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For those new to the Lead Safe Mama website:

Tamara Rubin is a multiple-federal-award-winning independent advocate for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety, and a documentary filmmaker. She is also a mother of Lead-poisoned children (two of her four sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005).

• Tamara owns and runs Lead Safe Mama, LLC — a unique community collaborative woman-owned small business for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety.
• Since July of 2022, the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC has been responsible for five product recalls (FDA and CPSC).
• All test results reported on this website are science-based, accurate, and replicable.
• Please check out our press page to see some of the amazing coverage of our work so far this year!

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Advertising and affiliate income help Lead Safe Mama, LLC cover the costs of the work we do here (independent consumer goods testing and childhood Lead-poisoning prevention advocacy). We have removed ads from most of our more widely-read articles (and newly published articles, too — like this one!) to make them easier for you to read. In addition to supporting this work by starting any shopping you might be doing with a click on our affiliate links, if you would like to support the independent consumer goods testing and childhood Lead-poisoning prevention advocacy work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC by making a contribution (which will also help us keep our more widely-read articles ad-free), click here. Thank you!

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Published: June 22, 2024
Saturday

The propaganda is so thick with this one that it hurt my soul when I first read it all. After all of the greenwashing uncovered with Serenity Kids’ products, one might think it would be difficult to be surprised by the depths to which a company might dare plunge in greenwashing their product. As of the moment of publishing this article (with the full laboratory test report for metals for the product shown above — the cerebelly smart bars in sweet potato blueberry banana flavor), this level of hypocrisy in marketing hype and greenwashing is the worst I have seen for any baby food product so far — specifically because it touts a “science-based” nature. I think we actually need to come up with a new term for this one… let’s call it “medical greenwashing” — for which I am hereby proposing the following definition: Using a company founder’s medical background to impart false or misleading import to the health-based claims made about a product (most often a food or personal care product). 

For safer snack choices, click here.

A quick narrative summary of key points in evidence (for those not familiar with this brand):

• A practicing neurosurgeon — with a second degree (from Stanford) in Developmental Neurobiology — has created a baby food with aggressively-specific branding as being science-based, with the intention (both explicitly stated, and implied) that this product is optimal for brain health in our youngest babies, possibly to the degree that it could prevent cancer — a focus she has emphasized given her interest in combatting pediatric cancer.
• With testing conducted by the Lead Safe Mama community, this baby food product ironically (tragically) has tested positive for an unsafe level of a known carcinogen (i.e. a substance that causes cancer — Cadmium) with the level found being more than 400% of the action level (the level at which “action should be taken to address the concern because that level is unsafe for children,” as set forth by the medical and scientific community in the standards proposed for the Baby Food Safety Act of 2021).
• The level of Cadmium (and Arsenic) found in this baby food product is not illegal — as these proposed standards were never adopted/ the law never passed. Unfortunately, given what we have seen at this point (regarding prior troubling discoveries concerning the “Clean Label Project” program), I was also not surprised to learn that this brand (like Serenity Kids) is also a “Clean Label Purity Award” recipient. (!) <heavy sigh>

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How Lead Safe Mama, LLC came to test the “cerebelly smart bars” product…

This product was our first “crowdfunded laboratory food testing project”; several members of our Facebook Group (Lead Poisoning Prevention with Lead Safe Mama) had submitted this suggestion and pooled their resources to help cover the cost of conducting truly independent third-party laboratory testing on this specific product (pictured in the graphic at the top of the page). Prior to the group nominating this product for testing, we were not aware of the product (nor of the, shall we say, “rather bold” claims made by the company). In fact, it was not until we were doing research in support of this article (after we received the alarming test results back from the lab) that we became aware of the outrageous narrative that accompanies this brand — outrageous, specifically in the context of the levels of Cadmium and Arsenic detected in the laboratory testing we coordinated. 

While I am fairly certain the manufacturer of this product will likely respond to these findings (if history with such matters is any guide, likely with deflection and attempts at dismissing/ excusing the levels of toxicants found, and possibly even with a letter from their legal team sent to Lead Safe Mama, LLC demanding a “retraction” of our replicable/ science-based/ factual statements), we implore them not to take the predictable approach after learning of the concerning levels of Arsenic and Cadmium in their baby food products. In their public statements — that you can see below if you scroll down — the company has made a clear public declaration that “if they learn of unsafe levels of heavy metal in a batch of their product, the entire product batch will be thrown out” (which, in this case, would require a public recall — since the products from this batch have already been sold and are in the homes of consumers… and being fed to babies and toddlers). That would be a best-scenario (preliminary) outcome of this testing!

In the meantime, based on the science supporting the proposed Action Levels for Cadmium and Arsenic — proposed back in 2021 — we here at Lead Safe Mama, LLC want to make it clear that (in the absence of further independent testing in the future that confirms changes have been made and this brand is safe) we do not consider these products safe for children to eat, and we especially do not consider them safe for babies and toddlers to eat.

While we could go on dissecting this company’s misleading public narrative (the narrative that aims to convince families to buy their products for their precious children), we don’t think it is necessary to do that at this time. If you simply take a look at our lab report for this product (directly below), and then scroll down to read the narratives from their website, the juxtaposition of these two items say more than any critical narrative could add. 

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Lab test results — here is our lab test report for this product:

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Relevant screenshots from the cerebelly website:
Screenshots — captured on June 22, 2024

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When you click the “Our Standards”/ Learn button above you get this (phenomenally-greenwashed) narrative:

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And then there’s the “founder’s story”

In addition to the above narrative (that appears to be riddled with falsehoods — whether or not these falsehoods are intentional), given the levels of Arsenic and Cadmium we found in the sample of their product that we had tested with independent laboratory analysis, we have this thoroughly-misleading “Our Story” narrative solidly designed to make customers believe/ not question every single word on the cerebelly website…

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Batch info for the sample of this product that we tested:

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Some additional reading that may be of interest:

1. Our landing page with links to all of the food test results for products we have tested
2. Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s initial batch of food testing (March 2024), including Serenity Kids Puffs, Siete Cassava Chips, Lesser Evil Puffs, and Happy Baby Puffs products
3. Lesser Evil’s response to our testing
4. Serenity Kids’ response to our testing
5. Test results for Bob’s Red Mill Cassava Flour
6. Test results for Otto’s Naturals Cassava Flour
7. Test results for Quay Naturals Cassava Flour
8. Test results for Terrasoul Superfoods Organic Cassava Flour
9. Initial email exchange with Terrasoul Superfoods about their Cassava Flour
10. Follow-up email to Terrasoul Superfoods regarding the (questionable) “COA” they share with customers
11. How to send your own food samples into a lab for testing (the cost is $195 per single food sample tested for Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, and Arsenic)
12. The Food category of articles here on Lead Safe Mama dot com 

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