The presence of palm oil in powdered milk poses serious health risks to infants. Theme, the subject of a petition launched by Great Italian Food Trade and The Food Fact, is back in the news after the latest analysis conducted by the Altroconsumo association, which repeated the test performed in June 2016 and still found the Carcinogenic contaminants 3-MCPD and GE, generated by high-temperature refining of tropical fat.
Analyses show that in the 13 samples of powdered milk for babies from zero to 6 months-all consumer brands-the dangerous contaminants are always present, above tolerance thresholds. One product (Crescendo Coop) never crosses these thresholds. Two others (Humana 1 and Plasmon Nutrimune 1) exceed the limit in the one-month infant formula, while falling within the tolerated range in the version formulated for 3-5 months.
Altroconsumo had already demonstrated, with laboratory analysis, the excessive presence of the carcinogenic contaminants carried by palm oil in snacks, cookies, chips and milk powder. Only milk powder producers had disputed the test result, claiming it was inconsistent with the resulting data to their self-monitoring systems. To reaffirm its reliability, the consumer association repeated this by outsourcing the disputed batches to another laboratory (accredited as the first), which uses a different method of analysis.
The result of the new test recalculated the presence of the contaminants. In comparison with previous tests, Altroconsumo writes, the milk “Humana 1 goes from a value of 3MCPD, ten times higher than the tolerable daily intake, to a value that is almost always within safe limits, except for the one-month-old baby, in which the safety threshold is slightly exceeded. The 3MCPD contaminants in Nidina 1 and Mellin 1 also drop from previous tests, although the safety threshold set by the European Food Safety Authority is still always exceeded in these products.”
In the matching analyses, Altroconsumo points out, “To investigate the issue and broaden the landscape, we added other infant formula brands to the test, some without palm oil. Result: ten out of thirteen samples still exceed the tolerable intake limit of 3MCPD. They range from values that are slightly above the tolerable daily intake to values 2-3 times higher (e.g., Nidina 1, Mellin 1, Formulat 1), to the most extreme case, Blemil 1, in which we found a 3MCPD content fifteen times higher than the safe limit. In this product and in Formulat 1 milk, we also found GE contaminants, which being definitely carcinogenic and genotoxic (i.e., can damage DNA) should not be there and therefore no tolerance threshold can be given by definition. On the other hand, the results of Coop Crescendo, which does not use palm, were good.”
An outcome that does not satisfy. “Although the contamination values are lower than those found in the test published in July, the overall situation remains critical and still warrants our concern, especially in light of the discussion taking place in Europe on setting new permissible contamination limits, which risk being too lax,” the consumer association concludes.
