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 of the metals not detected with the laboratory testing Lead Safe Mama, LLC 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” that 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: August 6, 2024

A full lab report for the product pictured is below. Please scroll down.

For this article, we have copied most of the text from another recent article about a Lead-contaminated snack food as many of the considerations are the same. If you already read some of our recent food-related articles, you may want to scroll directly down to the bottom of the page to see the lab report for this food product.

For context for all the food testing we are conducting, it is important to understand that all U.S. federal agencies agree there is no safe level of Lead exposure. Lead exposure should be eliminated whenever possible.

Lead bio-mimics Calcium and is absorbed by the body in place of Calcium (in Calcium-rich biological structures, including the brain and bones). Nearly 90% of the Lead we have ever been exposed to is still in our body, which is why we need to focus all of our attention on PREVENTION when it comes to Lead exposure.

Lead poisoning is the single most preventable — yet single most expensive — environmental illness in the world today.

The above statement is out of the mouths of scientists and medical professionals and is not in dispute at all.

If there are Lead-free choices/ Lead-free alternatives for products (especially foods) — it is our duty as parents to choose Lead-free options whenever possible.

It is also important to understand that “eating some lead-contaminated foods and then simply upping your detox game” is not a good strategy. Most detox protocols are snake-oil hoaxes that do not actually remove Lead from the body (some actually have potential to cause significant harm — including by causing/ contributing to an increase in Lead exposure). Prevention is key. Most detox protocols implemented after Lead exposure are — at best — ineffective placebo solutions and — at worst — potential sources of additional Lead exposure/ poisoning.

For more information on the background of the issue of childhood Lead poisoning, please watch the documentary film I directed and produced titled MisLEAD: America’s Secret Epidemic, linked here.
For information about the most effective (scientifically-proven) natural detox protocol (that you can buy for pennies in your local grocery store), click here.
To see a full list of all of the foods we have tested and reported on (and the related articles we have written) since we started doing food testing for Lead, Cadmium, Arsenic, and Mercury, click here.
To see a full list of all the foods we have pending/ currently at the lab (and all of the items we are seeking community funding for future testing and reporting on), click here.
For safer snack choices for your children, click here.
For general guidelines on avoiding Lead in your diet, click here.
For a comprehensive discussion of the concerns for Lead in baby food, click here.
For a list of products we have tested that tested negative (non-detect) for Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, and Arsenic, click here.

A few more key background points:

Lead Safe Mama, LLC is a unique community collaborative woman-owned small business in which YOU (Our community: Readers of this website and followers of our social media channels) decide what we test and you (our community) help cover the cost of the testing we do.
The testing we report on is truly independent third-party testing — community-driven and community-funded — not influenced by any agency, person, or business.
We are sharing this scientific information (laboratory test results for food products that the Lead Safe Mama community has asked us to test, and that the Lead Safe Mama community has funded testing for) with you (Lead Safe Mama readers) to help you make informed decisions for your family.
We are not doing this to cause panic, fear, or anxiety.
Most other organizations and businesses completing food testing are not sharing the actual lab test results for the food products they are testing.
- We have chosen to “lift the veil of mystery” and share the actual lab reports so you have hard data to use as a basis for any decision-making you need to do.
- We are confident that you are smart enough to understand what the numbers mean (to take the time to learn what they mean) and use this as a basis to make informed decisions for your family.
While none of us can change the past, we can at least hopefully take the time to learn about the toxicant profiles of the foods we feed our families and use that information to make the best choices we can moving forward.
#KnowBetterDoBetter

The most important question to ask yourself right now: If you had known that this product tested positive for unsafe levels of Lead (and Arsenic, too!), would you have chosen it for your family? For me the answer to this question is a resounding “no!”

My son (who eats a sugar-free and vegan diet) brought some of these home to try a few months ago. After doing some preliminary research into the concern for toxicants being absorbed by water lily seeds, I advised him not to eat these until we had a chance to test this product and determine whether-or-not it was safe (from a heavy metals content perspective at least). Now that we have the test results for this product, it is our advice (with the context being the Baby Food Safety Act of 2021 — details noted above) that this food not be consumed by children. I would also assert that it should not be consumed by pregnant women.

Whether-or-not adults choose to eat this product as an occasional snack/ treat is a decision for each individual to make for themselves (hopefully now from a more informed perspective). We certainly understand that others may choose to use this information to make different choices for their family based on their own standards and/or circumstances — and we think no one should be judged or criticized for making whatever choices seem right for them.

Hopefully the information we provide will help you make whatever choices you make with a foundation of knowledge and facts (rather than selecting products based on blind acceptance of the marketing hype and spin found in the greenwashed language and manufacturer’s claims).

The test results for this food product (and for other similar snack food products we have tested) support the following considerations:

As a society, we really need to reconsider how and what we are feeding our children.
At minimum, as parents, we need to consider eliminating (at least significantly so) highly-processed (made by machines) snacks based from any kind of processed flour (including seed and nut flours).
- Note: In our testing to date, processed packaged food products made of flour (any type of flour) appear to be more contaminated than some other products — likely both as a result of contamination introduced by the mechanized grinding and processing of the ingredients used to make the flours in addition to contamination likely introduced during the machining process required to make the final shaped/ formed product (cereal O’s, puffs, or cookies, etc).
We also need to consider limiting/ eliminating ANY TYPE of store-bought processed, packaged snacks from our children’s diets whenever possible (not just the flour-based products).
Societally, we need to more closely examine how our culture of eating processed, packaged food (which frequently tests positive for high levels of known carcinogens, like Cadmium) is impacting cancer rates, types, and what we can do in response to these findings. The epidemic of cancer in the United States is not generated by some mysterious source — we are accumulating ample evidence that it is clearly rooted in widespread contamination of our food supply (contamination which is primarily found in processed, packaged foods).
We need to demand more from our food supply chain (every step of the way: Not just growing, but the entire system, including harvesting, processing, packaging, and distribution). We need to demand that profit-driven corporate interests (no matter how large or small the corporation) stop manufacturing and selling contaminated products — especially food products with contaminants like Lead and Cadmium, two toxicants that are well-established as causally linked to countless life-long health impairments (and are also toxicants that accumulate in the body over a lifetime).
As consumers, we need to demand (and advocate for) effective regulatory oversight of the food industry.
Finally, we need to demand greater accountability and higher standards related to the language used for marketing and selling products — especially products ostensibly sold as “healthier” and/or “more natural” choices for children.

We have been feeding this product to our kids — what should we do now!?

If you have been feeding these AshaPops snack products to your young children (or consuming them yourself) on a regular basis, out of an abundance of caution we recommend that you stop doing so immediately and consider getting a Blood Lead Level (BLL) test, or better yet, a full heavy metals panel including Arsenic testing (to help determine if they or you have had any exposure of concern from eating this product).

Please read the exchange in the image below (from Instagram recently) with considerations specifically about food-based toxicant exposure:

We always encourage you to rely on science to help you make informed decisions for your family.

Negative health impacts have been demonstrated with blood Lead levels as low as 0.43 (in the study referenced in the image above).

Try finding a lab that tests down to a BLL of 1.0 or lower — you at least want to start by making sure your children do not test positive for a blood Lead level of 1.0 micrograms of Lead per deciliter of blood or higher.
If they (or you) do test positive for a BLL of 1.0 or higher, that level is considerably higher than the current national average (for children and for adults) and is indicative of a likely source of Lead exposure in their lives.
For any family with a family member who tests positive for a BLL of 1.0 or higher, it is always worth doing further investigation, looking for (and identifying) potential sources of Lead exposure (including dietary sources) and eliminating those potential sources, then retesting 45 to 90 days after the suspected source of Lead exposure has been eliminated.

Having baseline heavy metals testing done for everyone in your family is a good place to start.

Hopefully you and your children will all test negative for Lead (and Arsenic) after regularly consuming a product like this, but it is better to get a test done and know the answer (to have a baseline for future comparative testing) than to not test at all.

You can learn more about Blood Lead Level testing (including questions to ask to help make sure you get the most accurate possible testing done) at this link, and this link. We discuss considerations related to heavy metal panels done with urine testing and hair testing at 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.

AshaPops popped water lily seeds (in vegan cheese flavor) tested positive for unsafe levels of Lead and Arsenic. See the lab report here.

For those new to the Lead Safe Mama website:

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

This is an ad-free article.