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from the chew-on-this...-at-your-own-risk dept.
from the "damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't" dept.
Ars Technica provides the scoop on a new study that should alarm practitioners of gluten-free diets--especially the 1% of Americans that suffer from celiac disease and thus are gluten-sensitive. While admittedly a small study, the researchers found many of the blood and urine samples of the gluten-free participants had elevated levels of mercury and arsenic.
Those just happen to be toxic substances that often accumulate to high levels in rice, a food that is naturally gluten-free. Rice flour and other rice products are often used as substitutes for gluten-containing ingredients in foods.
Exposure to high levels of mercury and arsenic is linked to risks of cardiovascular disease, cancers, and neurological problems.
The study is very small, and it’s unclear if the elevated levels are directly linked to the participants’ self-reported diets or even if the mercury and arsenic levels are high enough to cause health effects. But the researchers say the findings raise concern.
“These results indicate that there could be unintended consequences of eating a gluten-free diet,” Maria Argos, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago and lead author of the study, said in a statement. But it’s impossible to draw firm conclusions “until we perform the studies to determine if there are corresponding health consequences that could be related to higher levels of exposure to arsenic and mercury by eating gluten-free.”
Argos and colleagues reported their findings in the journal Epidemiology.
High accumulation of mercury and arsenic in rice is not a new thing. Previous research as shown that rice plants are at least ten times better at accumulating toxins from the soil than other grain plants. However, it seems that people are putting together the evidence that a high rice diet has its own set of unfortunate consequences too. In 2016, the US Food and Drug Administration proposed new regulation restricting the allowable arsenic levels in rice cereals for infants. Chew on that organically grown, fat-free, sugar-free, low salt, gluten-free, flavor-free, nutrition-free, non-GMO, PETA-approved, recycled cardboard for a while.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday February 14 2017, @05:25PM
If you were to grow rice, over a long time, in the same soil, wouldn't the rice eventually have sucked up all of the mercury and arsenic from the soil? Let's not forget cadmium which is mentioned in one of the links. Or is the rice getting it from some other source? (What?) And is it bad practice to read the links before posting?
If ". . . the rice plant is a very efficient vacuum for pulling metallic elements out of the soil.", then wouldn't it eventually remove all of it?
Also this would seem to suggest these plants as a long term way to remove metallic elements from the soil, if that were ever desired.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Sulla on Tuesday February 14 2017, @05:41PM
I like that idea. Growing rice using a diluted runoff from mining operations waste ponds. Suck up the arsenic in the rice. Also posibility of finding what in rice causes this to occur and developing an organic filter.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday February 14 2017, @06:00PM
The problem is burning coal puts it in the air and rain transfers it from air to dirt, where growing plants transfer it from dirt to food. Essentially you're eating dirty coal.
This also explains why the Chinese 5000 years of rice consumption hasn't killed them, because they more or less have only burned a lot of coal for maybe one human generation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @06:17PM
Take "very efficient" with a grain of salt... and it is very relative as well. Problem is that these trace elements are also toxic to plants, they can take it up, but also have to store it safely somewhere (coupled to chelators in the vacuole). Then, it's only the grain you eat, most of the plant is thrown away (composted/burned, so nutrients enter the same field again). Next, most of these elements are not readily available in the soil, they are released by processing the soil before planting the crops. Finally, there is a lot of that stuff in the soil. All in all, it will take a very long time to remove most of it and requires a fair bit of knowledge mostly not available to poor farmers that produce these crops.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @09:14PM
the arsenic is from pesticide used on cotton. now that land is used for rice and citrus. this happened a lot in Texas and much less so in California. so, buy cali rice and avoid texas rice. this was news a few years ago.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 15 2017, @03:51AM
Arsenic also used to be used in large quantities to preserve wood. Wooden playgrounds from the 1990s and earlier contain significant arsenic in the soil that the children play in. At least Florida banned it around 2000, not sure about the timing in the rest of the world.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by butthurt on Tuesday February 14 2017, @10:35PM
Rice requires large amounts of water. Those elements can be carried by water. I would expect them to be especially prevalent in ground-water.
We had a story about nitrate (from e.g. fertilizer) apparently mobilising uranium into ground-water.
/article.pl?sid=15/12/08/215208 [soylentnews.org]
There was also a story about cadmium and arsenic appearing in a pond where mining waste had been left; for some reason the waste promptly killed birds.
/article.pl?sid=16/12/09/1231235 [soylentnews.org]
A commonplace situation where rice is irrigated with well water could provide an ongoing source of elements of concern. If the rice stalks are ploughed under rather than being removed from the fields--another commonplace situation, I would assume--the elements that the rice bioaccumulated will mostly become part of the soil again.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 15 2017, @03:48AM
>wouldn't the rice eventually have sucked up all of the mercury and arsenic from the soil?
Not if the rice paddy is located within 800 miles of a coal fired power plant.
🌻🌻 [google.com]