The very first solid food we put in Darah’s mouth was from Earth’s Best. It was rice cereal. Ever since that day (New Year’s Eve 2009), we’ve been big fans and loyal customers to this brand. When I was offered the opportunity to become an ambassador for the brand for the next 6 months, I knew the partnership made perfect sense. I already love and respect Earth’s Best, and now I get to share my thoughts and experiences with you, and along the way, offer up some wonderful prizes to you, my readers.
This is going to be so much fun!
Did you know that Earth’s Best has been around since way before organic became trendy and cool? It has 25 years under its belt, and in that time, has grown tremendously, now offering more than 100 products, including organic infant formula, a really impressive line of infant and toddler foods, and baby care products.
Earth’s Best works hard to be the company of choice for parents who are hoping to provide organic options for their babies and children, and who seek out companies that only use the purest ingredients.
Earth’s Best aims to help make your life a little less hectic. For example, we don’t all have time to go to our local farmer’s market each week and then come home and turn those ingredients into delicious purees and snacks. Earth’s Best is happy to take that chore off your hands without you having to sacrifice the standard you’d like to set for your child’s nutrition and overall health.
Over the next 6 months, I’ll be bringing you news about great new Earth’s Best products, information from Earth’s Best nutrition and health experts, and of course, wonderful giveaways. I hope this series will inspire some good conversations among my readers, not only about this particular brand, but also about how we can strategically make choices to provide products that are free from nasty chemicals to our children.
I’ll be posting for Earth’s Best twice each month, and one post each month will have a giveaway. Folks who comment on the non-giveaway post each month will get a bonus entry into that month’s Earth’s Best giveaway! So here’s your chance to earn a bonus entry!
Do you have any questions for Earth’s Best, either about their products or about ways to cut out unhealthy chemicals in your home and in your child’s diet? I’d love to take your questions and comments back to the company!
Congratulations to you–the respect you’ve earned deserves recognition!
As a mom, I’m trying to help babies and toddlers besides just my own too. I wrote this as my review of the rice cereal you mentioned for CVS. I don’t blog, and I very rarely write product reviews. I am trying to get the word out on this b/c it seems nobody has really taken notice of just how much worse EB rice is than most of the other brands on the market, if you include dozens of uncooked rice brans. Please take a moment to read if you are considering using EB brown rice cereal. It was a disappointment and wake up call for me. I use many other products from EB and Hain Celestial. I’m going to have to rethink this.
If you have any creative ideas on how I can dispose of unopened boxes of this product, please share! I could just stab all of the boxes so thy aren’t picked up and used by someone else. I can label the bag “high in carcinogens,” or…..? Thanks!
Too High in Inorganic Arsenic (Class I Carcinogen)February 16, 2013
In late 2012 Consumer Reports published results of arsenic levels it found in samples of over 200 rice products.
Inorganic arsenic is a known carcinogen. Rice is also currently considered a significant source of environmental arsenic for humans, ranging from 17% (2009-10 EPA study) to the main cause of over half of the total environmental exposure, which is attributed to cereals according to a “more complete” study by the European Food Safety Organization (CR 2012).
This is not a new issue. Most of what I’ve seen online about baby cereals and arsenic have cited inorganic arsenic content PER SERVING and concludes that you should limit your baby or child to one 15g serving per day and adults to 1.25 45g servings per week. Among the four baby products CR tested, Earth’s Best Organic Whole Grain Rice infant cereal had the highest average levels of inorganic arsenic–ALMOST DOUBLE (193%) the average arsenic in the other three brands (Beech-Nut Homestyle Cereal, Gerber Rice, Gerber SmartNourish).
I was late to read this report, and when I did, I looked at a pdf containing detailed results of the tests before I noticed a chart at the end of the article published online.
What I was startled to find in the detailed data is something not reflected in the more popularly-viewed chart, which lists inorganic arsenic content in rice per serving rather than in parts per billion.
When I compared the 32 uncooked rice brands CR tested and the 4 infant cereals, I found that the inorganic arsenic (the kind that causes cancer) in Earth’s Best brown rice cereal is not only the highest among the 4 baby cereals, but it ranks as the FOURTH highest in inorganic arsenic concentration, gram per gram of rice, among the other 32 products.
In parts per billion, the highest levels of inorganic arsenic were in:
#1: Della Basmati Brown,
Average inorganic arsenic in ppb: 179.66
#2 365 Everyday Value Long Grain Brown (Whole Foods)
Average inorganic arsenic in ppb: 176.67
#3 Carolina Whole Grain Brown,
Average inorganic arsenic in ppb: 164.33
#4 Earth’s Best Organic Whole Grain Rice Cereal
Average inorganic arsenic in ppb: 152
#5 Jazzmen Louisiana Aromatic Brown,
Average inorganic arsenic in ppb: 149
The old news is that brown rice is known to be higher in arsenic content than white rice, and this was shown in the CR data.
The good news is that you can reduce the arsenic content of rice by about 30% if you wash it first and cook it using 6 parts of water to 1 part of uncooked rice. This is great, but it only applies to the uncooked rice products. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to mitigate the arsenic that is in baby cereal.
If you were to prepare your uncooked rice according to the CR and FDA recommended methods, you will see that Earth’s Best Organic Whole Grain Rice Cereal for infants jumps into the number ONE spot as having the highest average inorganic arsenic contamination in parts per billion. (This is assuming that organic and inorganic arsenic are removed at the same rate.)
AFTER WASHING AND COOKING WITH EXCESS WATER*:
#1 Earth’s Best Organic Whole Grain Rice Cereal*
Average inorganic arsenic in ppb: 152
#2: Della Basmati Brown,
Average inorganic arsenic in ppb: 126.8
#3 365 Everyday Value Long Grain Brown (Whole Foods)
Average inorganic arsenic in ppb: 123.7
#4 Carolina Whole Grain Brown
Average inorganic arsenic in ppb: 115
#5 Jazzmen Louisiana Aromatic Brown,
Average inorganic arsenic in ppb: 104.3
* Unfortunately, you cannot reduce arsenic in baby cereal so it gets fed in totality to your baby or toddler.
I bought a case of this cereal among other available brands after reading on its packaging that it is organic, non-gmo, and “grown without potentially harmful pesticides and herbicides.”
The arsenic in Earth’s Best brown rice cereal is not only high b/c arsenic is higher in brown rice in general, it is higher than arsenic in other brown rice brands, particularly since there is nothing you can do to reduce it.
If you have this product in your home and if you are using it as a first food, you can switch to other grains, but if you want to continue using rice due to allergen or other reasons (I fully understand), you are much better off feeding your child 15grams of any one of the other 32 brands of uncooked rice using the FDA recommended prep guidelines, and you will be feeding your child less inorganic arsenic, gram per gram of rice. Remember that the chart at the bottom of the online CR study lists arsenic PER SERVING, and the serving size for uncooked rice is 45g and for baby cereal, it is only 15g.
If you feel you were mislead by Earth’s Best’s brown rice product, I urge you to contact your local stores to let them know about the arsenic in this product and to ask them to discontinue stocking it! If you care, please write to your local stores, take a moment to talk to the store manager, write a review online. Every time I see this product in stores, it makes me sad. I have more than half a case of unopened EB rice cereal and there is no way I would feed it to my son, nor is there any way I would give it away, knowing it will be eaten by another child or baby!
I wrote to the company. They have not taken any responsibility for the high levels of arsenic in their cereal, nor have I found anywhere online where someone has raised the issue of comparing the absolute inorganic arsenic content of infant and uncooked rice in parts per billion, rather than in micrograms of arsenic per serving.
If you have this product and would like to complain to the FDA, you can call your local coordinator. In the absence of a federal limit on arsenic levels in food, however, you can only complain about Earth’s Best’s inaccurate labeling on their package. The words, “Grown without Potentially Harmful Pesticides and Herbicides” appears on its label. EB does not ADD these harmful substances to its crops, however, research shows that much of the arsenic appearing in rice comes from pesticide residues IN THE SOIL that crops are grown on. “Organic” means that a producer does not ADD these substances TO THE CROP or soil.
However, the high inorganic arsenic content in Earth’s Best Organic Whole Grain Rice Cereal for infants suggests that the product WAS grown WITH potentially harmful pesticides IN THE SOIL. The statement “Grown WITHOUT” is a larger claim than the “organic” claim, which the company can support. Again, the arsenic concentrations in EB’s brown rice cereal suggest the crop was indeed grown WITH arsenic-containing pesticides that got into the crop via soil and water used to grow the rice. If it wasn’t grown with arsenic in the soil and then in the water, then the rice wouldn’t contain such high levels of inorganic arsenic. This is common sense, and EB’s labeling is inaccurate.
If you call the FDA, you will need to state when you bought your product, where, how much is left, any effects you experienced (which for carcinogens does not happen for many years, so you should state that inorganic arsenic is a known carcinogen and that the FDA already knows this and it also already knows the levels of inorganic arsenic CR found in EB’s infant cereal), and the expiration date, lot number, place of production, size of package, and bar code, all on the box.
[…]
I try to do what is best for my son on a day to day basis. Buying EB cereal was one of those things. I felt horrible, when I saw the CR pdf. I read it thinking EB’s cereal was going to come out on top! I now cringe at my naive expectation. I immediately put the unused boxes in a bag for the trash, but I luckily kept it in the house long enough to have a box handy when I called the FDA. I feel so bad seeing something on store shelves that I believe is dangerous to feed my own child being marketed to other health-conscious moms trying to do the best for their babies.
I wrote to Whole Foods and am awaiting a response. The Hain-Celestial group that makes EB cereal gave me a generic (auto) response. The FDA will tell you they are already addressing the issue and that no violations have occurred in the absence of a federal limit on arsenic in food. However, it remains that it is not on the FDA’s radar that EB’s packaging has untrue claims. Infant formulas are more highly regulated, but this cereal is not a formula, even though it is intended for infants. This is a serious issue that potentially falls through the cracks.
For the love of babies and toddlers, please help remove this product from stores. Many people use infant rice cereal, particularly parents whose babies have reflux and feeding intolerances. The last thing these young ones need is a neurotoxin to make life just that much more challenging. This cereal is only one of many products EB carries and it is a tiny, inconsequential part of Hain Celestial–there is no reason for them to ignore the CR report. Even Nestle, whose cereal had much less inorganic arsenic, responded to the CR data.
Please feel free to share this post if you are supportive. Thanks!
Cons: high levels of carcinogen, no accountability from company, unopened boxes bulky in trash
No, I do not recommend this product.
Thank you for your comment. I will pass this on to Earth’s Best for review.
Congratulations on being a blogger for Earth’s Best. I look forward to entering your fun contests. =)
I love Earth’s Best products. I began with them when I had my daughter who could not eat so many foods. They were a lifesaver! Now I use them on my son.
I would love to try this. I would rather my child’s food be organic than that processed stuff they sell at the store.
I love it when I can pronounce ingredients. Thanks so much for this awesome review!
My Name: Heather Abbe
My Email: abbegirl1977 at gmail dot com
I would love to try Earth’s Best for my grandson coming soon. With all the stuff in the news about pesticides, makes me wonder if that causes many of the childhood cancer cases.
I love how their products are organic
Earth’s Best sounds exactly like it’s name says it is… “Earth’s Best” considering that their products are made from all organic ingredients.
I would love to see a boxed barley cereal or millet… would be perfect for mixing with some of their simple Stage 1 purees. Would they ever consider boxing these grains (or at least some other grains other than oatmeal and rice)???
Great question! Have you seen the multi-grain cereal box? It’s got spelt flour and barley! http://www.earthsbest.com/products/product/2392390002
I’d love to see millet, too!
We love Earth’s best! We started with their baby food and cereal for both my little ones and now love their fruit bars and puffs for on the go. And their abc cookies are always a favorite!
I love Earth’s Best, it was the first baby food we fed our daughter as well. She still eats it and loves it at 16 months old (as she only has two teeth.) I’d love for Earth’s Best to hook you and your reader’s up with a coupon link! As we all know, baby items add up, especially their food.
I would like to know where Earth Best obtains the ingredients for its products?
Here’s my question for Earth’s Best: What foods are recommended to be a child’s first foods? It’s been over six years since I had a little one and had to know these things!