Homemade is no longer safer ! Avoid eating foods that contain toxic metals ! Here is a list of items to stay away from

Updated on August 12, 2022 11:53 AM by Andrew Koschiev

Making baby food at home with a store-bought procedure will not reduce the amount of toxic heavy metals in the food. Two hundred eighty-eight foods bought at stores and farmers' markets across the United States include grains, vegetables, snacks, teething foods, and family items that baby eats like rice cakes for lead, arsenic, Mercury, and cadmium.

Toxic metal exposure

The WHO has some top chemicals for concern of infants and children. Toxic metal exposure is harmful to the developing brain that linked with some problems like learning, cognition, and behavior. 94% of manufactured baby foods, family foods, and homemade purees made from purchased raw foods contained detectable amounts of heavy metals.

The food you must avoid

Rice cakes and crisped rice cereals are heavily contaminated with arsenic. They had a higher level of inorganic arsenic when compared to other food. So try to avoid both. In fresh carrots and sweet potatoes, lead, arsenic, and cadmium levels are high.

Heavy metals can find in every section of the store. One hundred sixty-eight foods purchased from major baby food manufacturers for analysis found that 95% of store-brought baby food contained lead, 73% contained arsenic, 32% contained Mercury, and 75% contained cadmium. Most of the foods from the analysis contain all four heavy metals.

Organic baby food

Buying organic varieties is a so-called dirty dozen. Organic foods are likely to contain heavy metals as conventional foods. Fruits and vegetables contain the highest pesticides, so don't skimp on fruits and veggies to reduce the baby's exposure to heavy metals or pesticides.

Food with low metal content

Some of the least contaminated foods are bananas, with 1.8 parts per billion of heavy metals considered the least heavy metal food. Following banana eats, butternut squash, apples, pork, eggs, lamb, oranges, and watermelon are the least-contaminated foods. Green beans, cucumbers, peas, and soft home-cooked meats are among these foods.

Milk is one of the good choices for babies 12 months older. Based on snacks for baby’s yogurt, unsweetened applesauce, cheese, beans, hard-boiled eggs, and grapes are considered lower metals foods. Using a frozen banana for a teething baby could lower the risk of heavy metals by 95%, and some of the teeth aids are peeled and chilled cucumber spears.

Related: How to avoid heavy metals in your baby's food

Limitations of foods

Rice cakes, rice puffs, crisped rice cereals, and brown rice with no cooking water are heavily contaminated with more toxic inorganic arsenic. All the rice, including white and wild rice, can reduce the level of arsenic by up to 60%. Baby food companies took brown rice cereal off the market because they contain high arsenic levels.