Unwanted ingredients

Although breastfeeding and human milk are the furst choice for the nurturing, protection and feeding of infants, many parents choose to use substitutes to feed and nurture. The infant food industry happily jumps in on this trend by broadly marketing their product to be ‘’even better now’’ and ‘’most like human milk’’ (makes you wonder how inferior the previous variations were). Ingredient after ingredient of human milk is researched and (if not to difficult and pricey to duplicate) added to the human milk substitute. Infant formulas nowadays contain quite some of the hundreds of ingredients of human milk and is more or less suitable to supply the basic nutrition needs of infants. But the basic ingredients used and the methods used also unwanted and not-asked for (and not appearing on the labels) ingredients will end up in the powder. Minerals and spores that need to be in the milk may appear in unwanted-high quantities. A Scandinavian study by Ljung et al found that a serving of human milk substitute contained significant more Fe, Mn, Mo, As, Cd, Pb and U than one feeding of breast milk, but less Ca, Cu and Se. Rice-based products in particular contained elevated As concentrations. Drinking water used to mix powdered formula may add significantly to the concentrations in the ready-made products. Evaluation of potentially adverse effects of the elevated element concentrations in infant formulas and foods are warranted. In Italy, Meucci c.s. studied samples of the leading brands of infant formula milks and meat-based infant foods commonly marketed in Italy to determine the concentrations of zearalenone and its metabolites (zearalenone is a yeast-toxin of the fusarium species, which is slightly toxic, possibly carcinogenic and has estrogenic charateristics). This study shows the presence of mycoestrogens in infant (milk-based and meat-based) food, and this is likely to have great implications for subsequent generations, suggesting the need to perform occurrence surveys in this type of food.
Ljung K, Palm B, Granderm, Vahter M: High concentrations of essential and toxic elements in infant formula and infant foods - A matter of concern. Food Chemistry, 2011, 127(3):943-951.
Meucci V, Soldani G, Razzuoli E, Saggese G, Massart F: Mycoestrogen Pollution of Italian Infant Food. The Journal of Pediatrics, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 10 March 2011.