Another independent laboratory test discovered that a well-known carcinogen called arsenic is once again in over 300 rice products in grocery stores across the U.S. The goal of these independent tests is to pressure the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to set a safety standard for arsenic in foods bound for Americans and this has been something that they have been dragging their feet for a very long time. These test results is basically nothing new for informed readers for the last decade but serious attention should be had to stay informed and free of any arsenic poisoning.
For the record of all the grown grains in the world the rice plant is the best designed to uptake the arsenic in the soil. This naturally occurring element, which is in the soil, uses the same mechanisms that allow it to save minerals such as silicon, which aids the growing strength of the rice plant. It was published in a business magazine that inorganic arsenic levels in rice cereals where at least 5 times more than has ever been discovered in oatmeal. Keep in mind that white rice which is grown in Texas, Missouri, Louisiana and Arkansas and accounts for over 70 percent of all domestic rice, which has higher levels of total arsenic and inorganic arsenic.
As everyone knows that in the south rice is now being grown in what used to be cotton fields and for a long time the primary pesticides used to kill insects molesting the cotton plants where arsenic based and these poisons left a very long lasting residue in the southern states. The runoff from southern chicken farms as arsenic is used in chicken feed and can also explain why there is a high level of arsenic in our rice. As to the white rice that is being produced in the south the levels of arsenic tend to be higher in brown rice because when the rice is processed much of the rice hull is removed and this seems to be a place where the minerals are mostly concentrated.
So do these levels of high arsenic levels pose a threat? You betcha. The FDA’s view of this is simply that these are trace amounts in products that are mostly considered a healthy food.
Of course, this also suggests that we should avoid a diet rich in rice and that some cultures who ate rice more frequently like Asians and Hispanics– may be at more risk.