CAN RICE BE CONTAMINATED?

We almost never hear of contaminated grains, including contaminated rice. But rice can be contaminated - like any other food. This can be a huge risk, since rice is the staple food for about half the world. Children, as well as adults, may eat large amounts of it regularly, particularly if they are poor and can afford little else. Or, you may be well off, but be more exposed to risks in rice if you go on one of the rice diets to lose weight, as a friend of mine did.

Many of the nastier things that have cropped up in rice have been absorbed into the rice from the soil they grow in. In Japan, it's now rice planting time, and the government has issued restrictions about planting in some areas affected by radiation from the Fukushima power plant, because of fears that the rice will pick up the radioisotope cesium-137 from the soil. It's sad for the rice farmers but good that care is being taken to keep the food supply safe.

But radiation is not the only hazard that rice can pick up. When I was doing the research for The Safe Food Handbook, one of the issues I became most absorbed in, and contacted top researchers world wide, was the risk of arsenic in rice. As we know, arsenic is one of the worst heavy metals. It can be present in soil, as when arsenic-based presitcides have been used on previous crops such as cotton, to control the boll weevel. Certain plants absorb arsenic, others do not. Rice is one that does.

Quite high levels of arsenic have indeed been found in rice from certain parts of south-central United States, and in some - not all - rice from countries such as Bangaldesh and India. Organic growing conditions will not guarantee that the rice will be low in arsenic, as it can stay there for very long periods of time.

These are just two possible contaminants in rice. And wouldn't it - brown rice, and especially rice bran, are likely to be more risky. Nutrition and food safety do not always agree.

TSF

WHAT HAPPENS TO RECALLED FOOD PRODUCTS?

One of the great mysteries in our food supply is what food companies do with the products they so-called "voluntarily" recall (a note of sarcasm here - read: "That the FDA or USDA makes them recall."). I have heard and read all kinds of stories, and more-of-less reliable reports: it is buried, it is shipped overseas, it is used as fertilizer, it goes into animal feed (including pet food)...and it is recycled - to us.

But before I go any further, I want to say that there are some very ethical food companies that are truly concerned about their clients' welfare and make double sure that any "bad" products of theirs that have unfortunately got into the food supply, will never get in again. I am sure that the owner of the clover sprouts company that I spoke to the other day falls into this category. So do some others.

However... there are also the other kind. Their thinking seems to go more or less like this: "This recall is costing us a bundle. What we need to do is find a way to reduce the costs. Maybe we can just send these returned products back to customers and no one - including the FDA and the USDA - will be any the wiser. All we need to do is just repackage them, with a different label and/or different code, and off they go. Easy... "

Impossible? Not at all. It happens. If you read my recalls alerts about a year ago, you would have seen that a California nut distributor recycled its potentially contaminated and recalled almonds under a different (and very healthy-sounding) brand name - and, sent them right back into the marketplace. And today, well, another instance. This one was caught by U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA/FSIS), which is charged with the safety of our meat products in the United States. As a result of customer complaints about smelly and off-color meat products (note..not routine inspection) it found that One Great Burger, of Elizabeth, N.J., had repackaged and recoded their returned burgers and

sent them out for further distribution to institutional customers. Yummy....What's this about a "great burger"?

Also, you can bet that for all the cases caught, there are hundreds of others that slip through the net.

TSF
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Is that Melamine in our Food Supply?

There was another one today. In all, that makes at least three in December, and one in early January. What I am talking about is Food and Drug Administration (FDA) alerts about yet another melamine-contaminated food product.

Melamine? Wasn't that the contaminant in pet food in 2007 that sickened some 8,500 of our beloved cats and dogs and other pets and killed many of them? Yes, it was. Wasn't it also the industrial chemical that got into milk in China (and maybe a bunch of other foods as well, such as eggs, meat, and soy). Yes, it is. The official estimates on the China incident: about 30,000 or so infants sickened, and about 6 killed. I would bet my beloved new Breville super-automatic toaster and electric kettle (that my son bought me for Christmas) that this is a huge underestimation.

So what is a nitrogen-based compound used in making plastic items, such as eating utensils and laminates, whiteboard wall paneling, flooring and Formica countertops doing in food? The answer is greed...A get-rich quick scheme by unscrupulous people who thought they could get away with a little sleight-of-hand. This was not a case of turning water into wine, but of turning water into milk (with a little help from melamine). And you thought the latest financial scams were bad?

Back to melamine in the U.S. food supply. Bottom line: it's there, but we don't yet know all the food products that are involved, or how bad it will be for us. The FDA testing is ongoing. It takes time. Hang in there. We'll keep you informed. Just waiting for those scientists to get over their vacation sloth and for the new and more honest administration to come in, so we get the real facts.

But why? Why is melamine in our food? Well, that's what globalization gets you. We love imported foods, and food manufacturers love cheap imported ingredients. It all translates into better profits. China is a great soure of both. And, no prejudice involved, but that's where it began. But it could have been some other chemical in some other country. There are plenty to choose from.

The warnings are dribbling in to the public, except that most of us remain blissfully ignorant. Not that it matters much. By the time the warnings are issued the products have usually been on store shelves for months, and most have been eaten. Yumm...Did you notice that lovely crunch of plastic in your chocolate bar? Feel an odd kind of tickle in your kidneys a few days later?

Let's take today's announcement. National Brands recalled topaz wafer rolls. Going backwards, the alert on December 20th, announced the discovery of melamine in gourmet cocoa products. On December 18th it was Wonderfarm biscuits. On December 6 it was found in chocolate bars held by cute teddy bears that were sold at Walgreens. And yes, in November it was found in low levels in three major brands of infant formula sold in the U.S. In between there have been other incidents. Most of the melamine contaminated products were sold in several states or nationwide. And it is not just one food manufacturer or distributor involved, but many.

What makes it worse, is that most of the contaminated products identified so far are eaten by infants or children, who are more vulnerable. Of course, all the announcements downplay the risks and say no illnesses have been reported. But let's not be fooled. As we found out in the case of melamine in pet food, it can take a while for melamine to create kidney and other problems. And it takes a lot longer to track it back to a specific food product. As for the low dosages, let's hope they are too low to do any harm. But it might be a good idea to remember that findings in other countries have shown that the levels in a single type of produce - such as chocolate bars or candy - can vary tremendously from one chocolate bar or candy to the next. There are also a lot of things we still don't understand about how melamine works in the body, what the cumulative effect is, how melamine and cyanuric acid work together, and in what situations melamine is most likely to be dangerous.

So how do we avoid it? At this point I would love to give a magic answer. But frankly, I don't know. Much of this melamine contaminant is probably reaching us through foods produced in China, or, ingredients produced in China that are then used here in the U.S. Some is also coming from other countries that have imported melamine contaminated ingredients and used them to produce foods that are then exported to the U.S. One such recent case is the 'his and hers' gourmet cocoa products produced in Quebec, Canada.

Perhaps the best way to be safe is not to eat any manufactured food products that might contain milk ingredients. But I would not be at all surprised if it did not soon turn up in soy as well. Or, something else, like our eggs.

Stay tuned.

In the meantime: bon apetit, buen provecho, guten appetit, bete'avon, buen appetito, kale orexe, itadakimas, est gesunterhayt, afyet olson, priiatnogo appetita, buon appetito.......Is that enough for now?

TSF