According to research, some baby foods have been found to contain an "alarming" level of toxic contaminants including arsenic, lead and cadmium!  Something as innocent as baby rice, or fruit baby porridge has been found to contain albeit low levels of these poisons.

The researchers claim that feeding infants twice a day on shop-bought baby foods such as rice porridge can increase the baby's exposure to arsenic by up to fifty times when compared to breast feeding alone.

Officials at the Food Standards Agency and the European Commission are conducting an urgent review of the baby foods.  Products tested included brands such as Organix, Hipp and Nestlé - many of which are available in our supermarkets.

Parents all over the country trust these brands and are possibly unaware of this research and the implications. Just to be clear, none of the toxic levels exceeded official safety limits, but scientists believe they are still of concern if fed to very young children, suggesting that the guidelines themselves are too lenient.

New guidelines have been called for as well as an urgent review. Babies are particularly at risk because they develop so rapidly at a young age.  The Sweedish researchers said the toxins come from the raw materials.  And that all traces should be banned from baby food, not just levels reduced.  One way would be to source the rice from different parts of the world. The rice, wheat and grains absorb the aresnic from the soil as they grow.  Ambient levels vary across the world.

The World Health Organization recently changed the recommended levels of arsenic in our diet because fears that it can cause cancer even at very low levels.  Is this another case where breast is best?

By the time a baby is born, its taste buds are developed and a baby has an innate sense of what foods are good, and which are bad.  Breast and formula milks are sweet, and babies initially favour sweet tastes over sour or bitter flavours.  Although they may taste similar, the difference between breast and formula milk is the difference between processed and natural food.  The first solid foods that many children experience are also processed baby foods.  The packaging will tell you that the contents are healthy and nutritional, but often the truth is that they are laden with more sugar than we would use in our own cooking, and sometimes ingredients that we wouldn't be happy to add ourselves!

There is inceasing evidence that eating high proportions of processed foods as babies leads to increased consumption of processed foods throughout life, as our tastes adapt to the foods that we eat early on.  Processed foods are typically high in salt and sugar and use cheap fats with higher saturated fat content.  This almost certainly plays a part in the rising instance of obesity in children and adults.

A study published in America in 2004 suggested that by the age of 2 years, one third of toddlers do not eat fruit and vegetable in any healthy form, instead being fed a diet consisting only of processed foods.  Other research suggests that babies exposed to a broad range of complex flavours, provided by natural foods, grow up to eat a broad and healthy diet, which in turn contributes to a better lifestyle.

If these ideas are correct, then it reinsforces just how important it is to be feeding our little ones a broad range of foods and flavours from an early age.  Don't become dependent on baby jars from the supermarket, instead, look to buying a wide selection of fruit and vegetables from which to make your own purees, and wholesome meals.