How Heavy Metal Levels in Baby Food Have & Haven't Changed in 5 Years with @consumerreports James E. Rogers, PhD

Katie Ferraro (0s):

If you're just starting solid foods, you might be confused about a few things. I hear from parents all the time, so they'll see stuff on social media that is not only incorrect, but it's actually downright dangerous. So we hear about accounts that are recommending things like offering intact meat to your baby, like steak for early eaters, which is so dangerous. Or they'll show you how to prepare the foods, but they're doing it wrong and showing the wrong size of foods for that baby's age and stage. I know the food prep stuff for baby-led weaning can be confusing. And if you're confused or overwhelmed by the misinformation that you're seeing online about starting solid foods, I wanna invite you to join my free online video workshop called Baby-Led Weaning for Beginners. This is a 75-minute video training where I show you exactly how to prepare simple, safe, starter foods for your baby as well as what not to do Plus, I give everybody on this free training a copy of my original 100 First Foods list so you'll never run out of ideas of foods your babies can eat.

Katie Ferraro (52s):

I am a registered dietitian specializing in baby-led weaning, and feeding babies is all I do all day, every day. Right now, I'm working with my friend's baby, Ezra. I'm actually going through my own 100 First Foods daily meal plan, streamlining all of the recipes. We're actually on food 76 to 80 now. He's getting so close to his Hundred First Foods, and I get so excited and love helping families give their babies a safe start to solid foods. But I also really enjoy debunking a lot of the misinformation that you see on social media accounts that are run by people who are not experts in baby-led weaning. So I would love to teach you more inside of the Baby-Led Weaning for Beginners Workshop. You can sign up if you go to babyledweaning.co/workshop.

Katie Ferraro (1m 32s):

This is a 75-minute training, so it does require a little bit of your time, but I promise you, you are going to walk away feeling inspired and confident in your baby's ability to eat real food. So you can take the training right now. If you're ready, you can do it later today or tomorrow when your baby is napping again. Go to the signup page, babyledweaning.co/workshop, and I hope to see you there. What are the best foods for your baby when you're starting baby-led weaning? Now there are no right or wrong foods for starting solid foods safely, but if you are looking for inspiration and ideas on foods your baby can eat, I have a free feeding guide called 10 Easy Starter Foods for Baby-Led Weaning that will give you a bit of a roadmap.

Katie Ferraro (2m 15s):

I packed this feeding guide full with two weeks full of new solid foods that your baby can eat. And I also include tips on how to make them safer in order to lower the choking risk. So you can download this free feeding guide. Again, it's called 10 Easy Starter Foods for Baby-Led Weaning. It has prep descriptions in there as well. Go to babyledweaning.co/resources. Again, that's babyledweaning.co/resources to download the 10 Easy Starter Foods for Baby-Led free feeding guide.

Dr. James Rogers (2m 4s):

We found that certain strains of Jasmine rice or sushi rice has less Arsenic. We've also written about how the way that you wash and cook your Rice, so you wash it before you cook it, and then you cook it in large volumes of water and then pour off the excess water and serve it that way. So there's some ways that in combination You can actually reduce your exposure to Arsenic, both you as an adult, but also as your children too.

Katie Ferraro (3m 16s):

Hey there. I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietitian, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby-led weaning here on the Baby Led Weaning Made Easy podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby-led weaning. I received an interesting email recently from a communications person at Consumer Reports saying, Katie I know you follow baby food, teach parents how to make baby food, talk about baby food. We did a report looking at how heavy metals in baby food has changed in the last five years.

Katie Ferraro (3m 59s):

Would you like to interview someone about it? I said, oh, I, I've already interviewed Dr. Rogers about consumer reports reporting on heavy metals in baby foods. Thank you. But I clicked and looked at the article and was like, oh my gosh, nothing has changed in five years. But that's actually not true. So, back in 2018, consumer Reports did testing on 50 different commercially available baby food products and found that more than two thirds of them had concerning levels of heavy metals. And so a year or so ago, I interviewed Dr. James Rogers. This is back in episode 208. It was called Heavy Metals and Baby Food with Consumer Reports, James e Rogers PhD. But he did the test on 14 of those 50 foods again in 2023.

Katie Ferraro (4m 41s):

And in today's episode, Dr. Rogers is coming back to talk about what has changed. And I personally have noticed a reduction in the reliance on Rice as a primary ingredient in commercially available baby foods. I personally think that you don't need to buy those foods 'cause Babies can learn to eat real foods. But I understand that parents do rely on them for the convenience factor. And so a lot of, I think the changes in the industry that we're seeing are coming from consumer reports really sounding the alarm about heavy metals in baby food. So I wanted to have Dr. Rogers back on to talk about, as someone who comes, he has a history, he's a scientist who formerly worked on the government side for the USDA and now he works on the consumer side and he's sharing about, you know, why certain things aren't changing in the baby food industry, but what actually is changing.

Katie Ferraro (5m 29s):

So with no further ado, here is Dr. James Rogers from Consumer Reports talking about How Heavy, Metal Levels in Baby, Food Have and have not changed in five years. And also just to point out, he's the one who did the testing from both the 2018 report and the 2023 report and oversaw the writing of the reports. I'm gonna, there's a lot of reporting in this episode, so I'm gonna link to those reports and some of the previous episodes that we've done about heavy metals in baby foods. If this topic is new to you, it'll all be in the Shownotes for this episode, which You can find at blwpodcast.com/394.

Dr. James Rogers (6m 4s):

Well thank you for the invitation. I look forward to talking to you today.

Katie Ferraro (6m 8s):

So you are here in March of 2022. We were talking about at that time the current state, what was going on with heavy metals in baby food. Has anything changed? Are There, Still, Heavy Metals in Baby Food and what is Consumer Reports doing about it?

Dr. James Rogers (6m 22s):

Well, there are, things have changed, but not as much as we would like them to. There's been a couple of pieces of legislation that have kind of like slowly crawled through. There are still heavy metals in baby foods and we'll talk about some of the findings we had in our most latest retests of baby food.

Katie Ferraro (6m 38s):

Okay. So can you give us a kind of historical timeline as far as testing for heavy metals in baby foods consumer reports? I know when we were talking in 2022, this was, you know, data that was a couple of years old and then now in 2023 a new report comes out that looked at kind of the last five years. When did you start looking at the heavy metal levels in baby foods and why?

Dr. James Rogers (6m 59s):

So actually consumer reports have been testing baby foods since the, the latest report I saw was a nutritional testing in 1977. We then in 2008 looked at apple juice that was supposed to be baby apple juice and we suggested lower Arsenic levels after our testing of that in 2012, there was a small test of heavy metals in baby foods, but my tenure started and we tested heavy metals in 2018. The main reason was that chemical testing for chemical contaminants of food in general became a high priority for my team and I to test, because you may know that for food safety it's either gonna be bacteria and viruses or it's gonna be chemical contamination that we're concerned about.

Dr. James Rogers (7m 46s):

So testing baby food for heavy metals became very, very important to us and that is why we did it in 2018 and that is why we again repeated it and reported on in 2023 five years later.

Katie Ferraro (7m 58s):

So we did a previous episode about the findings from 2018, but could you summarize what happened then? And then you kind of gave them this five-year ultimatum And, you guys got a fixed stuff and then what did you find in 2023?

Dr. James Rogers (8m 10s):

So in 2018 we first tested 50 different packaged baby foods for babies and toddlers. And that was from meals, fruits and vegetables snacks. And we tested for lead cadnium Arsenic and we found that two thirds of the products that we tested had concerning levels of lead cain or inorganic Arsenic. And we also found that our findings reflected what other groups were finding in baby food also. So five years later what we said is, okay, you've had five years to react to our testing and to other organizations testing industry. Have you done anything about this? so we took the top 14 products that had tested high and that include a mix of fruits and vegetables, meals, entrees, snacks such as bars and puffs, wafers, the teething wafers.

Dr. James Rogers (9m 2s):

And we tried to do three samples of each product. But before we got started, when we did a market survey to see if those products were even still there, we found that about half of them were not produced anymore. And some of those products were the infant Rice cereals, And. you may remember from our testing it was infant Rice, cereals and Arsenic that were giving a lot of problems to some of these products. And so what we believe is that the manufacturers had AdChoices either fix it or stop making it. And there were a number of ones that have actually stopped making the product. We are guessing that because they could not find either Rice for their products that had reduced Arsenic Or, they just gave up on that product and decided to do something else.

Katie Ferraro (9m 45s):

I have noticed of course as someone who works in the baby feeding world, the definite dip in rice foods, which is a good thing. There are so many other foods that Babies can eat. I teach a 100 First Foods approach. We teach parents how to make a hundred different real foods safe for their babies to eat. I am still amazed though, despite all the negative press about Arsenic and rice, rice foods, almost every major health body at this point right, recommends against irreg use of rice foods or babies. There are still food manufacturers who are making rice-based foods for babies like those little air puffs. So do you foresee an era where rice might be banned as an ingredient in processed baby foods?

Dr. James Rogers (10m 20s):

Banned is a very drastic thing for our federal regulatory agencies to do. I'm sure you're aware that it is the FDA that regulates rice and baby foods. I have not seen the FDA ban a product, especially one where we're looking at more of a chronic threat to health as opposed to an acute threat. Right? So it's, it's over time, right? And so I don't think it's gonna be banned, but I think we're gonna see a couple of things. I think what we'll see is what we just talked about, that there will eventually be fewer and fewer rice-based products out there on the the market because it, they just may not be able to sell it because consumers are not buying it for their children.

Dr. James Rogers (11m 4s):

The other thing is that possible that as the regulations If they ever get them all in place and can actually start enforcing them, then we'll see fewer and fewer manufacturers 'cause they will just say, well it's not feasible for us to do this and produce this effectively. What I would also hope that the manufacturers will try to do is find alternative places to grow the rice where the soil does not contain as much Arsenic or no Arsenic and then reserve those areas for growing rice only for baby food. And so you would result in getting less baby food in the Rice itself. There's also been some, some reports about producing strains of rice that do not take up arsenic.

Dr. James Rogers (11m 48s):

So Arsenic free Rice just based on breeding or I've also seen some reports where they're looking at can we remove the Arsenic out of the soil by some type of chemical or physical process. So there's a couple things out there, but I don't think that because rice is such an essential part of the diet of adults and in different cultures it's gonna be banned. But I think there's some modifications that can be done in some adjustments to be done to hopefully produce rice that has less Arsenic. We've also written about what can you do to lower the Arsenic risk to you, us as adults and this would apply to babies. So for instance, we found that certain strains of Jasmine Rice or sushi Rice has less Arsenic.

Dr. James Rogers (12m 32s):

And so that's an alternative. We've also written about how the way that you wash and cook your rice, so you wash it before you cook it and then you cook it in large volumes of water and then pour off the excess water and serve it that way. So there's some ways that in combination You can actually reduce your exposure to Arsenic both you as an adult but also as your children too if you're insisting on using this product in their diet.

Katie Ferraro (12m 57s):

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Katie Ferraro (14m 24s):

And we had Charlotte Brody and Jane Houlahan from Healthy Babies Bright Futures on in an episode a while back talking about, and I was learning from them that the rice grown in different parts of, in the United States, at least the country like the basmati rice that's coming from Texas is gonna have lower. And I forget the exact specifics, but I also thought like, well when I go to Costco they only have one type of basmati rice, like I don't really get to pick and choose, but we did a whole episode on the pasta water cooking method for rice. If you guys are interested, that's episode 259. So If, you go to BLWpodcast.com/259. We teach about how to lower the Arsenic levels in rice. so we got a lot of interesting feedback from that. You know, there were some of our families that like, listen, I'm a, I'm from this Asian culture.

Katie Ferraro (15m 5s):

If I tried to make my short grain rice like that, they would laugh me outta the house. I totally get it. Rice is a very important cultural staple food. We must however, acknowledge that rice is not the only food that babies can eat. And we are it from a nutrition standpoint. We are literally coming from an era where doctors are still telling parents to start force feeding iron fortified white rice cereal, bi spoon as early as four months of age. So this larger conversation of diet diversity is important in this conversation as well. That If you offer a variety of different foods from different food groups, from different soil types that you'll get a variety of nutrition, but that you'll also naturally minimize potentially heavy metals like Arsenic that for whatever reason, rice, sweet potatoes, some other crops, you know, preferentially take up.

Katie Ferraro (15m 47s):

So do you have any thoughts about this idea of diet diversity?

Dr. James Rogers (15m 51s):

Totally in agreement with you. In fact, in our writings what what we would say is diet diversity is very important, especially if you're trying to counteract or counterbalance rice or sweet potatoes or in our, our studies also some carrot products tested high that by diversifying the diet, that you're gonna dilute out the effects that they may be exposed to If, you still choose to feed them rice. And so we have talked about the puffs tested pretty high for heavy metal. So instead of giving puffs or the snacks to the Babies that are also very high processed, foodsfresh fruits and vegetables, cut grapes in half or in quarters, feed 'em that, those type of things as you're trying to wean them onto more solid food, offer them the, the variety and then naturally they'll just move away from these others foods that may not be as healthy for them as we would want them to be.

Katie Ferraro (16m 44s):

I feel like consumer reports is always, you know, a little ahead of the game. I was thinking back to the 2008 looking at the apple juice suggesting lower Arsenic levels like you know, it took the AAP few years after you to finally say, oh and by the way, babies under one should be having juice. Like let's just talk about the fact that You can make apples. Now apples can be a huge choking hazard if they're served of raw to babies. But If, you peel and core and poach to soften apple slices. Babies can very easily eat apple juice. They don't need to go drink apple juice. And now we have, you know, recommendations against offering juice. So I, I remember when I was a kid, you'd walk down the grocery store aisle, there was baby food dessert like cherry cobbler, blueberry, cobb, jarred baby food with added sugar in it.

Katie Ferraro (17m 25s):

Now a lot of the pouches still have added sugar in them. We don't call them cobbler, you guys call them kale, but then there's not you guys but like food manufacturers, excuse me, call them that. And there's kind of lipstick on a pig sometimes where you're like, wait a minute, this is the same process junk with added sugar in it being marketed as you know, organic and I, we mentioned organic a little bit before the conversation. Sometimes parents think, okay well I'm just gonna go buy all, you know, I'm not gonna make the food, I'm just gonna go buy all processed baby foods. But it's organic so that's okay. Can you talk about the link between organic foods and reduced heavy metal or or heavy metal levels and are you safe If you buy organic?

Dr. James Rogers (18m 0s):

Well let's say the link is zero because organic talks about how the food has grown, but it is mostly around how it's fertilized. No pesticides are used more of a natural way of controlling pests on the growing vegetable fruits and vegetables. but it has nothing to do with heavy metals. There's no requirement to test the soil for heavy metal contamination. There's no requirement to test the resulting fruit or veggies that come out for heavy metal contamination. And so I think that one of the probably unintentional, I'm gonna give 'em a benefit of the doubt that it is a unintentional association of, well if it's organic it's okay across the board.

Dr. James Rogers (18m 42s):

Well that's not true because If, you look at our testing, there were even organic products that were positive for heavy metals too. And so if it was a real true organic operation that's operating under all the rules and regulations of organic and you're still getting heavy metals, that tells you right there that it having an organic label has nothing to do with heavy metal contamination.

Katie Ferraro (19m 3s):

Dr. Rogers, what con determines a concerning level of heavy metals? Like who sets that standards? Are there government limitations on these metals or do you guys do that at consumer reports because there's a lack of defining levels coming from the US government?

Dr. James Rogers (19m 16s):

Well when we write about a concerning level of heavy metals in a way that's our own, I guess designation or or description because as I think you and I discussed the last time, there are no real limits set by our FDA for heavy metal contamination of baby food. And so what they have are suggestions there, have action limits, et cetera. But for instance, lead or there is no safe level of lead. There's no no set level by the FDA of little to no to undetectable amounts of of lead, right?

Dr. James Rogers (19m 56s):

So what we do is we take all of our data, public health data, medical data, we consult with the medical side, we look at the results that we're getting from our testing. We look at the results that we're getting from other people's testing. We do what's called a risk assessment. so we say if there's this level of heavy metal in this food, is there a way to look at how much can they eat or not eat? And we then say at this level, this is what we think is where the food should be. Now we tend to be more conservative than our regulatory agencies. And one of the reasons I believe or we believe as an organization is because in addition to the trying to get the levels to be health protective, there's also the concept of feasibility.

Dr. James Rogers (20m 46s):

Can the industry get to this level over a certain amount of time? And without extreme cost to the industry, we don't care about feasibility. We believe that baby health is number one. And so whether it's feasible or not, we're gonna set these levels and we're gonna say this is what the level should be. And feasibility does not come into our calculations. Now we do understand like you and I just talked about, setting certain levels may mean that a company can't make that product anymore. And so consumers may be faced with fewer choices on the shelf because once you set a certain level And you can't make it, you're not gonna be able to sell it if it's enforced. Right,

Katie Ferraro (21m 22s):

Exactly. And a lot of times they're picking those ingredients not with you. And I are concerned about baby's health. Number one, they're concerned about bottom line if you've got a cheap, widely available source of carbohydrate like rice, which is also hypoallergenic so almost everybody can eat it. Like this is not a very valuable source of nutrition that it's not a complete source of nutrition. That's for sure. So I think it's also important to have the conversation as, and I know consumer Reports does a very good job of this, but like baby health is not always the number one priority for a baby food manufacturer. And parents need to understand that this is marketing.

Dr. James Rogers (21m 56s):

Exactly. The other thing is because we don't have federal levels, we will use levels such as the California maximum allowable dose level because we believe for heavy metals that is more health protective. And again, because we don't have federal guidance, we're gonna go for the best guidance that we can find to help us write our articles. And we believe that California levels that they've set for heavy metals are health protective.

Katie Ferraro (22m 20s):

And I appreciate what you said earlier, it's like feasibility has some degree, you know, we need to address it here, but at the end of the day some of these products are just gonna have to go off the shelf 'cause they don't have the baby's best health in the interest. What else can the manufacturers do? Like they can't change the amount of Arsenic in the soil. Like when you write these reports, do you make recommendations on what you think that the manufacturers should do in the absence of federal guidelines making them do it? Or are you like you guys figure it out and we're gonna check back five years from now.

Dr. James Rogers (22m 46s):

So I think one of the things that we have written about and and I mentioned it a little bit earlier is since we know not all products in a product category have heavy metals or have high enough heavy metals, that means it's possible to do, right? So for instance, we have tested certain baby foods where you had high levels of lead and then you had some of the same types of products that had no detectable levels of lead. So that tells us it's possible, right? That not every soil source or whatever has lead in it. So what we have suggested, one of the things I mentioned earlier was find places to grow these products where you test the soil and it shows that there's low to no levels in it, which means that the products you grow on that soil will not have any lead and then reserve that just for baby food.

Dr. James Rogers (23m 36s):

So that's one thing. Next thing we recommended is that if it's incoming ingredients that are bringing the lead into the processing facility and ending up in final product, either have your suppliers do pre-testing and have a certificate that shows there's no lead in your product such as the sweet potatoes, the rice, our testing also showed problems with heavy metals and spices. So the flavorings, the spices that you use for the baby food or do in-house testing yourself of incoming ingredients and reject any lot that is positive for heavy metals. And then do in-product testing before you ship that out to the grocery stores, test your final product because there are some processes and some manufacturing facilities that might actually be adding heavy metals into the baby food A as they're making it because they're using old equipment or not well-maintained equipment or they're in an environment that may have heavy contamination of heavy metals in the environmental space that they're manufacturing.

Dr. James Rogers (24m 37s):

And then any lot before you ship it that test positive reject it, don't, you know, send it out to be destroyed. And that prevents heavy metal contaminated baby food to getting out there into the market. So those are some of the things we've suggested to them that they need to consider in doing.

Katie Ferraro (24m 57s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break but I'll be right back.

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Katie Ferraro (26m 42s):

Is there any one particular brand that's like yes I will change my soil, I am going to have my suppliers do the pretesting, we are going to prioritize rejecting third party items or aftermarket whenever the lead is showing up. Any brand that stepped out and said yes we can do this 'cause it that is what is best for babies. If we wanna get to zero lead and heavy metal levels in foods.

Dr. James Rogers (27m 4s):

Not that I've seen. What we have seen is, and we have not tested them yet, but we have seen some brands that claim to be safer. There are some brands out there that claim to rigorously test their products for heavy metals to make sure they're not shipping, which is one of the things we have suggested. We have some brands commit to producing safe products but not one that has said, well you, you know, consumer reports, you may have a point, there may be a problem where we're growing our our baby food ingredients and we need to find a better place to grow 'em. I have not had that experience yet. And

Katie Ferraro (27m 34s):

You would know I

Dr. James Rogers (27m 35s):

Just baby food manufacturing

Katie Ferraro (27m 36s):

It seems like there would be such an opportunity but also I know a lot, a lot of this is marketing. We talked about this, I had one of your colleagues from Consumer Reports, Dr. Michael Hansen came on to talk about Tuna and we talked about Tuna, Talk, And, you know, you know, is it safe to offer babies canned tuna and the testing that consumer reports had done retesting some of the US government just re-analyzing some of the data and being like they're gonna tell you that this amount is safe and we say that it's not safe And, you know, we can agree to disagree but at the end of the day some parents are like when in doubt leave it out. Like it is such an incredible privilege to be able to make food that someone would feed to their baby and yet that you wouldn't prioritize making sure that heavy metal levels are at zero. And I would say if it weren't for consumer reports kind of blowing the whistle on this, don don't know that a lot of like, there's lots of things to worry about when you're a parent.

Katie Ferraro (28m 21s):

And, you made a good point that this is a chronic situation, it's not acute. Like if it was causing e coli and babies were having bloody diarrhea and dying like a Jack in the box situation, then yeah we're all over this. But because it leads to lower IQs and reduced workout but and things that you can't really put your finger on right away, it maybe is not a higher priority. So I applaud consumer reports for keeping it top of mind. 'cause I think these things kind of come in cycles when your baby is a baby, you're paying attention to that legislation about heavy metals in baby food and then when you work in the baby food industry I'm like hello? Like we just had this conversation five years ago And, you guys have done absolutely nothing. Like it is frustrating and I'm just curious If, you had any thoughts about you know, what you'd like to see in the next five years or do you think things will change or you guys will do this again and you'll test those 14 foods and they'll still have the same high levels of heavy metals in it?

Dr. James Rogers (29m 8s):

Well you know, I mentioned to you that I also work on food advocacy and what I have seen was more movement and more awareness of this issue than the previous five years. For instance, I think we talked about the closer to zero program that the FDA put in place that actually has put certain limits on certain baby foods. Again as action levels, not as regulatory laws where we're going to inspect and if you're in violation we're going to do some type of disciplinary action to you. But at least that's a start. That's a start to say to the industry, we're looking at this, we're responding to congress.

Dr. James Rogers (29m 48s):

Which you know, they also had their study where they looked at heavy metals and baby foods and we're trying to do something now I used to work for the federal government, I used to work for USDA and I know how slow they are and how slow they can be. But now that I'm on the consumer side, they just go way too slow for me.

Katie Ferraro (30m 6s):

Yeah they do.

Dr. James Rogers (30m 7s):

And I just wish that there was some type of fire that we can light under them or an administration that would really, really support this or something to make changes. But in the meantime, as we've spoken, it's gonna be on to the consumer to become informed, to shop, to spread the word themselves to pressure regulatory agencies and their own leadership in the state. 'cause we can see what California can be effective or at the federal level to make, make a difference and make changes. And yes, maybe some of these companies will go, especially the small ones, they just may go out of business 'cause they can't make safe baby food. But well,

Katie Ferraro (30m 41s):

And at the end of the day, I mean it's no big surprise. I think the entire idea packaged and processed foods for babies is asinine because Babies can learn to eat real food and it commercially processed baby foods have only been available since the earlier part of the 20th century. Like what do you think Cave mama fed cave baby back in the day before there was an entire aisle of pouches at the grocery store. Like they, they've always made modified versions of the same foods the rest of the family eats. And so I think as a society we have these conversations about, you know, gosh look at our overreliance on packaged and processed foods that's so far removed from actual food and now we're teaching Babies to eat those foods you again, I, I have a Registered dietician who teaches families how to make real food for their babies. A lot of this can be avoided If, you just make real food for your Babies.

Katie Ferraro (31m 21s):

Now granted you can't feed 'em rice every day And, you can't feed 'em sweet potatoes. But, and again food manufacturers don't like to hear that their job is to sell you on the idea that you have to buy these special Foods for your babies. but it is important I think for credentialed feeding experts to be having conversations about, look, not only do they not need those but they're potentially harmful. Plus they're really expensive. So in a pincer, and this is what I wanted ask you is that these foods are convenience, foods If, you had to rely on some of these packaged or processed baby foods on occasion like a travel day you're in a pincer, intermittent, non-regular use of these foods. Is that okay in your opinion? Like If you had a baby or a grand baby And, you were considering offering it to them?

Dr. James Rogers (31m 60s):

Well like we said, this is chronic and so we have said in our writings about this that number one, do not panic that there are things that You can do along the way that If, you are in a pincer and this is all you have. It's more important for your baby to eat and get good nutrition, get satisfied, then worry about this. You're not going to all of a sudden cause your baby's IQ points to drop just because you fed them don don't know turkey and rice dinner that one time. But we still say be aware and then write the ship back when you have the opportunity to get home and feed them your homemade baby food, which we've also written about too. Or to pick these products to get these products and feed to your baby that have shown to have less heavy metal.

Dr. James Rogers (32m 44s):

So we say don't panic one time, two times whatever. We're not gonna stress about it. We're looking over the long haul as to what have you fed your children and what have they been exposed to, especially in this very rapid development time. As you know, this is where babies are growing faster than they ever will. Their nervous systems are developing, cardiovascular systems are developing, immune systems are developing. So This is a very important time but we're not gonna go totally overboard and have parents freak out If. you have to do that in a pincer and feed your baby these products.

Katie Ferraro (33m 14s):

When will your team be testing for heavy metals and baby food again?

Dr. James Rogers (33m 18s):

Well you know, you and I just talked about that, you know, five years we didn't see a whole lot of things changing. And then I do have other food safety related projects that I have to do that I'm tasked to investigate. But let's say I have unlimited testing dollars, which is not true but I wish I did. One of the things that I would love to see is a baby food monitoring program where consumer reports could test and monitor food either constantly or periodically, you know, a certain type of rhythm of testing just to see what's going on in the baby food market. If anything are getting better or worse. I mean in some of our testing, most recently we have seen that products that had lead under one testing the next time we tested 'em five years later they actually had Arsenic and no lead.

Dr. James Rogers (34m 8s):

So I mean the food space is so dynamic, right? so we would do a monitoring program, we would also make sure we look at those products that had rice or sweet potatoes to see If they they're getting any better. The other thing is that again, since it's so dynamic, there are new products coming on the market and coming off the market, as we saw with our tests, we lost 50% of the products that tested the worst, right? So when new products come onto the market, new formulations come onto the market, maybe even new packaging 'cause sometimes it looks like a new product but it's the same thing. Test that and then you and I talked about it, If, they make a claim to be healthier, safer, no heavy metals organic and that means there's no heavy metals.

Dr. James Rogers (34m 50s):

That type of marketing on the package or you know out there in the marketing space. I would like to test them and see well you know you say that, let's see if that's true and call them on false label claims because there's no way that they should be selling stuff and associating that with organic when it's not true. And then finally, If, they ever get this regulatory stuff in place, we'll give 'em a little bit of time and then go behind and say okay industry, you've had this amount of time to adhere to the new FDA regulations. Let's see how good you're doing now. And actually show, you know, consumers whether these manufacturers are in compliance of the new regulations.

Dr. James Rogers (35m 36s):

So let's test them and see If they're doing well.

Katie Ferraro (35m 38s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break but I'll be right back. Okay Dr. Rogers, any last minute thoughts? Best practices for parents that are listening, they're introducing their babies to a variety of foods trying to avoid heavy metals.

Katie Ferraro (36m 26s):

What advice do you have for 'em?

Dr. James Rogers (36m 30s):

Number one, don't panic. Don't stress out about it. It's easy to do relatively become informed. Read our work. Read other consumer-oriented groups'. Works to see what testing has shown and what recommendations are out there. Talk to your your baby doctor and see what they're seeing on their side sometimes and you've kind of noticed this, they're old school and they continue the same old stuff but some baby doctors are really on.

Katie Ferraro (36m 52s):

We do. We have so many pediatricians, especially the ones that have their own babies that are interested in baby-led weaning. And the reality is more than 90% of doctors in this country don't get any nutrition education in medical school. So like sometimes they're learning on the job too. You guys like oh maybe we don't have to force feed a baby white rice cereal by spoon at four months. 'cause If, you wait till they're six months And, you make soft safe foods for them, they can pick it up and feed it to themselves. It kind of opens up their eyes. So I agree with you. There's the pediatrician, it's good and bad. Some are still perpetuating old, outdated, harmful information and some are, wait a minute, these new updated standards and guidelines and work like consumer reports is doing is pointing to, you know, we need to minimize this and maybe focus over here more.

Dr. James Rogers (37m 32s):

Yeah. Also don't panic because we say don't eat this. I mean we really only have come out strongly against like sweet potatoes and rice. There's a whole whole pallet of other foods You can feed. So don't stress out over that. Remember juices, we did some testing of juices. There's a problem with Arsenic and apple juice for instance. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommended no juice in the first year and if you're gonna feed 'em drink, have them drink something. Drink milk or water. Remember water can be an issue. We've reported on water testing, both tap and bottled water. So be aware of the water that you're using. Consider getting a filter. If you need to for your water off the tap or your bottled water.

Dr. James Rogers (38m 11s):

Make sure you're picking those that are correct. And then again, you and I talked about making your own food. That means that You can pick the products. You can pick organic If, you think that's best and make your own food. It's okay for baby to eat the same thing you do as long as you prepare it well. And, you noted how to prepare an Apple perfect information. I think parents would be okay after that.

Katie Ferraro (38m 33s):

And I might add variety of foods. Oh yeah. That nobody should eat the same food every day, including your baby. Yet there is this culturally ingrained message that babies should eat rice cereal every day that we're still working very hard to undo. And I would say the only reason why there's less rice containing products on the shelf today compared to five years ago is because of the work that consumer reports has been doing to bring attention to it. Yeah

Dr. James Rogers (38m 56s):

And that's a good thing. Bring attention to the issue with rice. But we also said there are alternative grains that you could use.

Katie Ferraro (39m 2s):

Yeah. And that have a lot more nutrition in them.

Dr. James Rogers (39m 5s):

Yeah. And that's why don don't understand why these people, even though puffs are are, are a bad example. These rice-based puffs. Why are you using rice? Can't you use something else? If, you must make this product. We think you baby shouldn't eat it. It's way too processed.

Katie Ferraro (39m 17s):

No, they act like they're being revolutionary when they're like, you should feed your baby oatmeal. It's like, yeah, you know what? They can eat all the other whole grains And. you don't need special baby oatmeal. You guys, baby oatmeal is just ground up a little finer than regular oatmeal with a little more iron added to it. Like oats are a whole grain and offering your baby whole grain foods. Those are natural sources of iron. We don't, we don't have to go adding all this extra stuff in there. 'cause at some point your child needs to learn how to eat these real foods. So I think deemphasizing the role of packaged and processed foods for Babies is a good thing. I don't like that it has to come at the expense of baby's cognitive development with regards to heavy metal inclusion. but it is important to look at, there's lots of different reasons why we eat food and, and safety needs to be taken into consideration.

Katie Ferraro (39m 57s):

So thank you guys for the work you do. I wish you had unlimited food testing dollars Dr. Rogers because I, I appreciate that you guys are continuing to hammer down on the baby food stuff. Like I, it's sensational. I mean I know it gets the big headlines, but that's important. That's what people pay attention to.

Dr. James Rogers (40m 13s):

Some people may see it as sensational, but we think it's important. We think that again the babies are relying on us as the parents to make sure we feed them and grow them as healthily as possible. And so sensationalism, If, you want to but I just think it's an important area for consumer reports of

Katie Ferraro (40m 28s):

No you are fighting for parents' attention, right? We're talking about a TikTok era. If you're not If, you don't get the message across in six seconds. No one's hearing it. And. you guys are doing long form journalism in-depth reporting, thorough testing. I mean these things are still important, but to stay top of mind and in the conversation, it is hard to do. And I appreciate, I love the model of coming back to it. I was, I was kind of chuckle when you're like, well five years ago we wrote stuff and no one did anything. It's like every five years they rewrite the dietary guidelines for Americans and nobody freaking does any of those things. And they come back the next year with like more sets of, of recommendations that nobody's gonna do. It's like, what's the point? You're actually seeing results. You're seeing a reduction in the amount and the number of rice-based foods for babies available for sale that are harmful.

Katie Ferraro (41m 13s):

That's a good thing. That's progress.

Dr. James Rogers (41m 15s):

Yeah. But the industry does not like us. And in fact, I can imagine

Katie Ferraro (41m 18s):

They don't love me either.

Dr. James Rogers (41m 19s):

The rice industry has really been very upset with us. But we're like, the data speaks for itself. If I test it wrong or if I use the wrong lab, which I know I didn't show it to me. And okay, we can adjust, but don don't think the data's lying here. So,

Katie Ferraro (41m 31s):

Well thank you so much for taking the time to come back and share this with us. 'cause I, I love those reports. You do. And I'm gonna link to them too because I want parents to click on 'em and just look because you recognize these brands, And. you guys aren't here to brand bash or put baby food companies out of business. But there is this brand and this product. Here's the serving size and here's how much lead slash Arsenic whatever is in it. These are products that people are buying And you, you will recognize them. So I, I love the layouts of your reports. The language is important, the numbers are important, but the visuals, consumer reports always does such a nice job. And that's what parents see on the shelves in the stores. And. you need to realize that just 'cause they're available for sale does not mean they are safe for your baby.

Dr. James Rogers (42m 10s):

Thanks for pointing out that we don't brand bash. I think in my tenure at CR what we try to do is say, these are the results. This is what we found, this is how we tested it. We'll share our methods with anybody that wants to replicate our tests and here's the rankings, you know, make of it what you will, but here's the rankings. But also from a health protective standpoint, here are the ones that we're concerned about and this is why. And so that's what we're trying to report to parents. So, they can make, again why selections. We would love for them to walk into the store with the magazine or their cell phone or their iPad and just go down the line and say,

Katie Ferraro (42m 44s):

Oh James, I know a lot of brands that wish you would do that 'cause they would sell a lot more baby food. Before I let you go, I wanted to ask the original 50 foods in 2018, how did you select those?

Dr. James Rogers (42m 58s):

So what we did is we have a market analyst that first looked at all of the baby foods that were available and what were the categories. so we subdivided them into different categories, so entrees and fruits and vegetables. We also looked at the literature to say, was there any previous testing that suggested that this there may be an issue in this area. We'd already known about rice, we'd already known about sweet potatoes because it's out there in the literature. And so we tried to test a good subset of those that may have problems versus those that probably do not have problems. And then we just selected based on budget. And so we came down that we could afford 50 different foods.

Dr. James Rogers (43m 41s):

We tried to test multiple lots, we tried to test multiple samples per lot. so we had statistical power in our results and then we just tested and reported out the results.

Katie Ferraro (43m 48s):

I love the work you guys do and I appreciate it. And I, again, I wish you had unlimited baby food testing dollars, but thank you for all you're doing with the funds that you have.

Dr. James Rogers (43m 56s):

And thank you for a chance to talk to your audience yet again. And if there's something new or different that comes up, I'll be certain to let you know.

Katie Ferraro (44m 4s):

Well, I hope you enjoyed that update and interview with Dr. James Rogers from Consumer Reports. I will link the reports that he's done on heavy metals in baby food, both the 2018 and 2023 update on the Shownotes for this episode, which will be at BLW podcast.com/394. And a special thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If, you guys like podcasts that feature food and science at using your brain. Check out some of the podcasts from AirWave. We are online at BLWpodcast.com. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time. If you're interested in doing baby led weaning, but you're not exactly sure, like what does that mean?

Katie Ferraro (44m 45s):

What does it look like? Where do I start? My online program called Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro has everything you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods and get them to eat over a hundred foods before they turn one, whether you're terrified of choking or maybe you've started but you feel like you're feeding your baby the same foods over and over 'cause you don't know what to feed next. Or you're looking for guidance on how to prepare foods safely for your baby's age and stage. My program has exactly what you need. There's five hours of concise self-paced video training. You can knock this thing out during nap time this week. You also get access to my 100 First Foods content library so You can see and learn exactly how to prep all of the hundred foods as well as my original a hundred days meal plan. I've been refining this program for the last seven years.

Katie Ferraro (45m 26s):

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