Plant poison in baby herbal tea
Alarm in the feeding bottle: "WISO" found carcinogenic herbal poisons in baby tees. The ZDF consumer magazine tested a total of 19 herbal baby teas and reported in its issue of 03.11. (Missed the program? Click here for the video).
Pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) were detected in four of the teas. This substance can damage the organism and cause liver tumors at high doses. Especially infants and toddlers are endangered. The body of children does not flush out the plant poison, but stores it.
Particularly bitter: Four organic teas are burdened, two of them considerably: "Sonnenkind Babytee" by Sonnentor and "Baby Kräuter-Tee" by Alnatura. In addition, "Baby tummy tea" from Lebensbaum and "Baby tea herbal tea" from Salus performed poorly. The companies have now taken their teas from the market, Sonnentor even calls his tea back publicly.
The cause of the finds are impurities. PAs are phytochemicals that protect some plants against predators. In tea herbs, there are no PAs, but in the weeds that grow between the tea herbs. Since organic farming does not use chemicals to combat unpleasant crops, they can get under the tea weeds during harvesting. Tea producers are aware of the problem and have developed strategies to eliminate weeds, such as new cultivation guidelines or multiple post-harvest cleaning processes.
Sonnentor also points out that their raw materials have been tested for PA for a year using a new method. However, the batch was produced and sold before that date. For more information, see information.sonnentor.com.
Lebensbaum has also provided information on his website, for example about the affected batches "Baby tummy tea".
The Federal Association of Natural Foods Natural Products criticized the nature of the report in a statement: "Among other things, the WISO editorial board did not consider that the distribution of PA contents in the batches varies widely, with high contents being only occasional."
