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 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!

Important Background: What is an Action Level?

Please note the following key points:

The original lab report for this product is below (at the bottom of this page).

The graphic above shows the levels of metals detected in this product (in red) along with the low threshold of detection (in green) for each the metals not detected with the laboratory testing that Lead Safe Mama, LLC had completed for this product. The numbers are juxtaposed (in blue) to the “Action Level” proposed by the medical and scientific community in 2021 as part of the Baby Food Safety Act.

These levels were set as “Action Levels” because they are (in fact) protective of human health.
An “Action Level” is NOT the same as a “Maximum Allowable Level.”
Once something is as toxic as the “Action Level,” it is officially in the realm of heavy metal levels that can cause lasting harm to children.
The “Action Level” is the level at which the scientific and medical community believes the company (or government) needs to take ACTION to fix the problem (which also includes taking ACTION to inform the public that their product has an unsafe level of the metal detected at-or-above the “Action Level” — and which relevant batch numbers should be recalled/ not consumed).
These Action Levels are not arbitrary, however they were not passed into law.
These Action Levels reflect the current advice of the medical and scientific communities as levels both achievable and protective of infants and toddlers — regardless of the fact that it is not illegal to have food for children test positive at these levels (as the Baby Food Safety Act of 2021 was not passed into law).
The legitimacy of these levels as “Action Levels”/ “Levels of Concern” (even though they were not adopted as law) is similar to the legitimacy of the America Academy of Pediatrics’ level of concern for Lead in water — which is 1 ppb — even though the FDA’s official “level of concern” for Lead in water is 15 ppb (you can read more about that here).

For safer food choices, click here.

Published: July 21, 2024

We decided to conduct follow-up testing on the Lesser Evil products — with a specific focus on their products targeted/ marketed to children — after Consumer Reports performed follow-up testing on our original testing of Lesser Evil products.

In our June/July 2024 food testing batch (using independent laboratory testing), we tested some of the exact products that Consumer Reports tested for their article published earlier in June (link above). We chose to test these products for the following reasons:

Consumer Reports has a policy of not making the actual laboratory test report available from their testing, and we wanted to make sure Lead Safe Mama community members had access to the full laboratory test report for these products.
Lesser Evil’s statement in the matter was incredibly dismissive and they did not issue (and still have not issued) a full recall for their children’s food products when they should have.
These products are still available for sale (as of July 21, 2024) in stores and online today. Here’s a link to the product for sale online today: https://amzn.to/3LuDoVE.
Unsuspecting parents who did not see our preliminary testing and/or did not see the Consumer Reports piece might be more likely to see this information (and take appropriate action, including getting their children tested) if there is more data out there/ available online (like the specific laboratory test reports for the products in question — you can see that below).
“Influencers” and others who promote these products online are being incredibly dismissive of the concern for hazardous/ dangerous/ damaging Lead levels in these products, stating that the Lead is “naturally occurring” and somehow a “safe form of Lead” — which is 100% untrue (on both points) — needs to be countered with additional information.
Finally, unfortunately, given the level of information overload in society today, consumers often assume that a product — in the absence of specific test results for a certain version/ flavor/ size/ packaging of a product — may be safe (in a different flavor or type than what was tested), so we felt it prudent to test each flavor of this product and confirm the lack of safety for ALL cassava products produced by this brand (as demonstrated both by our original testing of the brand and by Consumer Reports’ follow-up testing).

Takeaway

If you have been feeding this product to your young children (or consuming it yourself), I recommend that you stop doing that immediately and consider getting a Blood Lead test (to help determine if they or you have had any exposure of concern from eating this product). You can learn more about that at this link, and this link.

Some additional reading & links that may be of interest:

Amazon links are affiliate links. If you purchase something after clicking a Lead Safe Mama, LLC Amazon affiliate link, we may receive a percentage of what you spend at no extra cost to you.

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Lesser Evil Lil’ Puffs Star-Berry Beet flavor tested positive for 57 ppb Lead — that’s more than 11 times the proposed 5 ppb “Action Level” for Lead in food marketed to kids. Read the lab report here.