Gluten-Free Eaters Have Higher Levels of Arsenic and Mercury

The number of people with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity is on the rise. When they eliminate wheat and other gluten containing grains from their diet, they usually significantly increase their consumption of rice. Unfortunately, as it is growing, rice soaks up heavy metals like arsenic, mercury, and cadmium from the soil and water. According to a new study,  researchers found those who have been on a long-term, gluten-free diet have double the amount of arsenic in their systems and 70% more mercury than their gluten eating counterparts.

The Metal Sponge

Why does rice suck up arsenic and other heavy metals? Rice is flooded while it’s growing, in part to keep weeds in check and to discourage pests. Water enables the rice’s root system to draw in more nutrients from the soil. As it draws up nutrients, it also sucks up other things in the soil, like mercury, cadmium, arsenic, and tungsten.

Most of the rice in the U.S. is grown in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas, and California on farmland that was formerly used to grow cotton. Arsenic-based pesticides were used on much of the land to combat boll weevils. Combine those specific pesticides with rice’s extraction abilities, and high levels of heavy metals are the result.

What to Look For in Rice

This does not mean a gluten-free diet dooms you to heavy metal poisoning. With some smart planning and healthy choices, a gluten-free diet can leave you feeling great.

Not all rice is created equal. Though organic rice still has arsenic in it, it’s the best choice to avoid excessive pesticides on top of the metals naturally found in the rice. Brown rice has higher levels of arsenic than white rice. The hull or bran of the rice that gives brown rice its’ higher levels of magnesium, fiber, zinc, and folate also stores arsenic. Of the places where rice is grown, Basmati rice that is grown in California, India, and Pakistan contains less inorganic arsenic.

Variety is the Spice of Life

Another answer to the rice problem? Eat less rice and a greater variety of gluten-free grains. Rotating rice with grains like quinoa or millet will both decrease arsenic exposure and increase your body’s exposure to another nutritional profile. The same rotation can be applied to alternate flours. If you chose processed or pre-made foods, look for ones with alternative flours like chickpea or coconut. Switching up the type of flour you use at home can also limit your arsenic intake.

Get Them Out!

There are also foods that pull heavy metals from the body. Garlic, onions, and cilantro all help detox heavy metals and add extra flavor to food. Other edibles like chlorella, spirulina, and activated charcoal are also great at attracting heavy metals and helping the body process them out. Learn about Diatomaceous Earth, Total Nutrition, and read Top 5 Foods that Detox Heavy Metals and Toxins – With Protocol.

A Healthy Diet is The Best Defense

Someone on a gluten-free diet is more likely to eat rice and foods made with rice flour. The trade-off for this is higher levels of arsenic and mercury. This doesn’t negate the benefits of a gluten-free diet. It can even be seen as a motivation to incorporate new foods and grains into your diet. And check out How To Reduce the Arsenic in Your Rice by 80%.

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How To Reduce the Arsenic in Your Rice By 80%

In the past year, many articles have been published to raise concern about the alarming levels of arsenic found in rice. Although arsenic levels should be a health concern for anyone who consumes rice, it is certainly more of a concern for those who eat rice frequently or on a daily basis.

High levels of arsenic are toxic to humans, and arsenic is associated with cancer, heart problems, developmental problems, and diabetes.

The Telegraph has published an interesting article about the safest way to prepare rice to eliminate most of the arsenic. Andy Meharg, a much-published scientist and a professor at the school of Biological Sciences, Queens University Belfast, conducted an experiment comparing methods to cook rice. The telegraph article outlines the following methods:

  1. Cook with 2 parts water to 1 part rice. Water is “steamed out” during cooking.
  2. Cook with 5 parts water to 1 part rice. Excess water is washed off.
  3. Soak rice overnight, then thoroughly rinse before cooking.

The article, which is sourced below, reported the results incorrectly. The article stated that choice #2 removed close to 50% of the arsenic while soaking (#3) removed 80%.

I was curious as to what percentage would be removed if the rice were soaked and it was cooked with a 5:1 water ratio so I questioned Professor Meharg directly. He stated that soaking and cooking with 5 parts water removed 80% of the arsenic (a combination of #3 and #2) was the action that resulted in the 80% reduction. He said he couldn’t tell me what soaking alone would do to reduce arsenic as that particular test was not conducted. He stated, “We did not check the intermediate stage, primarily as we were concerned with levels in the final product.” 

I’ve asked him to please let us know if he ever does test the arsenic levels after soaking before cooking. In the meantime, if we want to remove 80% of the arsenic, we need to do the following:

  • Soak rice overnight and rinse thoroughly until the water runs clear.
  • Cook with 5 parts water and pour off the excess water after the rice is done.

There you have it: an 80% reduction in arsenic.

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Dangerously High Arsenic Levels Found in Rice

What is Arsenic Anyway?

Arsenic is a naturally occurring, toxic element found in the earth. It is found in over 200 different minerals. There are two main types of arsenic: organic and inorganic. Organic arsenic compounds are primarily found in marine life, but they are also sometimes found in terrestrial life forms. Exposure to arsenic from organic sources is widely considered to be less toxic than exposure to inorganic arsenic.

A Poison Fit for a King

Arsenic has been used as a poison for centuries. Assassins have historically been very fond of arsenic because symptoms of arsenic poisoning resembled other sicknesses like food poisoning. The resulting death would look like natural causes. In low doses, arsenic poisoning could cause diarrhea, confusion, paralysis, or weakness. Arsenic was difficult to detect as it has little odor, almost no taste, and it doesn’t affect the color of food. How many kings and queens have died of arsenic poisoning? No one knows, but many historians speculate that kings and queens who died young rarely died of natural causes.

Where Does All This Arsenic Come From?

The majority of arsenic that we are exposed to is not of natural origin. Natural processes can bring arsenic into the atmosphere (such as volcano eruptions), but only one third of the arsenic in our atmosphere is of natural origin. Arsenic can be found in the earth’s crust, in deeply drilled wells, and in rocks, soil, air and water.

We Have Industry to Thank for This

Industrial activities such as mining, smelting, and the burning of coal in power plants all play a role in contaminating our environment with arsenic. Arsenic is produced commercially from arsenic trioxide, which is one of the leftover byproducts of smelting copper and other metals. Arsenic is commonly used by the timber industry as a preservative for treating wood. Arsenic is also an active ingredient in many insecticides and herbicides, and it is a common additive in chicken and swine feed (apparently it is used to fatten them up). The timber industry and agriculture industry account for over 90% of environmental arsenic pollution that is not due to natural processes.

No One Would Want to Die This Way

Consistent exposure to even small amounts of arsenic has been linked to several diseases, many of which are fatal. Arsenic is so toxic that it causes many different cancers, including skin cancer, lung cancer, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer and prostate cancer. Over consumption of arsenic has also been linked to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, reproductive problems, and it is known to compromise the immune system.

How Arsenic Gets into Rice

Many plants can absorb arsenic from its environment and rice is one those plants. Rice absorbs high amounts of arsenic from the soil, from water and from pesticides. Unfortunately, with so much arsenic contaminating the soil and water, organic rice can contain dangerous levels of arsenic even though it has not been exposed to pesticides. Counter-intuitively, there are actually higher levels of arsenic found in brown rice than in white rice. This is because more of the arsenic is found in the outer layers of the grain. The outer layers of the rice are removed during the processing that turns brown rice into white rice. (This processing also removes the majority of the nutrition found in rice).

While the FDA Does Nothing, Consumer Reports Steps Up

Consumer Reports has been doing the job that the FDA should have been doing for a long time now. On their website, you can find recommended weekly allowances for rice consumption based upon the levels of arsenic that rice contains. There is no federal limit for levels of arsenic in rice (but there is a biological limit, and one of its many names is cancer).

Since 2012, Consumer Reports has been asking the FDA to set a limit for arsenic in rice, a request that has been ignored. Over the past couple of years, Consumer Reports have tested over 700 foods containing rice, and they have tested hundreds of different samples of rice grown in different regions. It turns out that knowing where your rice is grown is very helpful if you wish to avoid high levels of arsenic in your food.

Not All Rice Fields Are Created Equal

Rice grown in California, white basmati rice grown in California, India and Pakistan and sushi rice grown in the US typically has almost half of the arsenic content as rice grown elsewhere. Rice that is grown in the US (with the exceptions being Californian rice, quick cook rice and sushi rice) contain the highest levels of arsenic. Rice labeled as having been grown in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas also stood out as having very high levels of arsenic in it.

One company in particular stands out as being proactive on this issue. Lundberg Farms is located in California. Their CEO, Grant Lundberg, recently issued a statement about the high levels of arsenic found in rice.

“We recently updated the published levels of arsenic in our rice, which now covers three consecutive years of data. I am happy to report that the levels of inorganic arsenic continue to remain low, and average less than half of the standard established by Codex. We are also actively engaged in the development of a code of practice through Codex to help develop ways to reduce arsenic levels even further.”

Codex is an international standard. Once again, we have no standards to rely on from the FDA.

Conclusion

According to the USA Rice Federation, you should eat rice because the benefits outweigh the risks. These are the people who are selling us rice, so no surprise there. The FDA recommends that Americans consume a variety of grains, and they say they’re looking into the arsenic problem. We recommend that you limit the amount of grains in your diet, especially rice. Also when you eat rice, eat rice that is grown in California. A healthy diet consists of 80% raw produce, with more vegetables than fruits as the main staple of your diet – not grains of any variety.

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Unsafe Arsenic Levels in Rice and Poultry (especially brown rice)

Lately, there has been a lot of publicity about unsafe arsenic levels in rice and poultry due to a report from Consumer Reports. This is very disconcerting to hear, especially if you have only heard of arsenic as a poison. It actually is a metal, frequently found in our food and our water in both inorganic and organic forms. But arsenic, especially inorganic arsenic, is a carcinogen that increases the risk of bladder, lung and skin cancer. It also has been linked to heart disease and type 2 diabetes. In utero exposure may damage the baby’s immune system.

Arsenic is found in dirt and water, but of course mankind has added to the problem through arsenic-based insecticides and factory farming methods. Factory farms have been feeding arsenic-based food additives to poultry through the FDA recently revoked three of these. They warn, however, that the supplies on hand for many of these operations will last a year, giving us another reason to eat organic chicken.

High arsenic levels in rice are attributed to the irrigation water and the dirt in which it is grown. Consumer Reports’ 2012 investigation, combined with the FDA study in 2013, and the latest 2014 investigation by Consumer Reports covers the level of arsenic in 697 rice samples and 114 samples of other grains.

Consumer Reports states, “White basmati rice from California, India, and Pakistan, and sushi rice from the U.S. on average has half of the inorganic-arsenic amount of most other types of rice.”

But other states in the U.S. did not fare as well. “All types of rice (except sushi and quick cooking) with a label indicating that it’s from Arkansas, Louisiana, or Texas or just from the U.S. had the highest levels of inorganic arsenic in our tests.”

Arsenic levels are higher in brown rice (80% on average) because the arsenic accumulates in the outer layers (the bran and the germ), which are removed when rice is milled to make white rice.

Consumer Reports recommends the following: “Brown basmati from California, India, or Pakistan is the best choice; it has about a third less inorganic arsenic than other brown rices.”

Due to these findings, Consumer Reports and the FDA recommend eating a wide variety of grains rather than designing a diet with rice as a main staple. High levels of arsenic were found in processed rice products such as rice cakes, cracker, pasta, and dairy alternative products. They suggest small children should not be fed rice milk. Consumer Reports recommends limiting rice intake using a point system. See the link below for details.

You can reduce the amount of arsenic in your rice by thoroughly rinsing it before cooking it and by cooking it in large amounts of water (6 cups of water to one cup of rice) – the traditional Asian way of cooking rice. This method does, however, decrease the nutritional value as it loses vitamins and other nutrients in the water. These two practices are said to reduce the arsenic content by 30%

While arsenic in food is a concern, it gives us one more reason to focus on the best possible diet, which is 80% raw produce, eaten with naturally chelating foods such as garlic and cilantro. Eating this way helps us remove heavy metals from our bodies on a daily basis through the foods we eat.

Other likely sources of metal toxicity include poultry, beer, wine,  fish, brussels sprouts, and  Mercury Fillings. See Mercury Fillings, Root Canals, Cavitations – What You Need to Know. To remove heavy metals from your body, check out the recommended supplements, and the articles, How To Detoxify From Vaccinations & Heavy Metals & Top 5 foods that detox heavy metals and toxins.

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