet Potato, Squash & Chicken and Spinach Lentil Brown Rice Veggie & Protein Puree.)
Why Levels of Heavy Metals Remain High
Why are sweet potatoes and rice prone to high levels of heavy metals?
It has to do with the way they are grown and the fact that they are particularly good at picking up certain metals from soil.
Sweet potatoes and carrots absorb lead as they grow, Houlihan says.
Plus, any root vegetable may collect lead on its outside from surrounding soil, says Tom Neltner, senior director for Safer Chemicals at the Environmental Defense Fund. Lead and other heavy metals are part of the Earth’s crust, but levels tend to be higher in certain places, often due to industrial or agricultural operations.
For example, while any soil can have lead in it, higher levels may be found close to highways, due to past use of leaded gasoline, or small airports, where leaded gasoline may still be used. Levels can also be high near orchards and cotton fields where lead-arsenate pesticides were previously used.
For rice, arsenic is a particular concern, in part because when that heavy metal is in soil or, especially, water, the plant pulls it up instead of other minerals, Houlihan says.
What Industry and the Government Can Do
Baby food manufacturers can limit the risk of heavy metals in their products by sourcing their products from areas known to have lower levels of those harmful substances. For example, CR’s testing of rice in 2014 showed that rice from California had lower levels of arsenic than rice from Texas.
Different growing strategies can also help. For example, arsenic levels in rice can be reduced by alternating between wetting and drying fields, or growing rice in raised furrows instead of in a constant flooded state, Houlihan says. More and more farmers are adopting those techniques, she says.
Another approach some farmers are taking is growing rice that’s less likely to have high levels of arsenic. For example, basmati rice may have lower levels than other types, according to Deyssenroth, of Columbia University. Processing can matter, too: Since arsenic tends to accumulate in the outer parts of rice, brown rice tends to have more arsenic than white.
Eliminating products containing rice is also something baby food manufacturers can do to make their products safer. Beech-Nut has done this, the company told CR. That’s a welcome development, says Keating, at CR. “A child doesn’t need to eat rice to be healthy. There are other nutritious grains that can substitute,” she says.
Stricter standards on the amount of heavy metal allowed in baby food could help too, says Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at CR.
The FDA has taken steps forward on this recently. In 2020, it set levels for the amount of inorganic arsenic in infant rice cereal (100 parts per billion), and this year, it established levels on inorganic arsenic in apple juice (10 ppb). If a manufacturer’s product exceeds these levels, the agency may remove them from the market. However, the levels don’t yet apply to any other food that children regularly eat.
For lead, the FDA has even more work to do, Ronholm says. He notes that the agency has proposed levels for heavy metals in some baby foods, as part of its Closer to Zero action plan. But those rules are not yet finalized, and it’s unclear when they will be. In addition, snack foods, like puffs, aren’t one of the categories the FDA has put forward lead levels for. And CR experts think the proposed levels—10 ppb to 20 ppb, depending on the food—are too high.
“It appears they were based more on current industry feasibility to achieve the levels, and not solely on the levels that would be optimal for protecting public health,” Ronholm says. CR would like to see the FDA set a goal of having no measurable amounts of cadmium, lead, or inorganic arsenic in children’s food—and use the most sensitive testing methods to determine the presence of those metals.
An FDA spokesperson told CR, “It is crucial to ensure that measures taken to limit arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury in foods do not have unintended consequences—like eliminating from the marketplace foods that have significant nutritional benefits or reducing the presence of one element while increasing another.” They also said that the agency is reviewing comments on its proposed action levels for lead and is also working to establish action levels for inorganic arsenic, cadmium, and mercury in children’s foods. The agency expects to finalize the lead levels in 2024, and propose levels for the other heavy metals in the next year or two.
“CR’s findings highlight the need for the FDA to move faster on setting levels for all types of baby food that would apply to all heavy metals,” says Michael Hansen, PhD, senior scientist at CR. “First up should be a level for snack foods, as we have found they have some of the highest levels of heavy metals, and children eat so much of them.” And since many parents make their own baby food or feed children what they eat themselves, the agency should also set levels for high-risk foods in general—not just the products intended for babies—Hansen says.
The FDA said it was gathering information about consumption of grain-based snacks by children and potential exposure to heavy metals from those foods. “As we gather additional information, we can determine the best regulatory approach for these types of food products.”
The agency is also looking into ways to reduce exposure to heavy metals from foods that both children and adults eat, including “potential strategies to mitigate the uptake of environmental contaminants in crops.” But the spokesperson did not provide a timeline for this.
Caregivers Have Many Healthy Options for Feeding Babies
This isn’t to say that you can never give your baby sweet potatoes, rice, or carrots. “These are nutritious foods, so you don’t have to eliminate them from your child’s diet,” says CR’s Keating. “Instead, serve them in rotation with many different vegetables and whole grains.”
In fact, Keating says, varying the types of foods your child eats is best in general. Doing so will provide nutrients (such as calcium, iron, and vitamin C) that may help offset some of the harms from heavy metals, and can help avoid overconsumption of heavy metals from one particular food. Low heavy metals options include: infant cereals made from oats and other whole grains (except rice); fresh and frozen fruit; peas, green beans, and butternut squash; baby food meats; eggs; beans; applesauce (unsweetened); cheese; and yogurt.
Another tip: rather than using packaged baby food products with rice, make your own rice and cook in a large amount of water, like you would pasta. According to the FDA, this can reduce the arsenic content by 40 to 60 percent.
In addition to this, limit your child’s intake of apple juice and grape juice, which CR’s tests in 2019 found contained higher levels of inorganic arsenic and lead in general than other fruit juices. And minimize baby snack foods, since our tests show these are more likely to be high in heavy metals, and they are more highly processed foods.
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