I'm with Alice but I appreciate the perspectives of the other panelists. I wish you had included someone with an infant in this segment because I am sure your fear of heavy metals and food contaminants wanes as your baby gets older. As an aside, there are many reasons to avoid high fructose corn syrup that have nothing to do with mercury contamination. Avoid it. Avoid it. Avoid it. Read your labels and don't buy it. Trader Joe's makes a great chocolate syrup without any high fructose corn syrup. You just have to change your shopping practices. As for the toy thing... I am at a loss. What should we do? Go back to giving our kids plain wooden blocks? My ped gave me her opinion on the subject. She said that people are so worried about shots and autism. It may not be the shots. It may be all the crap in the food nowadays that was NOT around when we were little and the heavy metals in the toys. Who knows? I have no idea.

LOL about 'you have to hope that someone that has poop on their hands doesn't fondle your lettuce." I try not to worry about it. Essentially, what can you do? I'm just glad we pray before we eat. ;)

I have to speak out about the salmonella, I think you guys are being a little too flippant about it. I got salmonella in 2006 and believe me, this is a *real* danger, if you want to talk about what you should and should not worry about. True, the peanut company doesn't want to be sued, but people have been sick! So, I think somewhere in their shriveled, cold corporate hearts they actually didn't want more people to get sick. And yes, that's *exactly* how it happens: someone who is infected does not wash their hands after using the restroom and then goes out and picks your veggies, fruits, peanuts, what have you. Then, in a processing plant, restaurant kitchen or wherever, someone doesn't properly wash the produce, cuts it, then cuts a myriad of other things with the same knife and presto: salmonella outbreak. And I went undiagnosed and untreated for a long time. If I had been a child I likely would have died. Just saying. [Sorry if I seem a little bitter, but I'm still suffering from the after-effects today, nearly 3 years later, so I actually am quite bitter about it.] I'm with you on the chemicals. I feel powerless as to what might be on my son's toys. I try to not to worry too much, but I did once get a really really really cheap and scary looking dollar store toy from someone for his Christmas present, and I actually just threw it in the garbage. It was just a little too sketchy looking to me. He has plenty of mass produced toys, but I'd like to think I can trust Fisher Price and Playskool. Maybe I can't? And food, ugh don't get me started. It saddens me that as Americans there are food products for sale that we are (and probably should be) afraid to buy. I think it's because the bulk of Americans (present company excluded?) are cheap. And if Hershey's started using real sugar, the price of a bottle of syrup would go up a dollar and everyone would complain.

Sorry ladies, my salmonella rant was a little crazy and not really helpful for the discussion, it was pre-tea. Hugs all around, great video as usual, try not to get sick from your peanut butter :)

Actually, I have to give you props! My brother had Salmonella and it was awfulllll. Granted, he did eat a chicken sandwich that had been left out overnight, but still. Didn't make it any less dangerous. And here's something no one seems to worry about: botulism. A friend gave her daughter botulism at six months from... are you ready? Honey. She was paralyzed, and had to learn to sit up and crawl all over again. Honey is touted as the one food that does not spoil, but it's friendly to other things we're better off not contracting. That doesn't mean I don't eat it, I just—as monsterwrangler said—say Grace first.

I usually don't worry about the news. Perhaps it's because I was born and raised in Italy where we are too nonchalant about this kind of stuff. But I have to say that one of my children had Salmonella and was so ill for weeks, it made me much more aware of being careful about these things. Not obsessive but careful. Salmonella is really rough for little kids - better safe than sorry :) Cheers, Anita www.ovolina.com

Mindy... your friend's pediatrician should have told her that a child under the age on one should NEVER be given honey... for just the reason you speak of. So sorry she had to learn the hard way. Spread the word about this to everyone with infants.

The more I think about scary things, the more scared I get. I try to avoid that cycle. I used to be affraid of spiders, then I lived in an old trailer home for a year, that pretty much cured it. Now I don't even try to squish them. I get spooked about sharks in the deep end of the swimming pool even though I know they aren't there. I handle it by diving in. After the invisible sharks don't eat me, I start to feel a lot better. I don't want to get sick, so I wash stuff (I spray all fruits and veggies with white vinegar and let em be for a couple minutes before rinsing well) and I try to avoid foods that are unnecessarily processed for me. Other than that, I don't even think about it. I'll freak out if I do. Sience has been telling me that freaking out is unhealthy too. In the end, it's probably what really ends up killing most of us. Kinda funny in a dark, morbid sort of way. Deep breath. Sigh. I'm ok, I'm ok, I'm ok.

Funny (or, perhaps, not), but I just wrote a long piece about this very topic -- how I am supposed to feed my son now that I just finished reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. (http://YogaMamaMe.com) And I wasn't even looking at the salmonella scare because I'm lucky enough to have a husband with a peanut allergy and a son who very likely may have inherited it. So I get to think, as do the panelists, "Ha! I don't give my family peanutbutter or processed foods that might, for some reason we can not explain, have peanutbutter in them." As to the whole debate about whether we are going overboard (and Peggy Orenstein wrote an interesting essay about just this question in yesterday's New York Times Magazine), what I concluded after batting it around was that we all have to make the choice we feel is the right one. I do feel, very strongly, that most of the food in supermarkets isn't really food; that the dangers of off-gassing are way under-noticed; and that I will -- perhaps literally -- die the first time my child demands a Happy Meal. I do my best to create as toxic-free an environment as possible for my son (and myself, since I'm 8 months pregnant) precisely because I know there are a million other toxins out there that I can do nothing about. It's about doing your best, making your choices as a mom and as a human being, and then giving yourself a break. Not having to explain yourself. Knowing you did your best. That said, dear god, what will I do if they find out something is wrong with Annie's Mac & Cheese? Jack will starve right along with Henry.

I refuse to live in fear of all these toxins and microbes and bacteria and viruses that are all around me and my family. I mean, I will be smart about cleaning my cutting board and washing my veggies but I am not going to take every toy to the laboratory and have it tested for mercury and lead. I'd rather spend the money and time on quality time with the kids. =) So much of American consumerism is driven by fear. That's how all the antibacterial stuffs got sold. If we used the money we spent on antibacterial stuffs and invested it on getting clean water to children who live in poverty, I think we would have saved a lot more lives.