Ways to prevent heavy metals in your baby's food

Heavy metals like arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury are everywhere in our environment and it's almost impossible to avoid them in your baby's diet. These metals have even been found in store-bought baby foods, including organic brands in unsafe levels.

But there are ways to lower the likelihood of your baby ingesting them. Here is what you can do.

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All the food, including baby food, contains some heavy metals. Metals are naturally present in water, soil and air. But metals also enter our food through pesticides and pollution. It has been found that some of America's biggest baby food manufacturers have been selling food with high levels of these metals. An analysis of 168 baby foods was done in the year 2019, it was found that 95 per cent of them had toxic metals in them. All the products have a measurable amount of at least on heavy metal, about one-third has worrisome levels of these metals and 15 per cent has health risk if eaten once a day.

Excessive consumption of these heavy metals can cause health issues and damage a child's developing brain. Public health experts have suggested that the Food and Drug Administration set safety standards for baby foods and provide more transparent labels. Currently, the FDA does not regulate the heavy metals in most baby foods.

It is not possible to completely avoid heavy metals lurking in your baby's food and snacks. But here are a few steps you can take to lower your baby's risk of ingesting too many metals in their diet.

- Serve them a wide variety of food that is rich in nutrients. Feeding them with a wide variety of nutrients help limit the risk of long-term exposure to heavy metals. You can start with pureed vegetables and fruits.

- Limit the rice cereals and snacks made with rice flour. Rice absorbs 10 times more arsenic than other grains. Go for whole grains instead, like barley and oats.

- Instead of processed snacks, give your child whole foods as much as possible. Snacks that are low in heavy metals include apples, unsweetened applesauce, avocados, bananas, barley with vegetables, cheese, grapes, beans, hard-boiled eggs, peaches, strawberries and yoghurt.

- Choose to breastfeed over formula milk if possible.

- Get your home's water tested for lead, if you use it for preparing the formula or cereals. Metals can get in tap water, especially if it comes through older pipes. You can use bottled water to make your baby's food.

- Avoid giving them fruit juice. No juice at all for infants and no more than 4 ounces per day for 1-3 years old, recommends the American Academy of Pediatrics.

- Limit their carrot and sweet potato intake. These two usually have heavier metals than other ground vegetables. This is because they are grown in the ground.

It is a bit unlikely but not impossible. As per the American Academy of Pediatrics, the heavy metals found in baby foods pose a small risk to children. But the exposure should be minimised as it can be harmful to the developing brain.

Many other things like the environment and genetics put them at risk, metal from food is just one of these factors.

Our government must regulate and set rigorous safety standards for baby food.

Heavy metals are present in the products we buy, so even making homemade baby food will not make much difference. But making it at home is still a better option as they will avoid the manufacturing and packaging chemicals.