How much lead should you feed your baby?
It's an absurd question, for sure. Yet, when you’re shopping in a store like Target, the last thing you want to worry about is whether the baby food you purchase is damaging the health of your baby in alarming ways. The reality is that you could be feeding your child toxic levels of lead hidden inside that “healthy” spinach ravioli. And while the baby food industry supposedly tests for heavy metals in their products, they’re doing nothing about getting rid of them and making products safe.
Two popular foods were recently tested from Nurture Inc.’s Happy Tots brand: A spinach ravioli and an apple-spinach snack bar. They were found to contain up to 12 times the daily lead exposure limit allowed in California. Further, 95 percent of 168 baby foods from major US food brands tested in 2019 had toxic metals in them. Little did you know, the seemingly innocent spinach ravioli that you purchased from Target for dinner contains lead - which can harm a child’s brain, nervous system and overall development.
Major food companies - like Danon, the conglomerate that owns Nurture - will not act on their own. To protect consumers in California and beyond, Custodio & Dubey filed a lawsuit in June that seeks to have these foods pulled from store shelves until they are reformulated to eliminate the lead, or relabled with prominent Prop. 65 consumer health warnings. Custodio & Dubey also held defendants Whole Foods and Target accountable for knowingly selling harmful products to their consumers.
At this very moment, these products are still on store shelves. Every single day, parents are walking into Whole Foods, Target and other stores across the country to buy these products that they are led to believe are healthy. Instead, they unknowingly expose their toddlers to the dangers of lead.
"Whole Foods wouldn’t sell an apple grown with pesticides, yet they keep selling baby food containing appalling amounts of lead to unsuspecting parents," attorney Vineet Dubey said in a statement.
Parents deserve to know the truth in order to stop putting their baby in harm's way. Custodio & Dubey works to protect consumers from products that pose a threat to their health and safety.
