Toxic toddler fruit pouches: "high" lead levels sicken 7 in 5 states
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Because I didn't see anything to back up corporate-whoopsie in TFA.
"Worse case scenario, I have to live like middle America" is a terrible deterrent.
If these folk have already demonstrated they are willing to harm others in order to "generate money", having them do more of that seems... counterproductive.
Harm done to others, meanwhile, is not free. Each of the affected toddlers will have had hospital time, and could have had a productive life of "generating money" had they not been killed by a fruit pouch; so even if you throw morality under the bus and focus purely on picking the outcome that "generates money"... society loses much more money with the death of a toddler than it gains with the sale of a fruit pouch. If it turns out that someone deliberately made that choice, that person is a risk to society and must be prevented from acting in ways that might cause further harm in the future.
I wouldn't. I used to have such faith in humans once, but, well, lead in toddler food.
It’s natural to be angry here but I think what we should be doing is channeling this anger into demands for more aggressive regulation. Waiting until people get sick is too late, we should expect things like lead or salmonella testing to be done constantly. We could crucify the CEO of this company on livestream and it wouldn’t have much lasting impact because the kind of people who do this think the odds of getting caught are low – change that and it’ll have a much bigger impact.
For example, we could start punishing people who sell drugs with harsh punishments.
It’ll surely work!
People therefore feel free to do drugs, which drives demand for people to sell them. Thus an incentive arises, which, for some, is worth the risk.
The same balance applies here. If we dont want something happening, it needs harsh punishments to outweigh the incentives.
I’d imagine making tens of millions by selling poisonous food provides a similar incentive?
Yeah, but how many? Singapore has a very small drug trade when you consider its wealth per-capita. Most counties with similar wealth have trades several times larger per-capita.
You can't completely eliminate a crime no matter what punishments you hand out. Someone people are just blind to risk. However, that doesn't mean punishing people is futile. It has a demonstrable effect.
Now, I do believe that checks and balances that prevent crime are generally more effective than punishments, but punishments are still necessary to add risk to gaps in prevention.
Lots of people. There are sizable drugs busts (kilograms of heroin) in Singapore every few weeks. It's a country of 5M, smaller than a larger US city.
That's a claim that needs some data to back it up.
Singapore has 3.5M people. Kilograms of heroin is a huge amount. It's in the dozens of kilograms per year, and that's not counting all the heroin that doesn't get seized.
You're really suggesting criminals should go free as long as we cap their maximum income?
Really?
Not free but under some kind of program where they’re allowed to stay out of prison in some kind of supervised program. These guys were greedy, not axe murderers, and I don’t think there’s much public risk as long as they’re no longer in a position where they can make decisions which affect other people’s health again.
I know it can feel satisfying to light the torches and demand vengeance – it’s a primal emotional reaction – but I don’t think it’s going to do anything. I doubt these guys are going to have evidence of intention to deliberately poison anyone, and I doubt that paying to keep them in jail is going to have more positive outcome than being allowed to stay out of jail so they can make restitution payments.
These guys did a lot more damage than any axe murderer ever did. Lining them up against the wall would do a lot to deter other CEOs from cutting corners in this way.
What if the axe murderer was after their wallet? That would put them in the same category as your sainted "job creators"
You have badly misunderstood my point. I’m not saying they should be tolerated to protect jobs, only that someone who is not uncontrollably dangerous to the people around them can probably serve society better than as an ongoing $100k/year cost.
Also, why not the mean? Surely they've made lots of decisions in their lives that were not so egalitarian as your proposal.
Is this example outside a normal range in the larger picture? Or is it just an outrage article? Corporations are constantly cost-cutting to keep product prices low for consumers, so that can't really be a way to judge liability.
> Right now this happens constantly
Food product poisoning this bad in the US is pretty rare. Even Flint, Michigan got cleaned up eventually.
And it's only 7 kids that they tested. Who knows how many there actually is.
People tainting our food supply with lead should be put behind bars for life.
It causes long-term loss of IQ, and it is the main suspect for elevated crime levels in the lead-crime hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
And if it's not negligence then maybe we need to raise the bar for testing such that any contamination indeed counts as negligence.
But lead is a pretty common metal. If it turns out that there's an undiscovered recessive gene for lead hyperaccumulation in the cinnamon tee and that tragedies like this are how it gets discovered, then we need to focus on raising the testing bar and not on punishment. Otherwise we create a situation where people are incentivized to hide data that could ultimately help prevent things like this in the future.
That's not what happens though, lead poisoning in spices is ~always shady actors adding pigment that's lead-heavy to make the spice (for example, cinnamon, turmeric, ground ginger, paprika) appear more vibrant in color. The Indian government did a whole bunch of work to fight against this a few years back; ultimately it's suppliers trying to adulterate their product to save money and make it look better than it is. This should absolutely be a serious crime, on the level of intentionally shipping any other dangerous product: jail time for executives, huge financial penalties for companies.
Why are markets trying to kill us?
Not at all, living next to a major road is massively different from living even a few blocks away. Same for highways etc.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6....
I have two girls - ages 5, 22 months. They both love pouches. I don't love that they love pouches. But, if it comes down to eating/consuming anything vs. not, I'm often siding with consumption vs. nothing.
Of course, I can make food for them with high-quality ingredients, and do, but it is nearly impossible to force a kid to eat something you want them to eat vs. whatever it is they have in mind (like a pouch).
I do what I can to keep as much crap out of my house but some inevitably seeps in. And, tough to control the situation once they are mostly not at home (school, daycare, w/nanny/friends/etc.)
For what it's worth, we have these in my house: - https://lifewaykefir.com/family/probugs/ - https://siggis.com/categories/pouches - https://plumorganics.com/
We bought a few when we started to transition to solids but never used them. Our one year old eats the protein we are eating (and has since about six months) and then has her own vegetables, cheese, chickpea pasta, etc.
Pouches aren’t a reality for her and thus she won’t ask for one. Same with gold fish, fruit juice and a ton of other metabolic disasters. Granted this is easy right now and, to your point, is going to get harder when she enters the school system. I’ll need a strategy for that next.
TBH this does sound like a real jerk comment (especially given the lack of any ability to travel backwards in time), but it is nonetheless correct. IME, the less they have of that stuff the less the less they'll want it.
Still, different kids are different. When dealing with a kid who's lost their mind due to hunger (and for those who doubt, that's a real thing, not an exaggeration), having to choose between offering healthy food or no food can be a no-win situation.
In my school district, they will NOT stop a kid from eating what they want to eat. Personally, I don't argue with that. They need to consume something so better it be something that they'll actually eat than nothing (which happens, trust me)
I remember in high school I had a stint of having crouton salads for lunch. That’s exactly as it sounds.
And that was my own experience too: 60 years ago we brought "weird" lunches compared to the other kids at school. We all traded a bit of course and I don't remember it being a big deal, though my sister complained so maybe I was just an oblivious nerd.
Source: parent who swore up and down that they were going to make their own purees, and immediately caved when they realized just how much gddmn*d food a 9 month old goes through in a week. I was sure I was going to be a hyper-organic, make everything fresh type parent, and now we give him frozen pancakes and squeeze pouches. It turns out that getting kids calories is hard enough without having to make it all yourself.
Also, many things fall into the not-ideal bucket. That doesn’t just mean the quality of the ingredients but also the specific food. Someone else mentioned chickpea pasta - and it’s great. But it’s also still partially processed. But because it’s not pure generic pasta, it’s ok? I don’t know.
I really prioritize the quality of things as much as possible rather than worrying in detail about whether they are metabolic superpowers or the opposite.
So why did you get them? If the children are so incredibly fussy that nothing else helps, sure, in rare cases you do whatever works to get them to eat anything. But most children can be reared without ever touching anything like that. I'm sure my four year old gets fed things I wouldn't choose at times, but those are rare exceptions, and at school, after school childcare, and before that day-care, this type of product is just not provided, nor condoned (parents are instructed to provide the child's lunch and fruit for school; parents who give the child a 'pouch' like that do get called out on that).
I don't think my kid even knows these exist.
> I do what I can to keep as much crap out of my house but some inevitably seeps in.
How? Unless your partner isn't on the same page, you are in control, right? The toddler certainly isn't buying groceries.
Most likely, they didn't know what would happen. Sure, "everyone knows" this stuff is not the best choice, but also every parent knows that at least half of what "everyone knows" is pure, unadulterated, value-negative bullshit.
Or, perhaps their well-meaning friends or relatives got the first pouch.
> in rare cases you do whatever works to get them to eat anything. But most children can be reared without ever touching anything like that
Sure, until the first time they taste the stuff.
We held off with sweets until our older one was ~3 y.o., but this is a feat you can't repeat with a younger sibling, unless you run some kind of ridiculously efficient home prison. Our younger one got up to speed with everything in terms of food and entertainment with her older sister, by then 4 y.o., simply because the latter was always happy to share.
I mean, we probably could've stopped it if we really tried. But this stuff isn't even particularly dangerous, unless someone leaks lead in the production, which is a failure mode you can't avoid even with homegrown vegetables. Otherwise, there's only so much effort we'd want to expend over bullshit fear-mongering.
Oh, also, a funny thing: we tried early on to substitute the shop-bought pouches with DIY ones - making various forms of smoothies and sludges and putting them in reusable pouches. Guess what, neither of our kids would take more than one sip of anything we made like this. Not that I blame them - obviously anything home-made tastes like shit compared to commercial equivalent, and even a 1.5 y.o. is able to tell when you're trying to substitute something they want with a fake.
> Unless your partner isn't on the same page, you are in control, right? The toddler certainly isn't buying groceries.
I wanted to say, "tell me you don't have kids without telling..." but I see you do, so let's use this as a reminder that parenting is high-variability occupation. We both have kids at the same age, and where for you this is a perfectly reasonable remark, it made me burst out laughing. I mean, 4 y.o. is the age where whenever two kids meet for more than 5 seconds, chances are they're sharing whatever food they have on hand...
I don't disagree with those things in concept. I'd love to execute a process every day that is perfection with respect to ingredient quality, time-spent, food consumed, etc. But I don't know a lot of people who somehow do all of this flawlessly - perhaps none in fact.
Also, what I didn't say is that you weigh what you want to control, how you want to impose rules with how much stress and anxiety you're willing to deal with in the process.
Suppose your kid cries for 30 minutes straight because they really want a pouch vs. chickpea pasta you've put in front of them. At some point, is that anxiety-inducing event worth it? Or, can you compromise sometimes with a pouch that helps everyone (kids, adults) get something they want.
That's a very important question.
We've had a much easier time getting our younger daughter to eat proper meals at proper times than we had with our older one, and I think this was largely because we weren't as strict about it the second time around. Sure, she tasted some junk food a bit earlier than we'd like, but she also didn't get anxious about meal time like her older sister did at some point.
I know I had it easy. The first food my first child demanded was more broccoli. But I like to think that's partly because I put the broccoli on the table in the first place.
In this environment, awareness of varieties of snacks and kid TV shows both spread faster than infectious diseases.
Welcome to the machine
What did you dream?
We told you what to dream
As a parent one of the worst things you get to witness is your kids being assimilated into the machine. Nobody wants it. Many try to fight it. All will lose. We've all been assimilated into the machine to some extent.
Toddlers can remain irrational longer than you can remain out of prison for starving them.
I had an extended period when I refused to eat anything at all except chocolate spread sandwiches. As an adult I'm not even sure where I would buy chocolate spread - is it near peanut butter? But my poor parents could either feed 4yo tialaramex chocolate spread sandwiches in that period or he'd go without food.
Can I get this on a t-shirt to buy for every mom in my partner's mom group?? Jesus there is so much "you're giving your kids poison" type shaming in that group and it drives me nuts. It just stresses her out and doesn't help us out at all; we're lucky our kiddo eats just about everything (he loves frozen pancakes and applesauce pouches, but what can ya do?), so we just try to give him whatever we're eating. And we get so much flak for it. So what if the kid decides he wants to eat spaghetti four days in a row? It's calories in his body, which he needs a lot more than he needs fancy free-range blueberries picked under a full moon.
My first kid - great eater up until about age 1.5, then pandemic hits, and then everything became much more complicated for a variety of reasons.
My second kid - will eat really anything, but does show a preference for certain snacks which isn't surprising. But, also loves salmon, avocado, lentils.
My third kid (my wife - :) ) - A long-time carbs/cheese aficionado. Doesn't love a plate of broccoli or a bowl of lentils like I do.
I'm the strictest/healthiest eater by a large margin. At some point, you need some compromise in your system (my opinion, not suggesting for you)
However, my third kid is absolutely willing to out-stubborn me on this one. She is a VERY picky eater (e.g., last night I had to fight with her to eat some food that she has eaten willingly before). If I let her she will simply go all day without eating rather than eating foods she doesn't want to eat. Not wanting her to be malnourished or develop an eating disorder, I pick my battles.
Everyone who's saying "just don't introduce pouches..." either has the luxury of always being the child's caregiver or just hasn't gotten that far down the road. It's like frozen or fast food. At some point your kid will find out about it. Don't act like it doesn't exist, just offer a better alternative.
I got such an email for dried fruit that I bought for my toddler. I felt an indescribable amount of dread, because he ate a lot of it. We got him tested for lead levels and he came back fine, thankfully. In this case, it turned out that several samples in a batch came back elevated, and the recall was conducted out of caution.
I’m grateful that we take this stuff seriously, but we need to do better. It is abhorrent that contaminated products clear our existing tests and make their way to children.
> Lead, Blood, Capillary: 2.5 MCG/DL (Range: <3.5)
I'm sorry that that your daughter's test went up, I know that's soul crushing to see happen. When I was freaking out back when I got an email about contamination, I found a study that gave some perspective and made me feel a little better. Obviously for threshold of lead present in any food should be 0, and we should not be complacent, but look at the magnitudes for both the blood concentrations and deltas of IQ they're looking at here:
"A highly significant association was found between lead exposure and children's IQ (P < 0.001). An increase in blood lead from 10 to 20 micrograms/dl was associated with a decrease of 2.6 IQ points in the meta-analysis. "
But cinnamon is a flavouring agent, making up a small proportion of the pouch products. Lead salts taste sweet; cinnamon isn't supposed to taste sweet on its own. So I have to wonder how much lead was in these cinnamon "raw material"? This isn't the usual long-term lead poisoning you get from lead water-pipes; this was acute poisoning.
It seems to me more likely that Austrofood was using apples that weren't sweet enough, so somewhere in the supply chain some bozo added lead salts. People expect apples to be sweet, but not cinnamon.
Austrofood appears to be an Ecuadorian company:
https://advanceglobalcap.com/astrofood-a-sustainable-busines...
It's Austrofood that makes these products, and bags them up in pouches. They started selling into the US market in 2019.
[Edit] Austrofoods started out farming "guanabana", a product I'd never heard of before today. Apparently it has a taste like apples and strawberries, with sour, citrus notes. It's texture is like bananas; so perhaps it's good for making apple sauce, if you sweeten it a bit, maybe with lead.
Guanabana is quite sweet on its own. Certainly enough for kids. It's got a slight tang, but there's plenty of sugar.
Ceylon is supposed to be sweeter, but cassia is the most commonly sold form in the US.
Could just be a difference in exposure to types of what flavor you expect/experience.
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/turmeric-lead-risk-detect/
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/dec/24/d...
>She found lead in all of them.
>The cause, she found, was food colouring contaminated with compounds of lead. Lead chromate was added to the turmeric to brighten its golden colour and lead oxide gave the chilli powders a rich red hue.
It might be an excuse, though. Their heavy metal content is likely why people started using spices in the first place. They can't taste good without them. Nothing can. We evolved to detect their presence, and like their taste.
This should be a world wide issue that's tackled with the same urgency as a emerging disease. But it is not.
The panel of things you can test for is large, but not super cheap.
As an interesting aside regarding testing, in addition to food you can also test control points along the manufacturing process. For example, ultra-sensititve tests on sewer output that detect contaminants is a presumptive bad resultfor the material created since your last all-clear and you then identify what broke and what food isn't good. It some cases, for some contaminants at well-chosen control points, this is a much cheaper and just as reliable way of ensuring safe food.
Food safety is a huge industry. The teeth are generally only as sharp as the legal framework mandates but the capabilities are there on the testing side.
I have no memory of what he was testing for, I did softwarw dev and wasn't running labs tests. I'm assuming if anything was weird, then we'd remember that. In the general case, it is routine and unremarakable to test safe food. You tend to only remember the anomalies.
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb...
Most manufacturers don't (as per the above link). The FDA doesn't.
They generally do not!
- "The lack of regulation leaves much of the monitoring of heavy metal levels to companies. [Consumer Reports] contacted all the ones with products in our tests to see how they limited heavy metals."
- "Of the companies that replied to our questions—Al Wadi Al Akhdar, Costco, Bolner’s Fiesta, Gebhardt, Litehouse, McCormick, Roland Foods, Spice Islands, Target, and Whole Foods—a few said they require their suppliers to have a program for controlling or testing for heavy metals. But only three—Al Wadi Al Akhdar, Bolner’s Fiesta, and McCormick—specifically said they test products in their manufacturing plants for heavy metals."
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb...
Some high end products I buy will sometimes carry a link to a lab report quantifying the concentration of some critical component in that batch - curcumin in tumeric, for example, or polyphenols in olive oil - or highlighting the lack of such testing. Likewise, some supplements will bend over backwards to prove the purity of the product to consumers. But I guess only the super health nerdy market demands that. I don't imagine a typical consumer even reads the nutrition label.
The libertarian in me thinks Consumer Reports is enough for people who care. The liberal in me says if I wasn't health nerdy enough to navigate that hazard, it's a bit much to file under caveat emptor for random toddler mothers. I don't normally support regulation, but this seems like a worthy case.
Test for things like gluten or lead…
The spice adulteration I (and probably other HN readers) am familiar with is turmeric, but there’s an obvious motive - make the spice more yellow. Was the cinnamon adulterated deliberately? If so, why? Color, like turmeric? Some trick to make harvesting easier (I know that cinnamon is one of those tricky spices, since you need to shave off curls of bark)? To make worse grade cinnamon seem like higher grade?
And if you wanted to weigh down the container, lead costs more then iron per kg: just make the existing iron-based can thicker.
snort
Still makes me chuckle after all this time.
No, the answer is because lead poisoning is really harmful (permanent, irreparable brain damage) and that makes the news. Nobody care about to much iron in food.
Also, lead is still in a lot of colors and pesticides. To cheap/useful.
wrt the content of the post: it really puts into perspective how much implicit trust is placed into the care and quality of purchased goods, yikes (in this particular scenario)
edit: the latter point is just an observation, not attempting to be cynical here lol
The apple from the tree is not far from the serving size; is already packaged, has had its contents filtered by a complicated mechanism with multiple means of arresting contamination or showing that it has happened. It's even got "tamper evident" protections.
Vs the pouch, which is composed of partly of intentionally inedible stuff. The food parts are how far from a tree? been through how many machines and transportation systems? The materials in a single pouch came from how wide a geographic area and had how many humans responsible for their integrity in that time?
It seems like an immense amount of tangential efforts and risk to go to, and the only real selling point of the pouches is that the consumer doesn't have to chew their food.
I think you missed the greatest advantage: it can survive almost anything and can sit around for years and the contents inside will be unchanged.
You can also freeze them or store them yourself in some jars, if you want to.