What are you doing about rice in baby products?

[amldaley]

The arsenic in rice issue seemed to fade out rather quickly. I am wondering if anyone with young babies has changed what they are feeding their little ones?

We are not giving rice cereal (she prefers oatmeal anyway) but still occassionally giving pureed foods that contain rice. It's hard to limit as sooooo many of the pureed foods contain rice.

What are you doing?

[Melaine]

We haven't started solids, bc I still haven't figured out DS's digestive issues. However, I am going to delay grains until 12 months per my natural practitioner. I don't feel like rice is of much nutritional value anyway, so I'll just skip that altogether. Because my diet has been so all over the place (now I am grain-free, dairy-free, egg-free), I am not sure what we will do about rice as a family. We haven't had any since I heard about the arsenic.

[Katigre]

We dont do rice in general and do blw so no jarred purees

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[marymoo86]

My DD is out of puree stage but why not just eliminate them and give your DD whole foods?

[brittone2]

We briefly attempted rice cereal with my DS1, and skipped it entirely with subsequent kids. We used BLW. With my DS1, I didn't really know it was BLW, he just didn't like being spoon fed and did better with finger foods. With my 2nd and 3rd kids, we just went straight to BLW.

[amldaley]

My DD is out of puree stage but why not just eliminate them and give your DD whole foods?

B/c she is only 7 months old. She also has some issues with swallowing. I do make some of her foods myself with the blendtec but b/c we have alot of other things going on right now, including living in a temporary rental (so our kitchen is not really set up) I do need to rely on jarred foods.

[tmahanes]

I know they are more expensive but what about the Plum Organics pouches..... We really liked them. They have things other than rice mixed in.

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[amldaley]

I know they are more expensive but what about the Plum Organics pouches..... We really liked them. They have things other than rice mixed in.

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Thanks! I had not looked at those. Love that they use quinoa!!!! Too pricey for daily use but that's perfect for taking out and about...and we're out and about several days a week.

[kaharris83]

BRU often has them for $1/pouch and ecomom has vouchers(Plum District, etc) that sometimes apply to food maoing them cheap. Amazon S&S sometimes has a good deal on them too. DS1 loves the Plum pouches. We did BLW and those with him. Never did any sort of cereal.

[mommylamb]

I seem to have missed this. What is the arsenic in rice issue? DS2 has been eating Earth's Best (organic) for purees, but does eat rice cereal. He also eats regular food a lot (at nearly 8 months, he much prefers to eat what we're eating than eating purees), and I've given him rice. Feeling mommy guilt coming on.

[rin]

I seem to have missed this. What is the arsenic in rice issue? DS2 has been eating Earth's Best (organic) for purees, but does eat rice cereal. He also eats regular food a lot (at nearly 8 months, he much prefers to eat what we're eating than eating purees), and I've given him rice. Feeling mommy guilt coming on.

Consumer reports found pretty high levels of arsenic in a bunch of different brands of rice/rice products. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/11/arsenic-in-your-food/index.htm#recommendations Arsenic is a carcinogen, so they have recommendations (about halfway down that page) for limiting the amount of rice in your diet.


B/c she is only 7 months old. She also has some issues with swallowing. I do make some of her foods myself with the blendtec but b/c we have alot of other things going on right now, including living in a temporary rental (so our kitchen is not really set up) I do need to rely on jarred foods.

We didn't do "pure" baby-led weaning with DD1, because she did like things like applesauce, etc that she couldn't feed herself, but we did a lot of just serving her soft portions of the food we were eating, so slices of banana, a super-steamed piece of broccoli, scrambled eggs, etc. We started offering her things about 6-7 months (although I admit she never ate much in the way of solid food until closer to 12 months).

[amldaley]

I seem to have missed this. What is the arsenic in rice issue? DS2 has been eating Earth's Best (organic) for purees, but does eat rice cereal. He also eats regular food a lot (at nearly 8 months, he much prefers to eat what we're eating than eating purees), and I've given him rice. Feeling mommy guilt coming on.

Consumer Reports: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/11/arsenic-in-your-food/index.htm

Earths Best was tested and found very high (that's what we use, too). I had no issue tossing the rice cereal box, DD2 prefers oatmeal antway. But read the pureeed foods labels...many contain rice.

As for regular rice, it depends on white vs brown and where it is grown.

No mommy guilt! The worst thing about this is that it effects people who thought they were making healthy food choices!

[123LuckyMom]

Wow! Thanks for this information! DD has only eaten 2 servings of the Earth's Best rice cereal. She hated it, and she was old enough that I just started right into purées. I just checked, and nothing she's eaten has rice in it, just the fruit or veggie and water. I'll be careful going forward, but I still plan to use the Earth's Best jarred food and the Happy Baby pouches.

The rest of the family, however, eats lots of brown rice! I'd say we eat it at least twice a week between lunch and dinner. I'm not sure what I want to do about this, because I do feel overall that brown rice is more healthful than white rice. I guess we could eliminate rice entirely, but we already eat so much quinoa. Maybe it's time for more couscous? What are other people doing? Are you all carb free?

[queenmama]

B/c she is only 7 months old. She also has some issues with swallowing. I do make some of her foods myself with the blendtec but b/c we have alot of other things going on right now, including living in a temporary rental (so our kitchen is not really set up) I do need to rely on jarred foods.

Your baby can start whole foods at 7 months. Most start baby-led weaning at 6 months. You don't have to do anything extra, just give baby finger-food portions of whatever the rest of you are eating (within reason). The swallowing issue you mentioned shouldn't be a problem, as babies at this stage will generally chew first before moving food to the back of the mouth and will gag/cough if it does happen to go down wrong, provided they are sitting upright. And as with any foods, introduce one at a time to watch for allergies.

[amldaley]

Your baby can start whole foods at 7 months. Most start baby-led weaning at 6 months. You don't have to do anything extra, just give baby finger-food portions of whatever the rest of you are eating (within reason). The swallowing issue you mentioned shouldn't be a problem, as babies at this stage will generally chew first before moving food to the back of the mouth and will gag/cough if it does happen to go down wrong, provided they are sitting upright. And as with any foods, introduce one at a time to watch for allergies.

That may be true for average babies but my child has laryngomalacia and has some issues swallowing because of it. Per her specialists, she is only allowed cereals and purees at this time.

[queenmama]

That may be true for average babies but my child has laryngomalacia and has some issues swallowing because of it. Per her specialists, she is only allowed cereals and purees at this time.

Oh, so sorry, I must've missed that! I would probably recommend oatmeal over rice in this case, and it's going to have nutritional value over rice cereal anyway (which is really just filler). Oops, saw that you are feeding it already! Not sure which jarred foods are rice-free, what a pain to have to sort that out! Good luck!

[123LuckyMom]

I just went shopping and bought a bunch of Earth's Best jars. They have plenty without any rice in it, even meats, though they're all turkey, I think, not chicken. There's even one with quinoa in it, which has protein, too, since it's a seed. If you want to avoid rice, just check the labels. I didn't find it difficult.

[mommylamb]

Just trashed the rice cereal, and about to go through and chuck the few jars of purees that have rice. Of course, I've also been feeding DS2 rice (regular rice, not in baby food), so I guess I'll be stopping that too. Ugh.

But thanks for posting this. I posted it on my FB feed.

[mommylamb]

So what are you all doing about rice for yourselves and older children? Are you cutting it out completely? Cutting back? Thinking of the left over chinese food that I had planned to bring to work for lunch today...

[janine]

Not cutting back for ourselves or older children. I wonder why we don't see high incidences of cancer in Asia then?

I don't give my younger DD rice cereal anymore (a few servings in the beginning). What about things like Mum Mums? Love those but they are rice based...

[Katigre]

Not cutting back for ourselves or older children. I wonder why we don't see high incidences of cancer in Asia then?

I don't give my younger DD rice cereal anymore (a few servings in the beginning). What about things like Mum Mums? Love those but they are rice based...
The issue is most specific to US-grown rice ;).

[janine]

The issue is most specific to US-grown rice ;).

Ahhhh. We buy those huge bags from Chinatown for our rice so maybe we are ok :).

Mum Mums say product of China, not sure if that is good or bad!

[amldaley]

So what are you all doing about rice for yourselves and older children? Are you cutting it out completely? Cutting back? Thinking of the left over chinese food that I had planned to bring to work for lunch today...

I think the article makes recommendations - I'd have to go back and look - but think it said one serving a day is ok for white rice and, as pp said, depends on where it was grown. Our big bag is from Thailand, so hoping we're ok. We've cut down to once a week and using more quinoa instead.

[mackmama]

I know they are more expensive but what about the Plum Organics pouches..... We really liked them. They have things other than rice mixed in.

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