Mommies Beware!

I wanted to write a post about this the minute that I got Sawyer to sleep... so here it is. While I was putting Sawyer down for her nap this afternoon, I was watching Dr. Oz. He had a show on today about arsenic in apple juice. I don't usually watch his show, because he tends to sensationalize whatever he is talking about. But I will someday be giving my daughter juices, so my ears pearked up! What came next was horrifying. This is not something silly that new moms fret about, this is something that everyone should be worried about.
Apparently, China where almost everything is made these days, does not monitor arsenic levels in fruit concentrate, and the result is that we are getting juice here in the US that has unsafe levels of arsenic, sometimes 3 times as much as the maximum level that is deemed safe by the FDA in our drinking water. So, when you think you are giving your children something with health benefits you are actually poisoning them! Gerber was by far the worst, lab tests that came back had 3 times the allowable level in drinking water. So why is this allowed to happen at all... Our government has not set a restriction on arsenic levels in apple juice, apparently they did on pear juice after information like this was released. However, the restriction set there is still higher than what the FDA deems safe in drinking water.
Organic juices made in the US all tested within safe levels, so I will choose these for Sawyer in any kind of juice that I give her, and I will be writing my congressman to let them know that this is just unacceptable, and scary! As parents we want to keep our children safe and then something like this is going on right under our noses. Companies should be accountable, but if they aren't going to hold themselves to a high standard then we have to do the detective work ourselves. I personally do not know if I will give my child anything produced by Gerber and that is sad because I know it is a trusted brand. Just not so sure how great any of their products can be if they will allow such low standards in their products.
Scary to me that we have to research everything we give to our children, but there is no accountability and none of the companies would cop to the responsibility. If you want more information on this visit the Dr. Oz website, he has all the information from the study. We have to make the change because big companies obviously won't!
On a much happier note, Soybean is sleeping soundly and I haven't given her any juice at all so far in her little life. So I can sleep a bit more peacefully tonight... xoxo