Nearly all baby foods — both store-bought and homemade — that American parents feed their children contain detectable amounts of toxic heavy metals, a new study has found. The study, conducted by the Health Babies Bright Futures alliance, found that 94 percent of pre-packaged foods marketed for babies and toddlers contain heavy metals like lead and arsenic. Mark Corkins, chair of the Committee on Nutrition for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said he viewed Thursday’s study as the logical follow-up to the 2019 survey — after which many experts, including himself, suggested that parents switch to homemade options.
Rice is particularly problematic for precisely that reason, as it grows in copious amounts of water and readily takes up arsenic, explained Corkins, who is also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.