Heavy Metals in Baby Food: What Parents Need to Know and How Loco Bebé Keeps Your Baby Safe

Heavy Metals in Baby Food: What Every Parent Should Know And How Loco Bebé Is Changing the Standard

If you’ve ever come across a headline about heavy metals in baby food, you know how unsettling it feels. Parents put so much trust into those little jars, pouches, and snacks and yet multiple government reports and major news outlets have confirmed that many baby foods on store shelves contain measurable amounts of arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury. These toxins, even at very low levels, can affect a baby’s brain development and long-term health.

Where the Biggest Risks Are Hiding

The worst offenders are often products made with rice especially rice-based cereals, snacks, and puffs. Rice naturally absorbs more arsenic from the soil and water than most crops, and that contamination ends up concentrated in the finished product. Over the past decade, numerous recalls and warnings have been tied to these types of snacks, with arsenic levels far above what experts consider safe for infants.

Infant formula has also faced scrutiny. Because ingredients are often sourced from all over the world and mixed in huge facilities, there’s limited traceability meaning manufacturers themselves may not know which specific farms their ingredients came from or how those crops were grown. That lack of visibility increases the chances of heavy metals slipping into the final product.

What About Baby Food Pouches?

Pouch baby food a category that’s exploded in popularity for its convenience is not immune, but the picture looks a little different. Because most pouches rely on fruits and vegetables rather than grains, they tend to have fewer recalls overall than rice-based snacks or puffs. That said, root vegetables like carrots and sweet potatoes naturally draw more metals from the soil, so the risk is still there if those crops aren’t grown with care.

The difference between a pouch that’s truly safe and one that isn’t almost always comes down to how the ingredients are sourced and how carefully they’re tested. And in most of the baby food industry, that’s where things fall short.

How Big Brands Source Ingredients And Why It Matters

Most baby food companies don’t actually know where their ingredients come from. They rely on massive commodity brokers and processors who pool crops from dozens of farms sometimes across several countries into one bulk supply. By the time those sweet potatoes or mangoes arrive at a manufacturing facility, the connection to the soil they grew in is long gone. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) at these facilities prioritize price, volume, and shelf life, not soil health, water quality, or regenerative practices.

Even many organic brands fall into this trap. “Organic” simply means the crops weren’t treated with synthetic pesticides or fertilizers. It does not guarantee the soil is free from heavy metals. A carrot grown organically in contaminated soil can still contain lead or arsenic. And because most companies never visit their farms or test their soil, they may never know.

Loco Bebé Does Things Differently, From the Ground Up

We built Loco Bebé to challenge that system. Our approach starts where heavy metal contamination begins: in the soil itself. Instead of sourcing blindly through brokers, we partner directly with small local farmers and we personally visit every single farm we work with. We walk the fields, talk to the growers, understand their practices, and make sure they’re farming in ways that protect the land and keep heavy metals out of the food from the start.

Even better, we grow many of our most nutrient-dense ingredients ourselves including purple sweet potatoes, orange sweet potatoes, and pumpkin, on carefully managed regenerative farms in the Dominican Republic. Because we’re deeply involved from planting to harvest, we have full visibility into soil health, water quality, and every step of the growing process.

And soon, you won’t have to just take our word for it. Starting in 2026, we’ll be opening our farms to families for guided tours. Parents will be able to see exactly where our ingredients are grown, meet the farmers behind the food, and witness firsthand how our farm-to-pouch approach is setting a new standard for safety and transparency in baby food.

Testing Every Batch And Sharing the Results

At Loco Bebé, our commitment to safety doesn’t end in the field. Every small batch of our baby food is tested for heavy metals before it ever reaches your home. And because we believe parents deserve more than vague assurances, we publish those results in our Heavy Metal Testing Database, available right on our website. It’s part of our promise to make transparency the rule, not the exception..

At Loco Bebé, safety isn’t a slogan — it’s our standard. Explore our Heavy Metal Testing Database and discover how we’re raising the bar for baby food, from our regenerative farms to your family’s table.