Trace element contents in foods from the first French Total Diet Study on infants and toddlers

Chekri et al. 2019 — French Infant And Toddler TDS Trace Elements

Summary

This French Total Diet Study paper reports occurrence data for trace elements in 291 foods representative of French non-breastfed infant and toddler diets. It is useful for Category 1 because it separates infant-food categories such as formula, cereal-based foods, fruit purees, vegetable meals, soups/purees, fruit juices, and meat/fish ready-to-eat meals.

Key numbers

• Infant and follow-on formulae and growing-up milks had comparatively low reported mean contents for several trace elements, including Al 220 ug/kg, tAs 1.80 ug/kg, and Cd 0.51 ug/kg.
• Soups/purees and cereal-based foods had the highest reported Al means among the summarized infant categories, 653 ug/kg and 630 ug/kg respectively.
• Fruit purees had the highest reported Sn mean, 424 ug/kg.
• Meat-/fish-based and vegetable-based ready-to-eat meals were described as among the more contaminated infant-food categories for most trace elements measured.

Category 1 concentration rows

All values below are upper-bound mean concentrations in micrograms per kilogram fresh weight for foods as consumed, which is numerically equivalent to ppb for these food matrices. These are category-level TDS rows, not individual-product percentile distributions; they can support source-scope mean and max/p100 context but do not by themselves provide a p90.

French TDS category	N	Row fit	Al mean / max	tAs mean / max	Cd mean / max	Cr mean / max	Ni mean / max	Sn mean / max
Infant formulae	28	Formula, as consumed; powder/RTF and soy status not separated	196 / 585	1.61 / 4	0.39 / 1	20.8 / 38	25.9 / 50	42 / 42
Follow-on formulae	34	Formula, as consumed; powder/RTF and soy status not separated	276 / 1140	1.68 / 3	0.43 / 2	22.1 / 78	26.5 / 50	42 / 42
Growing-up milks	9	Toddler milk category; not infant formula threshold evidence by itself	189 / 724	2.11 / 4	0.71 / 4	27.7 / 61	25 / 25	42 / 42
Cereal-based foods	17	Baby cereal and infant biscuit/cereal foods; rice status not separated	630 / 3810	3.13 / 8	2.79 / 17	23 / 125	43 / 234	49.2 / 83
Fruit purees	30	Direct fruit-puree infant-food category	556 / 1420	2 / 8	0.66 / 2	42.7 / 84	54.7 / 121	424 / 3330
Fruit juices	4	Infant fruit juice category; canned status not separated	191 / 314	2 / 2	0.30 / 0.30	21 / 29	25 / 25	62.5 / 83
Soups/purees	11	Vegetable/soup puree category; root/non-root not separated	653 / 2140	4.82 / 9	7.36 / 15	39 / 57	57.7 / 106	42 / 42
Vegetable-based ready-to-eat meals	27	Vegetable mixed meals; rice and root status not separated	575 / 2480	3.33 / 17	9.26 / 18	50.4 / 92	71.5 / 137	59.5 / 143
Meat/fish-based ready-to-eat meals	45	Meat/fish mixed meals; meat, poultry, fish, and rice status not separated	597 / 2590	27.5 / 411	9.31 / 30	68.9 / 155	75.7 / 143	49.3 / 83

The study measured total arsenic, not inorganic arsenic. Chromium is total chromium, not hexavalent chromium. Lead, total mercury, and methylmercury are handled in separate French infant TDS publications, not in this trace-element paper.

Methods (brief)

The study used the French infant/toddler Total Diet Study design and compiled occurrence data for multiple trace elements. Foods were sampled in central France, prepared as consumed, pooled monthly where applicable, and analyzed by microwave digestion and ICP-MS. Results are reported in micrograms per kilogram fresh weight for foods as consumed.

Limitations

The table values are category-level means, standard deviations, and min-max ranges. They are not individual-product records and do not report p10, p50, p90, or p95. Some French TDS categories are broader than HMTc rows, so row-fit caveats are required wherever rice status, soy status, root status, meat/fish split, powder/RTF split, or canned status is not resolved.

Implications

Certification: Useful A-tier occurrence evidence for comparing infant formula against puree, cereal, and mixed-meal categories.

Courses: Useful example of why infant/toddler total-diet studies are not interchangeable with adult total-diet studies.

App: Supports ingredient and product-category caution for cereal-based foods, vegetable meals, fruit purees, and meat/fish meals.

Microbiome: No direct microbiome endpoint.

Ingredient nodes updated on ingest

• infant-cereal-ingredients — cereal-based infant-food row; rice status not separated.
• rice — named in high-arsenic meat/fish meal examples and broader rice/cereal discussion.
• wheat — included in the common-food rice and wheat products row.
• cocoa and chocolate — named as contributors to higher Al, Cd, Co, Cr, and Ni in biscuits, desserts, and pastries.
• fruit and fruit-juice — fruit-puree and fruit-juice infant-food rows.
• vegetables, spinach, carrots, and potatoes — vegetable, soup/puree, and root/non-root ingredient drivers named in the study.
• meat-and-poultry and fish — meat/fish-based ready-to-eat meals; fish is not separated from meat in the main table.
• milk-and-dairy — formula, growing-up milk, milk-based beverage, and dairy dessert rows.

Caveated product pages referenced on ingest

• infant-formula-powder-non-soy
• infant-formula-rtf-liquid-non-soy
• baby-cereals-dry-non-rice
• baby-cereals-dry-rice-based
• fruit-purees
• fruit-juice-not-canned
• non-root-vegetable-purees
• root-vegetable-purees
• meat-and-poultry-purees
• fish-containing-baby-foods
• mixed-meals-non-rice
• mixed-meals-rice-containing
• carrots
• fruit
• fruit-juice
• infant-cereal-ingredients
• meat-and-poultry
• milk-and-dairy
• vegetables
• cocoa
• chocolate
• fish
• potatoes
• rice
• spinach
• wheat
• aluminum
• arsenic
• cadmium
• nickel
• tin