Ready. Set. Food! Stage 1 and 2 Mix-Ins, and Original Organic Baby Oatmeal, have earned the Clean Label Project Purity Award. Find out what the Purity Award means for you as parents, and learn how Clean Label Project helps your family make mindful food choices with your little one’s health and safety in mind.
At Ready. Set. Food!, we know that what isn’t in your baby’s food is just as important as the ingredients that are included. Parents like you don’t want to feed your baby a long list of ingredients you can’t pronounce, and want to steer clear of products with high levels of heavy metals, pesticides, and contaminants.
That’s why we’re excited to announce that our Original Oatmeal and Stage 1 and 2 Mix-Ins have achieved the Clean Label Project Purity Award. The Clean Label Project Purity Award spotlights products that have the lowest levels of chemical contaminants in their categories.
Today, we’ll cover what the Purity Award means for you as parents, and how Clean Label Project helps your family make mindful food choices with your little one’s health and safety in mind.
What is Clean Label Project?
Clean Label Project is a national nonprofit dedicated to bringing transparency to the way packaged foods and other products are labeled. It carries out this mission by testing products for toxins and chemical contaminants, such as heavy metals, pesticides, and plasticizers. Clean Label Project then certifies which products have extremely low levels of these contaminants with its Purity Award.
Why is Clean Label Project’s work so important?
Oil drilling, spraying of pesticides, and the release of pollutants into the air causes chemical contaminants to seep into the soil and water. Eventually, these toxins and contaminants get absorbed by plants that are used for food. These contaminants have the potential to negatively affect people’s long-term health. Some of these contaminants have been linked with cancer, brain damage, and other diseases.
But current food safety standards are focused only on getting rid of the bacteria that cause short-term foodborne illnesses, and aren’t focused on sharply reducing the levels of the toxins and contaminants that could affect long-term health. There's also no standardized way that companies must identify the amounts of chemical contaminants their foods contain on food labels.
Clean Label Project aims to change the narrative around food safety by shedding light on the possible dangers of chemical contaminants, and by recognizing packaged foods with low contaminant levels.
What is the Purity Award?
The Clean Label Project Purity Award recognizes products that meet the nonprofit’s rigorous standards for keeping chemical contaminants at low levels.
To earn the Purity Award, products must be tested for over one hundred different chemical contaminants including heavy metals (such as arsenic, mercury, lead and cadmium), pesticides, and plasticizers (such as BPA, BPS, and phthalates). Using benchmarked data, Clean Label project compares a product’s contaminant test results to the results of other products in the category, including category best-sellers and industry leaders.
Products that earn the Purity Award are those that achieve the lowest levels of contaminants compared to others in the category. So, the Purity Award shows consumers that a brand “is taking the extra steps to minimize consumer exposure to known chemicals of concern," on a continuing basis.
As Clean Label Project explains, "Clean Label Project Purity Award Winning brands have voluntarily and proactively implemented procedures to ensure ingredient quality and purity. They have enlisted the help of Clean Label Project to go into the marketplace and randomly purchase and test their products to ensure that they continue to live up to these high standards."
Ready. Set. Food! Stage 1 and 2 Mix-Ins, and Original Organic Baby Oatmeal, have earned the Clean Label Project Purity Award.
Why does this matter in the baby food space?
The World Health Organization, American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) all affirm how crucial the first 1000 days of life are to a child's growth and brain development.
Baby's brain and immune system are developing rapidly during this time. And the way their brain develops during this window sets up the foundations for lifelong health and well-being. So, it's especially important to minimize your baby's exposure to heavy metals like lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury, which can negatively affect brain development.
Unfortunately, even in the baby food space, the U.S. doesn't have any strict regulations on the amounts of heavy metals and other chemical contaminants in baby food. And some baby food brands contain high levels of these contaminants, in higher levels than the government allows in bottled water.
Clean Label Project creates transparency and helps parents like you make more informed choices about your baby's food, to minimize their exposure to heavy metals and other contaminants.
As Clean Label Project shares, "The first 1,000 days of life… captures the window for optimal brain and immune system development and growth. Nurturing infants and children during this vulnerable period of development is key. Families want to reach for products with more of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff. Clean Label Project empowers families with more information about the true contents of America’s best selling foods and consumer products targeting infants, toddlers, and young children."
Note: Nearly all foods contain some level of chemical contaminants. It's impossible for food brands to produce foods completely free of heavy metals because of how common they are in the soil – many foods absorb these metals from the ground in very small amounts. That’s why Clean Label Project focuses on identifying the products with the lowest levels of contaminants.
Ready. Set. Food! and Clean Label Project
Ready, Set, Food! makes early allergen introduction safe, easy and convenient for all babies, to help give them the best chance at a future of food freedom. Our science-backed, allergist-developed and parent-approved system introduces babies as young as 4 months old to the most common food allergens, just like the latest medical guidelines recommend. Our products contain only organic, real food ingredients, and we don’t include added sugars or anything artificial.
Ready. Set. Food! is also committed to monitoring and reducing babies' and toddlers' exposure to toxic elements. Independent third-party labs test our products and ingredients to ensure that our products are below the current and proposed FDA action limits for heavy metals.
Now, Ready. Set. Food's Stage 1 and 2 Mix-Ins, and Original Organic Baby Oatmeal, have achieved the Clean Label Project Purity Award. This reaffirms our commitment to helping set babies and toddlers up for a healthier future – both through what's included in our products, and through what's left out and minimized.
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All health-related content on this website is for informational purposes only and does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Always seek the advice of your own pediatrician in connection with any questions regarding your baby’s health.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
See the FDA Peanut Allergy Qualified Health Claim at the bottom of our homepage.
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All health-related content on this website is for informational purposes only and does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Always seek the advice of your own pediatrician in connection with any questions regarding your baby’s health.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. If your infant has severe eczema, check with your infant’s healthcare provider before feeding foods containing ground peanuts.