Is the heavy metal content of a well-known baby rice cereal excessive?

Recently, a piece of news became a hot topic on Weibo, saying that many types of rice noodles were found to contain excessive heavy metals.

As soon as the news came out, everyone panicked. We received messages and private messages from everyone on various platforms, asking us to get tested quickly.

What is going on?

We quickly set up a special team to investigate and found that it was a "red-headed document" like this that caused everyone's panic.

The words in the "document" such as "metal content reaches dangerous levels", "causes devastating damage to the baby's brain", "taken off the shelves", etc., each one of them is irritating to mothers, and we also feel very uncomfortable after reading them.

You know, rice noodles can be said to be the first complementary food for children. If the above content is true, the consequences will be too serious.

So we went to check the source of this matter and found that it came from an economic investigation panel of the US House of Representatives and the report was released on February 4.

The so-called xxx committee simply translated and pasted the text in the report, and then asked the affiliated maternity and baby stores to remove the products from the shelves. This incident fermented instantly and caused panic across the Internet.

After a day of hard work, we are now confident to tell everyone, don’t panic, the Dad Review is here.

What exactly is this report? Let me show you part of the report (this report is very long, 59 pages long, and all in English. You never expected to be subjected to such a ravage before the Chinese New Year):

The dense English text looks scary, and the content of the report also makes us feel scared:

Many baby foods have very high levels of heavy metals, including products from four commonly purchased brands: Jubilee B, BiN, Jia B, and AiSbei (i.e. Earth's Best).

However, we soon discovered that the report did not mention how many times the limit was exceeded. The rumored dozens of times exceeded the limit is actually not scientific!

In the United States, supplementary food manufacturers are not required to conduct heavy metal testing on final products (referring to finished products), and there are no standards for heavy metal limits in supplementary foods.

This report directly uses the standards for heavy metal content in drinking water to compare with rice noodles.

Drinking water and infant food are two completely different things. It is not reasonable to use the standards for drinking water to require all foods.

For example, in my country's standards, the limit of heavy metals in drinking water is only 0.01mg/L, which is 20 to 30 times lower than other foods. No matter how you compare, the gap is huge.

Is there anything wrong with rice noodles? Although the United States does not specify heavy metal standards for complementary foods, last year the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) gave a recommended safety level for inorganic arsenic: 100 ppb (0.1 mg/L).

This report shows that the inorganic arsenic content of rice flour in the final product of AISBY (Earth's Best) exceeded the recommended level, with the highest level exceeding the recommended level by 30%.

As for other brands, we only have the test results of the raw materials. It is normal for some concentrated juices and vitamin powders in the raw materials to have high heavy metal content, and we cannot judge whether their final products have problems.

The Jia B rice noodles that everyone is most concerned about actually have relatively low levels of inorganic arsenic and lead in their raw materials.

We also found in this report that rice noodles with inorganic arsenic levels exceeding the US recommended level were basically made from brown rice flour.

In 2018, we collected a group of rice flours and tested them for free. We found a similar situation at that time - most of the organic brown rice flours were found to contain high levels of inorganic arsenic, while ordinary rice flour and oatmeal flour (oats + rice) were basically not detected.

Because heavy metals are more easily concentrated in rice bran, brown rice with rice bran contains higher heavy metals than polished rice without rice bran.

So when you buy rice cereal for your baby, don’t deliberately choose brown rice cereal. If there is brown rice in the ingredient list or the words “whole grain rice” in the product name, you should pay attention.

What should I do? Many mothers will ask, my family has always eaten rice noodles, what should I do?

01First, don’t panic

In fact, heavy metals already exist in the natural environment, and the industrial wastewater produced by humans, pesticides used, gasoline, etc., increase the heavy metal content in our soil and water.

The food we grow absorbs heavy metals from the soil, and rice is the best performer, absorbing arsenic and cadmium many times more than other cereals.

Even under organic farming conditions, pesticide residue problems are avoided, but there will still be trace amounts of heavy metal residues.

We don't need to be discouraged. Trace amounts of heavy metals below the standard will not have a serious impact on our health. We can also maintain the heavy metal content in food within a safe level through strict testing standards.

02Will heavy metals in food harm my child?

Following this incident, the American Academy of Pediatrics released the following:

The general idea is that there are many factors that affect children's brain development, such as genetic, social and environmental factors, etc., and the small amount of heavy metals contained in food is only a small factor among them.

So we don't need to worry too much. What's more important is how to reduce the chance of your baby being exposed to heavy metals:

03Don’t rely too much on rice noodles

Rice cereal is not the best source of nutrition to keep with your baby.

Iron-rich rice cereal or meat is an excellent first choice for baby food. However, after 6 months, the baby gradually needs a variety of nutrients from a variety of foods, which cannot be provided by a single rice cereal.

Don't rely too much on rice cereal. Increasing the diversity of your baby's complementary food can help them accept food better and eventually eat like adults.