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Quote from the Seven Sundays website
(see a direct screenshot from their website below):
This quote was posted on their website BEFORE Lead Safe Mama conducted any testing.

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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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Affiliate link to the test kit Lead Safe Mama, LLC uses for the laboratory food test results we publish: https://amzn.to/3UIPcHP

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This is an ad-free article.

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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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 of the metals not detected with the laboratory testing that Lead Safe Mama, LLC had completed for this product. The numbers are juxtaposed to (in blue) the “Action Level” that was proposed by the medical and scientific community in 2021 as part of the Baby Food Safety Act.

• These levels were set as “Action Levels” that are (in fact) protective of human health.
• An “Action Level” is NOT the same as a “Maximum Allowable Level.”
• Once the level of a heavy metal in food reaches the “Action Level,” that metal is officially over any safe threshold and into 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 the 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 also protective of infant and toddler health — regardless of the fact 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).

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For safer food choices, click here.

If you are new here, please check out our website menu (link) to see all the other types of items we have tested and reported on! Welcome to our site!

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Published: July 7, 2024

Here’s the link to a safer gluten-free breakfast food choice (details below):
https://amzn.to/4eRrcf0.

The Seven Sundays Real Cocoa Grain Free Sunflower Cereal (pictured in this article) tested positive for a level of Cadmium that is unquestionably unsafe for children to consume (given the context of the standards proposed by the scientific and medical communities with the Baby Food Safety Act of 2021 — linked here).

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Supporting considerations & concerns:

• Cadmium is a known carcinogen (and was identified as a carcinogen in 1993 — check out this link with more info).
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• In a world where we (societally) are persistently looking to “cure cancer” or for the cause of cancer, it seems prudent to eliminate food products from our diet (especially primary foood staples like cereals) if they test positive for a known/ established carcinogen (Cadmium).
• While this is the highest level of Cadmium we have found in a packaged food product to date, this is not the first cassava flour-based product we have tested (through independent, third-party laboratory testing) that has tested positive for an unsafe level of Cadmium:
  • Here’s an additional example,
  • here’s another example,
  • and another.
• Given the message posted on Seven Sundays’ website (at the top of this page) that they “don’t believe there have ever been unsafe levels of Cadmium in their product,” our findings are especially alarming.
  • We are really curious as to why they would have made that statement/ what prompted them to phrase the statement in that way?
  • Have they completed Cadmium testing but do not consider the levels to be unsafe?
  • Have they not conducted any testing for Cadmium?
  • What set of circumstances led to Seven Sundays adding this mandatory Prop 65 warning on their website?
  • We have never seen a Prop 65 warning (and related language) so specifically worded, so it seems to us they must be aware of the levels of Cadmium in their product — or they would not have written this statement in that way.
  • We are especially intrigued by their use of the word “believe” — which is so subjective and not at all based in science (a very unusual word choice in this context for something that is generally either scientifically demonstrated to be true or untrue with laboratory testing).
• Note: The Baby Food Safety Improvement Act set the Cadmium “Action Level” at 5 ppb Cadmium for food that is not cereal and at 10 ppb Cadmium for food that is cereal — with the distinction being that Cadmium levels in products eaten with milk (like cereal) would be diluted. Our assertion is that these cereal products, which are often served to children as snacks (without milk, by the handful), should be regulated at the level of 5 ppb since they are just as often eaten alone (dry/ without milk) as they are eaten with milk. We discuss this set of considerations in greater detail at this link.
• While the levels found were not expressly illegal (since there are no federal laws mandating maximum allowable Cadmium levels) — given the levels of Cadmium discovered with the laboratory testing we hosted — we will be reporting this product to the FDA and urging they take action, especially given this product is marketed as being healthier and is intended to be consumed by young children.
• In the meantime, we (Lead Safe Mama, LLC) recommend (to our readers and the general public) avoiding this Seven Sundays product specifically (stop eating it immediately).
  • We also recommend avoiding any and all cassava flour-based products in general (until there is better accountability in the processed food industry in the United States).
  • We also recommend avoiding sunflower seeds and sunflower seed-based products (due to heavy metals accumulation possible in sunflower seeds from environmental sources).
• We also want to share that we did conduct laboratory testing on one organic breakfast cereal-type product (not grown or processed in the United States) that we found to be “non-detect” for Cadmium, Lead, Mercury, and Arsenic (within the noted limits of detection for the laboratory we are using). This one breakfast product — which we identified as “non-detect” for toxicants — might be a good alternative for your family (it is also gluten-free and just happens to be what my family eats every morning for breakfast). Here’s a link to this safer product (on Amazon), and here’s the laboratory test report for this product.
• The laboratory test results for this one clean product (noted in the point directly above) also clearly demonstrate that it is obviously possible to produce a breakfast cereal free of toxic heavy metals. This is NOT an unachievable goal.

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Takeaway

The laboratory food testing Lead Safe Mama, LLC has been hosting since March 2024 has been an eye opener for us — with many unexpected outcomes (in addition to several outcomes we anticipated based on our work with families dealing with mysterious sources of toxicant exposure).

One point we want to emphasize: We have serious concerns that the over-consumption and over-reliance on flour-based products (including cereals) in this country may be a significant contributor to the epidemic of cancer in the United States, given our U.S.-produced flour-based products seem to be consistently contaminated with Cadmium (and/or Lead).

Soil contamination… or…?

While the manufactured/ packaged food industry is quick to blame the heavy metal contamination of these processed foods on soil-contamination, we would like to strongly encourage the processed food industry (and the FDA) to take a closer look at the processing equipment used to make these products (and the manufacturing environment for these products) as this inquiry may reveal a more likely source of heavy metal contamination for many of these processed foods.

In our experience, while soil contamination may be a contributing factor, it is not always a primary factor contributing to the contamination of the end-product for processed, packaged foods — but it is all too easy for the packaged processed food industry to deflect blame and shirk responsibility for the contamination by blaming the soil.

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P.S. What the HECK is “upcycled sunflower protein?”

In the other cassava flour-based products and flour-based machined/processed food products (made from oats or wheat in addition to the cassava products) we have tested that resulted in positives for Cadmium, the Cadmium level in most of these products were in the range of 20 to 30 ppb. 

If “upcycled sunflower protein” is concentrated sunflower proteins left over from the processing of sunflower seed oil (which is heavily processed/ heavily machined and would likely result in a highly concentrated waste product with correlative high concentrations of any contaminants present), it is possible that this one ingredient is responsible for the extreme levels of Cadmium in this finished cereal product (above what we have seen in other cassava flour-based products/ machined food products).

In addition to the possibility of Cadmium-contamination of sunflower products from machining and processing, sunflowers are natural bio-accumulators of heavy metals. You can read more about that at this link.  

Of relevance: Here is just one study we found when searching for “Cadmium Contamination of Sunflower Seeds.”

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Some additional reading & links that may be of interest:

1. A link with a spreadsheet showing all of our food testing — completed and in-progress (since March 2024).
2. The Lead Safe Mama affiliate link to purchase the same test kits we use for this testing.
3. Our landing page with links to all our results for the food products we have tested.
4. Here’s 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) or how to collaborate with Lead Safe Mama, LLC on the food testing we’re hosting.
5. The Food category of articles here on Lead Safe Mama dot com.

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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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