please read , this is very important - what i found in gerber 2nd foods

paulie wrote: hey everyone , i am here writing to you all today ,because of what i read on the gerber 2nd food mac and cheese label .my wife was feeding my son anthony and i started to read the ingredients . as a new parent i am taking some precautions with things like not giving my son arsnic to eat or a cigarette to smoke. so i was just curoius about what my kid is ingesting into his little belly. ready for this ? disodium phosphate . ever here of it ? would you like to know what it can do to your child ? well here is a list for you to read .These lists cover the following types of diseases or adverse impacts on specific physiological systems: cancer, cardiovascular or blood toxicity, developmental toxicity, endocrine toxicity, gastrointestinal or liver toxicity, immunotoxicity, kidney toxicity, musculoskeletal toxicity, neurotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, respiratory toxicity, and skin or sense organ toxicity. i was horrified to read this. yes this is what phosphate used as a preservative can do to a human being. look it up yourself. i am not preaching by any means , i love junk food and mountian dew as much as the next , but like not giving my child a cigarette or arsnic ,(which is found in both ) i will no longer feed him gerber foods. i called the 800 number, they have and they just didn't want to hear it. i was bothering them with , which is why i am here writing this for you all to see. i am only trying to make you aware of the things your child is eating. please pay attention to the labels. thanks for reading this , i hope i was somewhat informative. take care of your children. i love my kid so much and i would hate to have him sick , and this has the potentail to do that to him. thanks,
paulie

moped replied: YIKES!

mckayleesmom replied: Well....I hate to give my children things that are not good for them too, but if I started reading every label and listening to every rumer of what causes cancer, we would all starve to death.

Bamamom replied: Hi Paulie and welcome to PC. An intriguing first post I must say.

Maybe you're onto something but I'm always sceptical when I read stuff like this. I'm sure that if we look hard enough we can find something wrong in everything.

I decided to do a little of my own research and here is what I found: This is an EXTREMELY low risk chemical found in many common foods. As a matter of fact a 1998 study found that this was NOT a carcinogen, contrary to your post.

Nothing I found seemed to indicate the kind of concern that you are trying to generate. Don't guess you work for a rival baby food company huh?

Some links for the curious:

http://www.wholefoods.com/healthinfo/phosphates.html
http://www.scorecard.org/chemical-profiles...d=7558%2d79%2d4
http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/sear.../temp/~2TFUqc:1

paulie replied: no i do not work for a rival baby food company. i am a bartender ,my wife as well. i just am thinking small doses everyday will not be good for my child or anyone's child for that matter. i watched a program about phosphate mines and what it is used for. it was quite disturbing to know how many products contain phosphate ,and how it can create havoc on your immune system. since i am probably in a mothers message board , i want to point out a movie most of you have seen "erin brockavich " with the compound hexeum ,well think of small doses over the course of time. that movie was based on a real story. just trying to say buyer beware. we all have a common goal to keep or kids healthy, i just want to let you people know that i find it odd that gerber would put out a product saying no preservatives when in fact the cheese in the mac and cheese contains preservatives ,and phosphate at that . so not looking to generate controversy ,just letting you know that this is fact ,and i will now start looking at organic food for my child , and i wouldn't even know where to begin with that .

redchief replied: Well, one thing's for sure. Anything that you make with fresh ingredients is much preferable to processed foods. I've always believed that and still do. When our children were babies we ground their food for them using the same ingredients we were eating, save the peppier spices.

That being said I can find no proof of any of the claims made in the initial post regarding Disodium Phosphate. All of the MSDS sheets I've found basically say that, even in quantity, the stuff is practically nontoxic. If you get it in your eyes straight, it will cause burning and the eyes should be flushed, but then lemon juice has the same warning. If you eat large amounts of it, it may cause diarrhea and gastrointestinal irritation, but my wife's chile can do that too . (Sorry hon )

~Roo'sMama~ replied:
Ed, I love your logic.

MyLuvBugs replied:
ITA!!! There's tons of chemicals in EVERYTHING that "cause" disease/cancer. Including the water and milk that we drink, cleaning products we use in our homes, and other random items around us. You can only protect yourself and your family so far.

redchief replied:
Now if I could just learn how to spell chili.

ashtonsmama replied: ITA with Ed and Erika and Sara...

gr33n3y3z replied:

jcc64 replied: Ed, you're a freak!

I for one appreciate the heads up. Like Ed and Lisa, I ground all of my kids food in this great little food mill thingy when they were babies. The way I saw it, yes, we are inundated with all sorts of preservatives and chemicals in every aspect of our daily lives, but when my kids' immune systems were still so new and unpolluted, I was much more conscious of what went into their little mouths. I felt more comfortable making my own baby food, and it really wasn't much more work- not to mention the fact that those 2nd stage dinner type foods just tasted so nasty, imo.
Anyway, I think we all underestimate the effects of all those multi-syllabic, mysterious chemicals and additives in processed foods. When I was a child, I knew exactly 1 person that had cancer that was not related to advanced age. Now, everytime I turn around, someone's dying from cancer in my community (including my dad). No kidding- we lose 3 parents a year in my very tiny little elementary school. I am firmly convinced that we are slowly poisoning ourselves through our food supply and toxins we put into our everyday environment. And if we are expecting the FDA or any other gov't agency to protect us, we're all nuts. Buyer beware, and I for one trust no one who stands to make a profit.

redchief replied:
Of course I am... Actually we started out with baby food. But then I tasted it and IT TASTED AWFUL. I wasn't smart enough back then to think about immune systems and process foods. That's all important stuff and I wish that we had a resource like this place to take advantage of those that have gone before us, back then. We just couldn't feed our kids anything we wouldn't eat.

Bee_Kay replied: ITA with Ed.

Some of those baby foods just tasted awful (we used Gerber).

So, it didn't take us long to switch our children over to what we ate, minus the spices.
The only baby foods they ate were the fruity ones.