Brown rice syrup is the rare sweetener where a US pediatric body has taken a direct position, and the position is to skip it. The American Academy of Pediatrics, in its guidance on reducing arsenic in children's diets, tells parents to "avoid brown rice syrup as a sweetener in processed foods for kids," explaining that "the arsenic in rice is concentrated in rice syrup, which is sometimes used as a sweetener in toddler snacks or puffs." That recommendation is about arsenic, not sugar — but the sugar part is true too: brown rice syrup counts fully as added sugar on the Nutrition Facts panel.
What it is. Also sold as rice syrup or rice malt syrup, it is made by using amylase enzymes to break rice starch down into smaller sugars — mainly maltose and glucose, with some maltotriose. Because rice starch is a chain of glucose units, the sugars it yields are glucose-based rather than fructose-based, the reverse of agave or high-fructose corn syrup. Its appeal to manufacturers is largely positional: it lets a granola bar or a puffed snack say "no cane sugar," "no high-fructose corn syrup," or "organic sweetener" while still being sweetened. It is also fast. The 2021 international glycemic index tables list a commercial rice malt syrup at GI 98, near the top of the scale for any sweetener and well above table sugar at roughly 65 — though that figure reflects a single product measured by one laboratory in a small group of subjects and has not been independently replicated.
Where the arsenic concern came from. In 2012, Jackson and colleagues at Dartmouth published "Arsenic, organic foods, and brown rice syrup" in Environmental Health Perspectives. Rice takes up arsenic from soil and water more than most crops, and the researchers hypothesized that concentrating rice into a syrup would concentrate the arsenic with it. They reported that organic brown rice syrup "can contain high concentrations" of inorganic arsenic, that an "'organic' toddler milk formula containing OBRS as the primary ingredient" had total arsenic "up to six times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency safe drinking water limit," and that cereal bars and high-energy foods made with it "had higher As concentrations than equivalent products that did not contain OBRS." Their conclusion was that "there is an urgent need for regulatory limits on As in food."
What regulators have and haven't done. FDA acted on the closest adjacent product: in August 2020 it finalized an action level of 100 ppb inorganic arsenic in infant rice cereal, part of its broader Closer to Zero effort on heavy metals in children's food. There is still no FDA action level that applies to brown rice syrup as an ingredient, and no comprehensive public re-testing program for it. That gap — a specific pediatric warning, a regulatory limit next door, and none on the ingredient itself — is why this one sits in "avoid" rather than "limit" on our scale.
How to spot it on a label: "brown rice syrup," "rice syrup," "rice malt syrup," "organic brown rice syrup," or "brown rice sweetener." It is most common in granola and cereal bars, crisped-rice treats, toddler puffs and melts, nut-butter bars, and organic-positioned candy. None of this calls for alarm about a snack your child already ate — the AAP's framing is about steady, repeated exposure. Its other advice in the same guidance is the practical version: vary the grains in your child's diet rather than defaulting to rice, and don't use rice milk as a dairy substitute.