Trace element contents in foods from the first French total diet study on infants and toddlers

Abstract Occurrence data for aluminium, antimony, arsenic, barium, cadmium, chrome, cobalt, gallium, germanium, nickel, strontium, silver, tellurium, tin and vanadium were compiled during the first French Total Diet Study on infants and toddlers. For infant foods, meat-/fish-based and vegetable-based ready-to-eat meals were among the most contaminated food categories for most trace elements, except for gallium, antimony and vanadium, for which the concentrations were relatively similar in all food categories. Soups/purees and cereal-based foods had the highest levels of aluminium (653 and 630 μg kg −1 , respectively), whereas fruit purees had the highest level of tin (424 μg kg −1 ). Infant and follow-on formulae and growing-up milks had relatively low mean contents of trace elements compared with the other infant food categories: e.g. aluminium (220 μg kg −1 ), arsenic (1.80 μg kg −1 ), cadmium (0.51 μg kg −1 ). Chocolate-based foods contributed substantially to the higher levels of aluminium, cadmium, cobalt, chromium and nickel in sweet and savoury biscuits and bars, dairy-based desserts and croissant-like pastries. Only the contribution of chromium and barium levels were statistically different between infant and common foods, with median concentrations being slightly higher in infant foods. The results were largely comparable to those from other surveys on baby food.