[HN Gopher] Baby Foods Are Tainted with Dangerous Levels of Heav...
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Baby Foods Are Tainted with Dangerous Levels of Heavy Metals [pdf]
Author : malloci
Score : 52 points
Date : 2021-02-05 08:11 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (oversight.house.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (oversight.house.gov)
| woah wrote:
| 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.
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| Sea food is especially high in mercury since we polluted the
| oceans with coal burning.
| tschwimmer wrote:
| 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.
| avesi wrote:
| 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?
| Simulacra wrote:
| It seems we've heard this before but it was out of China, and
| dealing with infant formula. Is this a quality control problem,
| production, or sourcing issue?
| sithadmin wrote:
| 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.
| josho wrote:
| 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.
| all_usernames wrote:
| The worst arsenic levels in rice come from the US midwest and
| south. This isn't an outsourcing problem.
| frankhhhhhhhhh wrote:
| https://nutritionfacts.org/2020/12/10/which-brands-and-
| sourc...
| sithadmin wrote:
| 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.
| josho wrote:
| 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.
| sithadmin wrote:
| I don't think your claims about social attitudes towards
| breast feeding really map onto this discussion. The report
| focuses on prepared solid foods, not infant formulas.
|
| Strangely, however, the report does compare EU standards
| for baby formula to raw ingredients used in the preparation
| of the solid foods being examined. Yet another strange
| thing in addition to comparing contaminant levels with
| drinking water that doesn't pass a smell test.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Say thank you to the fossil fuels industry for making this
| problem worse.
|
| We still use lead in many aircraft fuels.
| 1_player wrote:
| Is there reason to expect heavy metals to be present only in baby
| foods, and not commonly available groceries?
|
| Are only babies at risk, or are we all?
| pixl97 wrote:
| 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.
| 1_player wrote:
| 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.
| brewdad wrote:
| Hard to say. It could be the supply chains used for baby
| foods. It could have to do with the additional processing
| of baby foods concentrating the contaminants or making them
| more readily accessible.
| mox1 wrote:
| 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...
|
| 1. https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-
| muc...
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| 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.
| aapppwe wrote:
| so what standard did it not met?
| pkaye wrote:
| Looks like labeling laws. Not written in English and also
| some reports of adverse events they are trying to figure out.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/parenting/baby/european-f.
| ..
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| When we purchased it (it was still legal several years
| ago), the instructions were in English. We followed the
| mixing guide, we knew what the ingredients were (because we
| researched) including the milk proteins.
|
| The formulas available on the American market were all
| loaded with sweetener and caused colic. This is an
| anecdote, but so is what's presented in that article.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| That's the thing, they claimed it didn't meet the standard
| because it hadn't gone through the approval process.
| arpyzo wrote:
| Assuming a family member has time, why not make baby food at
| home?
| evmar wrote:
| 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.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| 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.
| rantwasp wrote:
| this sounds like the start of a dystopian book :(
| selimthegrim wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/parenting/baby/european-f...
| (FDA claims about the dagers of not being able to read foreign
| language labels)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| *dangers
| threatofrain wrote:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/toxic-heavy-metals-found-in-som...
|
| Companies such as Walmart refused Congressional inquiry.
| blakesterz wrote:
| I didn't read the entire report, so I may have missed it, but
| where is this stuff coming from? It seems to say that the final
| product has higher counts than the raw ingredients, that's a
| result of... concentrating all the stuff I guess?
|
| "Voluntary phase-out of toxic ingredients--Manufacturers should
| voluntarily find substitutes for ingredients that are high in
| toxic heavy metals, or phase out products that have high amounts
| of ingredients that frequently test high in toxic heavy metals,
| such as rice;"
| mint2 wrote:
| My guess is the soil and fertilizer. But it may be fertilizer
| from the past too.
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