Sometimes I feel like the food manufacturers are plotting against my goals to feed my family healthy foods. It seems that all too often I see headlines that support this: tainted peanuts, meat and vegetables, bread and other “healthy” choices with food dyes and high fructose corn syrup, and now arsenic in fruit juice. It’s so hard to keep up with what’s safe, what’s not – just so that I can raise healthy kids.

So, the today’s news is that Consumer Reports’ latest study shows arsenic levels in children’s fruit juices to be higher than…well, higher than the limits for bottled water. Why that comparison? Because the FDA hasn’t established a safe limit of arsenic for fruit juices. Arsenic is bad, right? Doesn’t make sense to me, and I’m certainly no scientist but I’m pretty darn tired of the FDA protecting industry over my kids.

Check out the full report here to see if your juice was tested. While you’re there, ook at the lead levels for Gerber juices! The “safe” limits that the FDA has identified for lead and arsenic in other food items is likely based on a grown adult, not a six month old. Our juice isn’t on the list so I’m not sure if I should worry or not. It’s organic but in this case I don’t know whether that’s better.

So that I don’t lose sleep nightly over what’s contaminated my kid’s diet, I reassure myself that we make good choices 90% of the time and that counts for a lot. We buy a lot of organics, we eat less meat but when we do it’s grass fed, and we avoid artificial coloring and preservatives. The juice my kids do drink is an organic brand and they might have about five to six ounces a day.

How do you feel about these findings? I know some families don’t drink juice at all, while others drink it like water – so it impacts us all differently. Will this change your buying habits?

Santa Cruz Organic Juice