By: Angela Vranich
Last month we hopped on a jet plane to visit one of our incredible lab partners who graciously opened their doors to give our community a peek under the hood of everything it takes for Little Spoon to test every batch of our baby purees, meals + snacks for heavy metals.
We dove deep into the process of testing our baby food against our European Union aligned testing limits. As our customers know: if our product doesn’t meet our standards, we won’t sell it.
Not only was this experience deeply educational, it was honestly so cool. Cue the Magic School Bus soundtrack and call me Ms. Frizzle, because I think science experiments might become my new favorite pastime. 😉
If you’re reading this, you already know how critical the topic of baby food safety is for parents. The rising onslaught of headlines questioning baby food brands, the consumer reports on toxic levels of heavy metals in grocery store baby food and the seriously unfortunate lack of federal regulation in the space (did you know there are no federal regulations for chemical contaminants in baby food here in the U.S.?) has done nothing to help support parents as they navigate the often stressful and overwhelming life stage.
Simply put, at Little Spoon we set out to do things differently from day one, so it’s only natural that we take you on the ride with us to see every stage of our testing protocol when it comes to our Little Spoon, Big Change transparency commitment. Buckle your seat belts, students! 🚌
What goes into the Little Spoon testing process?
Our lab director took us on a step by step journey to understand the testing process each batch of our Babyblends, Baby Cereal, Baby Puffs and Biteables go through for heavy metal testing. First, we prepare and measure out the sample, then we heat the product until the metal components remain, dilute the remaining sample and, finally, the lab technician uses a sensitive instrument to test the heavy metal content of each batch.
The process is not only fascinating to watch, it’s also incredibly cool— seeing our vibrant colorful products turn into a clear liquid feels like magic. 🪄
Follow us @littlespoon to dig deeper into our lab visit and to check out one of the cooler experiments we ran: testing whole produce to understand what heavy metal levels are found in whole, organic sweet potato, organic spinach, organic apple, organic carrots and more.
