What I am about to share with you is in partnership with the clean label project. This information is information that while I am being compensated to share about is extremely important to me as a mom. After having 4 kids, I have learned a lot of information over the years, and I know becoming a Mom is a scary thing. There is sooo much information out there it is a lot to take in. For me what I feed my kids is extremely important, which is why I was happy to work on this project.
Two of my children were formula fed, two of them were breast fed. To me a fed baby is a fed baby as long as it is feeding them and helping them grow. I was unaware of things with my oldest that I wish I had known, and thankfully knew with the younger 3. Now with Hannah I have learned even more about baby food and it is important to talk about.
The Clean Label project, is a nonprofit focused on health and transparency in consumer product labeling. They want us to know what is in our food, especially what we are feeding our babies. I am glad someone is out there doing it, because have you seen the labels? I can’t always even pronounce what is on them!
So what does the Clean Label Project do?
They test products that are on our grocery store shelves to see what is in them and then they share with us (the consumers) their findings. They recently did a study on the baby food that many of us are feeding our babies. The study results are now available to the public on CleanLabelProject.org.
The Clean Label Project Baby Food Study is the most comprehensive scientific investigation ever completed on the foods that impact our nation’s most vulnerable population—young children—at the most critical stage of their development. The study goes well beyond evaluating the ingredients posted on nutritional facts panels and ingredient lists to examine the impact of 130+ industrial and environmental contaminants on nearly 500 worth of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) data found lead in 20% of baby food samples. infant formulas and baby food products. In all, the organization benchmarked more than 100,000 data points and found that over 25 percent of all products tested exceeded at least one state or federal guideline for contaminants. Infant formulas and baby food samples for the study were purchased in grocery stores across America within the past six months.
The Clean Label project Study highlights:
- Over 50 percent of infant formulas contained some arsenic
- Soy-based infant formula contained on average seven times more cadmium than other formulas
- Over 25 percent of baby food samples had detectable levels of lead
- Over 50% of the products labeled“BPA free”tested positive for BPA
- Some products labeled “certified organic” actually had higher amounts of mercury and lead than conventional baby foods, although the organic baby foods had fewer pesticides
- Rice-based “puff” snacks had on average over 5 times as much arsenic as other baby snacks
How to Use the Clean Label Project findings for your family:
To make the findings as accessible and understandable as possible, the Clean Label Project website features a 5-star rating system that names each product tested and shows how contaminated it is compared to the other products in the study. Consumers can easily see for themselves which products are the highest and lowest rated — there is also a report card rating each brand, based on their products as a whole.
What does the Clean Label Project want?
“At the same time, we want regulators to put more specific safety requirements in place and manufacturers to be more responsible when producing food for our nation’s children.”
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