Nitrates in My Baby's Food: Do I Need to Worry?

Katie Ferraro (1m 31s):

And of course the potential harmful consequences of high nitrate intake for your baby, like Blue Baby syndrome. Not desirable, but also you guys super rare. And if we look at where nitrates occur in the food supply, a lot of times they're used as the preservatives in cured and processed meat products, which because of the high sodium content, those aren't foods that we're regularly offering to babies or we shouldn't be. And then when we look at the vegetables, these like carrots and beets and spinach in the quantities that your baby is eating them as part of a bigger balanced diet with lots of other food groups in there, you're not shoving green smoothies down your baby's throat and maybe accidentally making them eat very high quantities of this with your regular typical amounts that your baby eats.

Katie Ferraro (2m 12s):

This is really not something that you need to be worried about. 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 know as a parent there are many things that you're probably worried or concerned about as your baby is starting solid foods. And my intention with this episode about nitrates in your baby's food is not to add one more thing to your plate to worry about.

Katie Ferraro (2m 55s):

Okay? The takeaway message from today's episode is going to be that nitrates in your baby's food is not a huge concern. But I wanna talk a little bit today about what nitrates are, why in high quantities they can be harmful to babies. They cause this weird phenomenon or condition known as Blue Baby Syndrome. Wanna talk about where nitrates come from in the food supply? Cuz there's some good messages about introducing a variety of foods and how we select those foods. And then we'll talk about what we can do to reduce the risk of any potential problems with nitrates as we're deciding what foods to feed our babies. But again, I don't want you to worry or panic cause what we're talking about today, I mean this is the 329th episode of the show. Like if it were a major thing you guys, we probably would've already covered it.

Katie Ferraro (3m 37s):

So let's go ahead and get started. What are nitrates? So nitrates and nitrites, they're composed of both nitrogen and oxygen and they occur naturally in our world and all around us, they're part of the nitrogen cycle. So nitrogen is, if you study introduction to nutrition science, you always learn about the role of nitrogen as an important nutrient for plants and for animals. And we talk about, you know, nitrogenous waste products and when we're digesting proteins and within soil and water as well as wastes from animals and humans, and then fertilizer products that as vigilant as you may try to be, you're still going to get some of these byproducts. The fertilizer products, they're decomposed, they end up forming nitrates and nitrites.

Katie Ferraro (4m 18s):

Now why are nitrates bad for babies? So I think as an adult, the reason I think about nitrates, like when I'm choosing certain meat products, I tend towards the ones that are nitrate free. So nitrates are used in meats in order to preserve them. So processed meats in for example, like deli meats, deli turkey and hotdogs, ham, salami, those are preserved with nitrates and in very high quantities of researchers study nitrates from the food supply as being potentially carcinogenic, meaning that they can cause cancer. So if we can choose foods that don't have higher levels of these preservatives, the assumption there, and again, we know not everything about the development of cancer as it pertains to diet four.

Katie Ferraro (5m 3s):

Sure for your babies though, I'm not really concerned about the nitrate conversation from cured meats because to be honest, those cured meat products are way too high in salt for babies to be having. So we're not, for the most part, regularly offering lunch meats and deli meats and salami and pepperoni and ham to baby because the sodium content is too high for them. But what about nitrates from vegetables? Okay, so in very, very high quantities there is a condition, it's sometimes referred to as blue baby syndrome. So this is a condition where baby's skin turns blue, it happens when there's not enough oxygen in the blood.

Katie Ferraro (5m 44s):

Okay? So it's also called methemoglobinemia. So methemoglobin is a form of hemoglobin that's talked about that when we teach about iron, right? It's the protein in red blood cells and that's responsible for carrying the oxygen throughout the body. But when the methemoglobin levels are too high, then that hemoglobin can't release oxygen to its tissues and the tissues have a lack of oxygen hypoxemia. Okay? And that causes that bluish discoloration of the skin. Like you learn that as a a parent, like blue is bad, right? When your baby is potentially choking, they're gonna be blue or purple and there's no air passing through problem, okay? With the high levels of the nitrates. And this blue baby syndrome can be caused by a number of different factors, including exposure to certain drugs or chemicals.

Katie Ferraro (6m 25s):

It can be a genetic defect or it's caused by high levels of nitrates in the diet, okay? And the severity of methemoglobinemia can be mild, it can be severe, in some cases it can be life threatening. But even from a thorough literature search, it does not appear to be like something that should be on your high level concern. Like of all the things that could potentially happen to your baby when you start solid foods. Blue Baby Syndrome is pretty low, but parents ask about it. So I wanna cover it. Where do the nitrates come from in the diet? So we already mentioned the meat products, okay, they're widespread in the environment, but also nitrates are used as preservatives for certain meat products. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (8m 14s):

Let's talk about the vegetables though, because these are foods that you are more likely to be introducing to your baby. And there are certain vegetables that are higher in nitrates. So raw spinach for example, beets, celery, lettuce, those are thought to have high concentrations of nitrates. So they've been identified as the primary source of nitrates along with processed meats. Now, nitrates are also prevalent and present in the water supply because of the use of inorganic fertilizer. We see higher levels of nitrates in water resources around the world. So we're not gonna talk a ton about water. I wanna focus more on those vegetables cuz the second I say beets fer are like, oh my gosh, my baby had beets last week.

Katie Ferraro (8m 57s):

Am I gonna have causes blue baby syndrome? No, no, no, no, no. I just wanna point out that Blue Baby Syndrome is a relatively rare condition and we don't know about its incidents around the world. Infants who are six to 12 months though they are considered to be at higher risk because they're digestive systems are immature. So they're more susceptible to that condition. So if those infants consume really high levels of these foods, the nitrate containing foods in their diet and if they're having contaminated drinking water, then yeah, they would be potentially vulnerable. So it's worth being aware of, okay, in order to minimize exposure to consistently high exposures to these high nitrate foods and water sources.

Katie Ferraro (9m 38s):

So if your baby is showing signs of Blue Baby Syndrome, like blue or gray skin and rapid breathing or lethargy, take them to your doctor immediately for diagnosis and treatment. Is this really something that we need to worry about because we don't have good global statistics? And again, just looking at recalls, et cetera. You know there's a lot of chitter chatter right now about heavy metals in baby foods, nitrates, and like recalls for example, from certain baby foods about nitrates. That's not really coming up. There's no recent recalls, no public notices regarding specific brands of baby food and their nitrate content. Okay? So what are the precautions that we as caregivers should be taking? Okay, avoiding like routine, regular daily use of high nitrate foods.

Katie Ferraro (10m 21s):

Like if you fed spinach every single day or you did beats every day, carrots are another one that are sometimes listed. It's not saying that you shouldn't be offering those foods, but obviously we talk about the benefits of a variety of foods and offering a variety of different vegetables will help to automatically lower the potential that you're gonna be accidentally pumping your baby full of nitrates cuz you're only doing one vegetable, okay? As far as water goes, okay? The water that you do use in preparing infant formula, if you can, it should be tested for nitrates. And if the levels are found to be high in your area, an alternate water source should be used so you can research your own public water sources wherever you're getting your water from in the event that you're using that water to mix formula for your baby.

Katie Ferraro (11m 7s):

Okay? So you can contact your local or state health department, you can get information on private well water testing if you have that in your area. You can use purified drinking water instead until you determine whether or not there are nitrates in it. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (11m 60s):

Another recommendation is if you look at the data about Blue baby Syndrome and then nitrate content coming from foods and vegetables, it's particularly the highest risk for infants under four months of age. Well that works for us in a good way because babies aren't starting solid foods prior to four months of age. Like your baby, having high levels of beat at four months of age doesn't make sense cuz your baby's not safe to eat anything except infant milk prior to six months of age plus when they're showing the other reliable signs of readiness to eat. So one thing you can do is to focus on eating a variety of different colors and different types of vegetables, okay? And then if your baby does have that bluish skin from a lack of oxygen, you're gonna notice it first around the mouth and the lips.

Katie Ferraro (12m 43s):

And obviously this would be totally separate from like, you know, you're observing your baby for choking when they're actually eating, if they're actually choking. Some of this is gonna look the same. We're talking about in the non eating situation, you're seeing blue or purple lips or you're seeing nausea, severe dehydration, vomiting, but it's the gray or the bluish skin that's kind of gonna give you the cute, and again, this is incredibly, incredibly rare. And what I want you to walk away with, what I don't want you to walk away with, I guess is saying like, oh, my baby can never have beets. They can never have carrots, they can never have spinach. If you were only feeding your baby very high concentrations of foods like beets and spinach and carrots, then yes, they could be at high risk. And I think about some of these families that are like really, really just hellbent on green smoothies every day.

Katie Ferraro (13m 26s):

My kid has a green smoothie. Those are very high quantities of spinach that you are condensing down into a smoothie that once you mix it with something sweet like a banana, a baby, a child could be consuming high levels of. So we don't need to be or want to be feeding any one food every day. My suggestion to you for your babies, when introducing five new foods a week, one of those foods is a new vegetable, right? We do a new fruit on Monday, a new vegetable on Tuesday, a new starchy food on Wednesday, a new protein food on Thursday, and an allergenic food on Friday. And we move through in our 100 First Foods list. The vegetable list has 20 different vegetables and those are gonna be vegetables of different colors. They're gonna be from different plant families are gonna be getting a variety of nutrients, a variety of color experiences, a variety of taste textures, and you're not gonna be overly emphasizing one of those higher nitrate foods.

Katie Ferraro (14m 13s):

So in moderation, those nitrate containing foods appear to be perfectly safe to offer your baby. I'll link to some more resources about nitrates in baby food, but I don't want you guys to be fearful of these foods because they're really not a public health concern if offered in the small quantities that babies would naturally eat them. We get into trouble when we concentrate things, for example, smoothies with tons and tons of that produce in it or supplements that are maybe food derived. The natural amount of food that your going to be eating is not a concern with regards to nitrates or the water situation. You might want to check into your own municipal water source to see what the deal is with nitrates in your area. Check out more information about nitrates in the show notes page for this episode at https://blwpodcast.com/329.

Katie Ferraro (14m 58s):

And a special thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If you guys like podcasts that feature food and science and using your brain, check out some of the podcasts from AirWave or online at https://blwpodcast.com. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time. Congrats. You made it to the end of another episode, and I have a quick favor to ask. Would you be willing to answer a short survey about your podcast listening habits? This is a survey hosted by AirWave. It's a network we joined last year, and I wanna make sure that the ads that you hear on this show are of use and interest to you. It only takes a few minutes to complete the survey and you'll be entered to win a $500 Amazon gift card when you complete it.

Katie Ferraro (15m 38s):

Go to https://surveymonkey.com/r/babyledweening. Again, https://surveymonkey.com/r/babyledweening to complete the survey. And thanks so much for listening.