Homemade vs Packaged Baby Food: Which Has Fewer Heavy Metals?

Making your own purees can feel like the safer bet, so it surprises a lot of parents to learn that homemade baby food is not automatically lower in heavy metals.

Lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury occur naturally in soil and water, and they also come from past pollution. Crops take up small amounts as they grow. A sweet potato absorbs them the same way whether it ends up in your blender or in a factory kettle.

What the testing found

In 2022, the nonprofit Healthy Babies Bright Futures (HBBF) set out to answer exactly this question. It tested 288 foods, including store-bought baby food, homemade purees, and regular grocery items that families feed babies, and reviewed more than 7,000 other published test results.

The result: detectable heavy metals turned up in 94% of store-bought baby foods and in 94% of homemade and family foods. HBBF found no evidence that homemade food is generally lower in heavy metals. The biggest differences came from the type of food, not from who made it. Read the HBBF report.

Foods that tend to run higher, and lower

Across the studies, a handful of foods stand out:

• Higher: rice cakes, crisped rice cereal, rice-based puffs, brown rice, rice teething biscuits and rusks, and fruit juice. Carrots and sweet potatoes also tend to carry more lead and cadmium than other vegetables, because they grow in the soil.
• Lower: bananas, butternut squash, apples, eggs, and most meats were among the lowest in HBBF's testing.

That does not mean you should stop serving carrots or sweet potatoes. They are nutritious first foods. It means they work best as part of a rotation rather than every day.

What actually lowers exposure

These steps come from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and work whether you cook at home, buy jars and pouches, or do both:

1. Serve a variety of foods. Rotating fruits, vegetables, grains, and proteins keeps any one food from dominating your baby's diet.
2. Switch up grains. Rice cereal does not need to be the first or only cereal. Oatmeal, barley, and multigrain infant cereals are good options.
3. If you cook rice, cook it like pasta. Use plenty of water and drain the extra. White basmati and sushi rice tend to have less arsenic than brown rice.
4. Skip juice before age 1. Whole or pureed fruit is a better choice.
5. Wash and peel produce when you make purees at home.

The AAP's parent site has the full list: Heavy Metals in Baby Food: Reducing Risk of Exposure.

Where packaged food gives you more information

One real difference between homemade and packaged food is information. You cannot test your own purees at home. Packaged baby food increasingly comes with test data:

• Under California's AB 899, baby-food makers selling in the state must test their products for arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury and post the results online. Many packs now carry a QR code that links to those results.
• Some products also carry an independent certification mark, such as the Heavy Metal Certified mark. It means that specific product was tested through a qualified independent laboratory and met a published standard covering eight metals, with retesting every year. It does not mean the food is free of metals or that other foods are unsafe. Here is what the mark means.

The bottom line

Homemade and packaged baby food both start with the same crops. Neither format wins on heavy metals by default. The biggest lever you control is variety: which foods go into the bowl, and how often.

FAQ

Is homemade baby food lower in heavy metals than store-bought? Not in general. HBBF's 2022 testing found heavy metals in 94% of both homemade and store-bought foods. Levels depended more on the type of food than on who made it.

Should I stop making baby food at home? No. Homemade food is a fine choice. The same advice applies either way: serve a variety of foods, rotate grains, and go easy on rice-based snacks and juice.

Which homemade foods should I rotate most carefully? Rice, carrots, and sweet potatoes. They are worth serving, just not every day.

Can I test my homemade baby food for heavy metals? Home test kits are not reliable for the very low levels found in food. Accurate testing needs a specialized laboratory.

Does a certification mark mean packaged food is safe? No. The Heavy Metal Certified mark means a product met a published standard when tested. It is not a safety guarantee.

Learn more

• Why carrots and sweet potatoes carry more metals
• Heavy metals in vegetable baby purees
• Infant oatmeal vs rice cereal
• What Heavy Metal Tested certification is

Make packaged baby food? Book a 30-minute call to see whether your products are a fit for certification.