Vegetable Purees
Completeness scorecard
Deterministic gap audit — no score is composite, no cell is LLM-judged. Each chip is re-derivable by re-running tools/evidence/build-ingredient-scorecard.mjs. review: residuals and missing data are worked autonomously via data/evidence/ingredient-scorecard-review-flags.csv and wiki/completeness-gaps.md.
| Dimension | Status | What’s there (auditable counts) | What’s missing |
|---|---|---|---|
| D1 Analyte coverage (tier: unset) | GAP | 0/10 HMTc analytes, total n=0 | only 0/10 analytes have evidence |
| D2 Regional coverage | below-tier | 0 jurisdictions | only 0 distinct jurisdiction(s) |
| D3 Anthropogenic evidence | GAP | no upstream/attribution sources | link a supply-chain/ hub page |
| D4 Background mechanism | GAP | section present, 0 drivers, 0 upstream source(s) | drivers[] empty; no upstream source to substantiate |
| D5 Pooling depth | GAP | no priority analytes | — |
| D6 Speciation | OK | iAs, tHg, tAs declared | — |
| D7 Basis declaration | GAP | 0/10 populated cells declare a basis token | 10 populated cell(s) lack a basis token: Pb, Cd, iAs, tHg, Ni, Al, Cr, Sn, tAs, U |
| D8 Provenance integrity | GAP | 2 claims checked, 2 supported; 3 citations, 0 orphan, 3 foreign | 3 foreign citation(s) not naming vegetable-purees: collado-lopez2025-heavy-metals-baby-food-formula, houlihan2019-hbbf-whats-in-baby-food, codex-cxs-193-1995 |
| D9 Mitigation | GAP | 0 cited lever(s), 6 mitigation/ link(s) | section present but no source-cited lever |
| D10 Regulatory coverage | OK | 3 rule link(s), 1 metal(s) covered | — |
| D11 Standards-readiness | NOT-READY | no priority analytes | basis: 10 populated cell(s) lack a basis token: Pb, Cd, iAs, tHg, Ni, Al, Cr, Sn, tAs, U; consumption tier unset (depth bar uncheckable) |
| Principle balance | OK | consumer-protection 0.50, contamination-reduction 0.00, brand-value 0.00, legal-defensibility 0.38, scale 0.00 | — |
This is a structural ingredient node created so product pages can link to a real wiki target. Occurrence values remain pending until a source is promoted for this ingredient.
Heavy metal contamination profile
Per-analyte snapshot derived from the machine-readable contamination_profile in the frontmatter above. data gap indicates the literature has been reviewed for this commodity-analyte combination and no usable occurrence data was found (a finding, not a placeholder). The Key sources column shows the top 2-3 contributing sources by year and sample size, with numbered wikilink aliases.
| Analyte | Coverage | Typical (ppb) | p95 (ppb) | Confidence | Key sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pb | data gap | — | — | — | — |
| Cd | data gap | — | — | — | — |
| iAs | data gap | — | — | — | — |
| tAs | data gap | — | — | — | — |
| tHg | data gap | — | — | — | — |
| Ni | data gap | — | — | — | — |
| Al | data gap | — | — | — | — |
| Cr | data gap | — | — | — | — |
| Sn | data gap | — | — | — | — |
| U | data gap | — | — | — | — |
Routing
This node is linked from non-root-vegetable-purees.
Contamination Profile State
The machine-readable contamination profile is pending. Ingredient-level values belong here once parsed; finished-product values belong on the relevant product-category page.
Sources
No source pages are currently cited for this ingredient node.
Why this commodity accumulates heavy metals
Vegetable purees inherit heavy metals from the source vegetables. The Cat 1 Step 0 lock splits vegetable purees into two row categories based on source-vegetable Cd/Pb accumulation:
root-vegetable-purees — carrot, sweet potato, potato, beet, parsnip, turnip puree. Root vegetables accumulate Cd and Pb from soil at moderate efficiency (see carrots, sweet-potato, root-vegetables). This row carries the higher Cd loading.
non-root-vegetable-purees — spinach, kale, broccoli, peas, green-bean, squash, zucchini, tomato puree. Non-root vegetables include leafy greens (high-Cd-accumulator) and non-leafy non-root vegetables (lower-Cd-accumulator). Spinach specifically is at the upper end and is split as a Cat 4 higher-contamination row (see spinach).
The HMTc panel concerns for vegetable purees are dominantly Cd and Pb, with subcategory variance driven by source-vegetable choice. The infant exposure pathway concentrates per-body-weight intake.
Ranges by source, region, and variety
Root vegetable purees: carrot puree typically dominates per-volume Cd among single-ingredient root-vegetable purees because carrots are moderate Cd accumulators and carrot puree is the most common single-ingredient infant root-vegetable product. Sweet potato and potato purees carry lower Cd typically. Spinach and leafy-green purees carry the highest Cd among non-root vegetable purees because of the leafy-green Cd-accumulation pathway.
Collado-Lopez 2025 and Houlihan 2019 (HBBF) characterize Spanish-market and US-market baby food vegetable purees respectively.
Processing effects
Vegetable puree processing (washing, peeling for root vegetables, blanching, pureeing, heat treatment, packaging) does not change source-vegetable metal content meaningfully. Washing and peeling at the manufacturer stage remove surface-deposited Pb for root vegetables (see carrots for the washing-and-peeling discussion). Blanching does not reduce panel metals. Heat treatment for shelf-stability does not change panel metals.
Ingredient-derivative risk
Vegetable purees are themselves finished retail products. Concentrated vegetable puree (used as flavor or color in compounded products) carries elevated per-mass metal. Vegetable-puree-based finished products (vegetable pouches, vegetable-and-meat combinations, vegetable-and-grain combinations) inherit the source-puree profile proportional to recipe fraction.
Mitigation options
Sourcing levers (supply-chain-screening) are the dominant intervention. Vegetable-source-region sourcing from documented low-Cd-Pb production areas, hydroponic-or-greenhouse sourcing for leafy-green-containing purees, and supplier soil verification.
Agronomic levers (agronomic) apply at the upstream vegetable-production stage (see per-vegetable ingredient pages).
Processing levers (processing) include washing and peeling for root vegetables (effective for surface-deposited Pb), blanching-water-discard (small additional fraction).
Formulation levers (formulation) include vegetable-species substitution (substituting lower-Cd-accumulator vegetables for spinach in spinach-containing infant pouches reduces per-serving Cd substantially), vegetable-percentage adjustment, and single-vegetable vs mixed-vegetable formulation choice.
Testing and QC levers (testing-and-qc) include lot-level Cd and Pb testing on finished vegetable purees, particularly for infant-targeted products. See icp-ms.
Packaging and storage levers (packaging-and-storage) include pouch and jar material specifications.
Regulatory limits that apply
- fda2025-lead-processed-baby-foods — FDA Closer to Zero Pb action levels for processed baby foods: 10 ppb for non-root-vegetable purees, 20 ppb for single-ingredient carrot or sweet-potato root-vegetable purees.
- eu-2023-915 — EU Reg. 2023/915 sets Cd and Pb maximum levels for infant-and-young-child vegetable-based foods. Spinach-specific Cd ML applies to spinach purees.
- Codex CXS 193-1995 — Codex MLs apply.
- California Prop 65 (california-prop65) Cd and Pb MADLs applied to vegetable purees sold in California.
Page history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| b0f3d38 | 2026-06-12 | batch | corpus rescreen b04 old terminal skips |