Homemade versus Commercial Jarred Baby Foods with Regard to Nitrites and Nitrates Content

Abstract

This paper presents results of nitrites and nitrates determination in two types of baby foods: com. products in jars and their homemade conventional counterparts. Nitrites levels in all analyzed samples were below of the detection limit (< 0.9 mg/kg) of applied spectrophotometric method with Griess reagent. Nitrates contents in com. products ranged: 9.1-38.1 mg/kg while in homemade baby foods levels between 26.6 mg/kg and 118.8 mg/kg were obtained. All the contents of nitrates were lower than the EU legislation maximum limit (200 mg/kg). Comparison of each type of com. product with its homemade counterpart baby food evidenced significant differences (p < 0.05) in average nitrates levels in favor of the first type. Apart from determining and comparing the levels of nitrates in the baby food samples also risk assessment for an average 6-mo old infant to nitrates exposure was conducted. The estimated nitrates intake with a typical portion of 200g of baby food ranged between 6% and 25.7% of acceptable daily intake for com. and from 18.0% to 80.3% for homemade ones.