Cereals
Cereals is the regulatory umbrella term used by EFSA, JECFA, and Codex Alimentarius for grain-based human foods. It encompasses rice, wheat, oat, maize, barley, rye, and the products derived from them. Per-commodity contamination profiles live on the individual grain pages (rice, oat, wheat, etc.); this page is the structural parent that lets regulatory documents addressing “cereals” as a category route correctly.
The cereals category is the dominant cadmium dietary-exposure pathway in EFSA and JECFA assessments and a primary source of inorganic arsenic exposure where rice-based products are prevalent. Cereal-based infant foods (referenced in EU Commission Regulation 2023/915 and FDA Closer-to-Zero guidance) carry tighter regulatory limits than adult cereal products because of the higher per-kg-body-weight intake in early life.
Routing
This node is the umbrella for grain-based regulatory documents. Per-grain detail belongs on rice, oat, wheat, corn, and related pages. Product-level routing flows through baby-cereals-dry-rice-based and baby-cereals-dry-non-rice.
Contamination Profile State
All ten contamination_profile sub-blocks are pending. This umbrella page carries no per-commodity values; concentrations and exposure data live on the individual grain pages and on the regulatory pages referenced below.
Sources
Auto-generated from source-page frontmatter. The “Used on this page for” column is populated by the orchestrator’s POPULATE-SOURCE-LEGEND action; pending entries appear as *[awaiting synthesis]*.
| # | Citation | Year | Type | Used on this page for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Codex 2024. Report of the 17th Session of the Codex Committee on Contaminants in Foods (REP24/CF17), Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme, Codex Alimentarius Commission | 2024 | Government report | Codex CCCF17 session report; initiated a new Code of Practice for Cd in Foods with cereal and rice annexes as priority commodities, establishing the current international governance trajectory for cereals Cd limits |
| 2 | Zhao et al. 2024. Toxic Metals and Metalloids in Food: Current Status, Health Risks, and Mitigation Strategies, Current Opinion in Environmental Science & Health | 2024 | Peer-reviewed | [awaiting synthesis] |
| 3 | Altunay et al. 2023. Ultra-Sensitive Determination of Cadmium in Food and Water by Flame-AAS after a New Polyvinyl Benzyl Xanthate as an Adsorbent Based Vortex Assisted Dispersive Solid-Phase Microextraction: Multivariate Optimization, Foods 2023, 12, 3620 | 2023 | Peer-reviewed | Cd measurement by FAAS in 13 Turkish market foods including oat, corn, wheat, and three rice variants; values are anomalously high relative to EU surveillance data and should be treated with caution pending curator review |
| 4 | Suomi et al. 2023. Cumulative risk assessment of the dietary heavy metal and aluminum exposure of Finnish adults, Environmental Science and Pollution Research | 2023 | Peer-reviewed | [awaiting synthesis] |
| 5 | EFSA 2020. Update of the Risk Assessment of Nickel in Food and Drinking Water, EFSA Journal 2020;18(11):6268 | 2020 | Government report | EFSA CONTAM Panel Ni risk assessment using 47,000+ European occurrence data points; cereals identified as a dietary Ni contributor alongside cocoa, peanuts, and lentils, with TDI set at 13 µg/kg bw/day |
| 6 | Nordberg et al. 2015. Cadmium (Chapter 32), in Handbook on the Toxicology of Metals, Fourth Edition, Volume II: Specific Metals, Academic Press / Elsevier, Amsterdam | 2015 | Textbook chapter | Canonical Cd toxicology reference chapter; synthesizes cereal grains’ role as a major population-level Cd exposure pathway and anchors the toxicokinetic frame for interpreting cereal Cd concentration data |
| 7 | JECFA 2011. Cadmium (Addendum), 73rd Meeting of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives — Safety Evaluation of Certain Food Additives and Contaminants, WHO Food Additives Series No. 64 (Cadmium addendum, pp. 305-380) | 2011 | Government report | JECFA document establishing the cadmium PTMI of 25 µg/kg bw/month; cereals and rice identified as the primary dietary Cd exposure pathways underpinning this international reference value |
| 8 | EFSA 2010. Scientific Opinion on Lead in Food, EFSA Journal 2010;8(4):1570 | 2010 | Government report | EFSA CONTAM Panel Pb risk assessment; identifies cereals as the dominant dietary Pb contributor in European adults, with child exposure estimates (0.80–3.10 µg/kg bw/day) driven substantially by cereal-based foods |
| 9 | EFSA 2009. Scientific Opinion of the Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain on a request from the European Commission on cadmium in food, The EFSA Journal | 2009 | Government report | EFSA CONTAM Panel Cd opinion establishing the EU TWI of 2.5 µg/kg bw/week; cereals identified as the largest single dietary Cd exposure pathway for European adults and the anchor for EU cereal Cd maximum levels |
| 10 | Codex 1995. General Standard for Contaminants and Toxins in Food and Feed (CXS 193-1995), Codex Alimentarius (Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme) | 1995 | Government report | Operative international Codex standard setting MLs for Cd, Pb, Hg, iAs, and Sn across food commodities; cereals and rice are the primary Cd ML categories and the international regulatory reference against which domestic limits are compared |