Rice cakes have the image of a healthy snack. It has long been known that this is not entirely true. Because rice cakes have one problem above all: arsenic. Inorganic arsenic gets into the rice plants via the soil and is toxic, even classified as carcinogenic. The Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) has therefore been advising for a long time that babies and small children should be given rice cakes to nibble on “only occasionally”. And older children and adults should only enjoy the waffles in moderation. Have the manufacturers improved? Ökotest did the test.
20 products were tested, including small and large rice cakes, with and without fruit flavor. Ökotest based its assessment on the limit values that apply to food for infants and small children. The result does not whet the appetite: 11 out of 20 products are so heavily contaminated with questionable substances that they fail the eco-test.
There are five main reasons why you should refrain from eating rice cakes every day. The first is the already mentioned arsenic. But also the heavy metal cadmium (toxic to the kidneys, possibly harmful to reproduction), mold toxin (can damage genetic material), components of mineral oil (possibly carcinogenic) and acrylamide (potentially increases the risk of cancer) could be detected. Tasty is different.
Only one product in the test scored “very good”, the “Babydream Rice Cakes Apple-Mango, organic”. The “Rewe Organic Mini Rice Cakes Apple-Raspberry” are “good”. The best “adult” rice cakes are the “Sondey Bio Organic Salted Rice Cakes”. You leave the test with a “satisfactory”.
You can read the entire test for a fee on test.de
