Organic/gluten-free baby cereal - pity about the arsenic and mercury

If you are buying organic or gluten-free cereals for your baby, are you aware that high mercury and arsenic levels may come along with these market-grabbing claims?

A research team recently looked at the mercury and arsenic levels in 91 different infant cereals from 10 different manufacturers in Spain. The rice-based cereals presented the highest arsenic levels with 32 of the 91 cereals providing an inadmissible risk of arsenic intake. 95% of the organically produced infant cereals and 70% of the conventional gluten-free infant cereals showed an inadmissible risk of arsenic intake.

Overall, the content of toxic elements found in infant cereals based on conventionally obtained raw materials was lower than in cereals produced by organic methods.

Mercury content in infant cereals shows the higher values in those formulations with ingredients susceptible to particulate contamination such as gluten-free or cacao-based cereals.

In their report published in Food Control, Volume 30, Issue 2, the researchers, Raquel Hernández-Martínez, Iñigo Navarro-Blasco call for the establishment of Hg and As guideline values for infant cereals in Europe.