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]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by termigator on Tuesday February 14 2017, @05:34PM
Since some cultures consume rice in large quantities, are there studies measuring arsenic and mercury in these groups?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DECbot on Tuesday February 14 2017, @06:04PM
I think this is interesting. However you have to consider the source of the rice. I would imagine rice from centuries old rice paddies would have lower toxin yields than new paddies or paddies planted next to industrial sites. So you would need to monitor if your study participants are buying US/new world rice or rice from established Asian farms far from mining and industry. I can't find it now, but I once saw that many Japanese families buy mostly US rice due to price. So I would expect that there will be a difference between the present population and the historical population.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 1) by Guppy on Tuesday February 14 2017, @09:52PM
Part of the arsenic comes from naturally occurring traces found in some alluvial sediments. However, another sources comes from arsenic-based pesticides that used to mostly be used in cotton-growing regions, and arsenic-containing coccidiostats given to poultry.
As far as domestic-grown rice goes, this means stay away from rice from the Southern parts of the US, and stick to California grown rice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:51AM
mod that guy up
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 15 2017, @03:56AM
Where in southeast Asia is not near a coal fired power plant? Florida receives more mercury from Mexico's power plants than from the local ones that run better (but still far from perfect) scrubbers.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @06:24AM
Whatever it is, rice from the USA tends to have higher arsenic than rice from India or Thailand:
http://www.consumerreports.org/content/dam/cro/magazine-articles/2012/November/Consumer%20Reports%20Arsenic%20in%20Food%20November%202012_1.pdf [consumerreports.org]
The exception is the California Basmati tested seems relatively lower in arsenic.
Brown rice tends to be higher in arsenic.
(Score: -1, Interesting) by jmorris on Tuesday February 14 2017, @05:47PM
What? Following fad diets have unexpected consequences? This is my shocked face.
There is a very small number of people with a genetic defect who should avoid gluten, for everyone else it is perfectly fine. It isn't even like lactose where only some of us evolved a genetic trait that allows us to consume the stuff. Excluding a major source of nutrition to chase a fad should have been an obviously bad idea. Eat as diverse a diet as you can do practically and odds are you are going to be ok. Every food source is going to have good and bad aspects, but if you do not eat a lot of any one food source you probably won't get enough of the bad stuff to matter and most good things appear in enough different foods you will get enough of them. Which is why we evolved to eat exactly like that, eating whatever we could get our hands on as we moved about and things came into and out of season, animals migrated, etc.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 14 2017, @07:36PM
Hey, asshole, as dumb as fad diets are no one deserves goddamn arsenic poisoning for following them. You're taking joy in their suffering, going "Good, serves the hipsters right." Screw you.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by jmorris on Tuesday February 14 2017, @09:02PM
Stupid hurts, that is generally the clue that it is stupid. Trying to remove the consequences of being stupid is why we have a broken world tottering on the abyss of chaos. It does not matter whether you approve, the universe will punish stupidity. The goal is to teach people this basic truth so that they will invest more effort into avoiding doing stupid things. The purpose of pointing and laughing at stupid people isn't to hurt them, it is an unavoidable side effect of using them as object lessons to prevent future harm.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @11:43PM
Typical, no the world is teetering on the brink due to greedy assholes causing lots of problems. People. Just. Like. You.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:50PM
That's way the fuck out of proportion and you know it. And you're one of those stupid people, but you're shielded from the consequences of your idiocy by circumstance and privilege. Fuck you twice.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @12:15AM
Allergies can develop, over expose to something and you can become allergic. Have some change in your body, such as the gut bacteria, and you can then develop reactions to gluten. The human body is complicated and overconfident people such as yourself never seem to learn even after a lifetime of corrections. Narrow minded arrogance is the worst!
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday February 15 2017, @01:13AM
Celiac disease is caused by leaky joints between the cells of the intestine. (I forget whether it's the large or the small intestine.) But, yes, it can be developed with age. It's also partially hereditary...e.g. my sister has celiac disease, but I don't, and neither did my grandfather, who died at 94 of anemia because is blood was leaking out through weak joints between the cells of his large intestine. No way to even treat that, at least not then (about 30 years ago now).
Perhaps if the blood pressure is high enough the contents of the intestine doesn't leak into the body. In that case you get your choice of problems.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @07:31AM
It's not caused by leaky joints. It's caused by an autoimmune reaction to gluten.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @07:34AM
"very small number,"
No, it's not a very small number. About 1% of the USA population has Celiac disease. Another 1-2% have other wheat or gluten allergies/intolerances. When you add in family memers who have to avoid gluten as well to avoid cross-contamination of their loved one's diets, you're talking at least 5% of Ameicans.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 14 2017, @05:57PM
Fundamentally its a story about rice, not a story about GF eating. My son has the medically diagnosed celiac disease and the first few months were rather interesting but in practice a decade later it just doesn't matter much. We mostly end up eating paleo-ish which means pretty much no grains for two reason:
1) The substitute GF products taste like crap and are super expensive.
2) Health in general. We don't really need the empty carbs and obesity that grains provide.
We use google calendar to plan our meals and then generate shopping lists so let me work back in time. Last night was a Fing delicious salad made by my wife with arugula and bacon and onions and nuts and some dried fruit (sounds weird but delicious) and some homemade meatballs (because you can't buy store bought meatballs that are less than 50% additives and crap). Taco seasoned meat on salad with taco "stuff" (sour cream, guac, cheese) again freaking delicious (kinda like nachos but on lettuce OMG I could eat 10 pounds of that stuff delicious). Slow cooked pork with bbq sauce in chunks laying on top of what boils down to homemade coleslaw. Big breakfast (for dinner) which means sausage and bacons and scrambled eggs and omletes no potatos or bread products. Baked chicken with great pile of veggies as side dish. My wife made something like blackened catfish inspired some-kinda-fish (fish has shitloads of mercury, probably worse than rice, so ...). Before that was homemade chili with sour cream and chopped onions freaking delicious. Mole chiicken (OK I was lazy and used a jar sauce) and steamed broccoli so green it almost fluoresced. Pork chops with apples and shallots and a white wine reduction sauce. Marinated skirt steak taco flavor on salad (the other taco salad meal was ground beef, this was better but skirt steak is expensive and harder to prepare). Classic "Italian" or at least "Italian-American" medium spicy italian sausages cooked with halved grapes and a white wine reduction sauce freaking delicious and some vegetable I've forgotten. Classic stir fry a bunch of left over fresh veggies and some chopped up chicken no corn syrup sauce those are tasty but gross, no rice, sorta like fajita without the tortilla I guess. My wife did something homemade with lemons garlic and a chicken that sounds weird but was tasty enough. I made a mexican inspired chicken bake kinda like enchiladas without the tortillas it sounds disgusting and is probably about as genuine mexican as taco bell, but it tasted pretty good, essentially it was spicy baked chicken with salsa and guacamole. Loaded as hell baked chicken, if you're familiar with loaded baked potato this is a butterflied chicken breast with all the loaded ingredients piled on looks like dog puke but extremely tasty and easy to cook. A cassarole my wife made out of thinly sliced zucchini that was kinda lasagna inspired best just call it an italian spiced zucchini bake. Weird as hell yet tasty pizza chicken where you pound out a chicken breast flat like you would for some italian thing I'm forgetting the name of and then 99% bake it and then slop pizza toppings on top and broil until bubbly, another "wife surprise" that was delicious despite looking like dog barf. Stereotypical slowly grilled chicken with bbq sauce. Stereotypical caesar salad with yesterdays grilled chicken and no croutons of course. My wife often cooks this homemade gyro meat (the only way to have it without 50% fillers) and a cucumber heavy salad and its pretty delicious with a bit of seasoned feta cheese. Plain old beef stew slow cooked until fork tender. We slow cook most any meat in the winter and grill a lot in the summer of course, I love homemade vegetable and meat kabobs and steaks and brats and burgers and chickens its just not the season. Pizza burgers not the disgusting things in the freezer aisle but home cooked patties with pizza toppings piled on no bread no bun just slop on plate and eat totally delicious. Some homemade grain/bread free more or less salisbury steak inspired ... things on empty calorie mashed potatoes. I skipped a hell of a lot of side dishes and salads and repetition.
Anyway the above paragraph is what "real" gluten free families eat, none of it involves those disgusting fake bread products that are super expensive and very trendy hipster almost exclusively eaten by people with no medical need unlike my son.
You can eat delicious food that is naturally GF or you can eat GF-substitute food but the overlap is roughly 0% after more than a decade of experience. This rice shit might be arsenic toxic or might not, but I assure you it tastes like styrofoam at best. You want something GF go eat a Fing steak or some prime rib or a delicious fresh salad.
We do occasionally buy the shitty substitute products for social pressure reasons like if they're having cake and cookies at school or whatever.
An interesting side effect of no grains is my kids are somewhat thinner and stronger than their peers and not crazy sugar addicts. I could lose a few pounds but the lack of carb/sugar intake means my blood tests are always none the less awesome.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @06:17PM
The substitute GF products taste like crap and are super expensive.
So, don't eat substitutes? Eat other stuff that doesn't have wheat and related stuff? You know, there are lots of these things called vegetables (including potatoes, beans, tomatoes) and all of fruit. I don't understand why you are trying to substitute grain-like things when you can just not eat them.
things on empty calorie mashed potatoes
1. "empty calorie" is bullshit term.the closest you could apply it to would be something like sugar
2. potatoes are superfoods if anything
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/6-reasons-we-should-be-calling-potatoes-a-superfood_us_57be44b9e4b06384eb3e339c [huffingtonpost.com]
no, not fries (which gets its "empty calories" from oil) but real, boiled potatoes.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Wednesday February 15 2017, @03:45PM
One reason we should not call potatoes superfood - the glycemic index is very high and these types of foods contribute to diabetes. In all fairness, HuffPo does mention this, but it still makes the potato a terrible choice for a "super food." Very few, if any, habitual potato consumers eat them cold with vinegar. Potato chips don't count.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rivenaleem on Tuesday February 14 2017, @08:52PM
Regardless of the GF-centric nature of your family's diet, it is worth pointing out that the amount of thought that you put into what you eat already sets you apart from the vast majority of families in the world. That is the crucial first-step in any improved diet and being healthier.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Thursday February 16 2017, @03:20PM
It's also worth noting that a lot of "gluten intolerant" people are just faddy dieters or want to be special. In cases like your son's, where he's had a proper medical diagnosis and you've *all* had to live with that, the people who prepare the meals would generally eat the same thing as the coeliac patient for the sake of convenience so the "fake bread products" and their ilk that you mention tend to get ignored because you'd never eat that crap by choice! I might be wrong here, but doesn't concrete diagnosis of coeliac disease require a colonic biopsy?
Also, as noted by another response, what your family does in terms of thinking about what to eat is much more than a lot of families do!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday February 19 2017, @05:13PM
but doesn't concrete diagnosis of coeliac disease require a colonic biopsy?
Wrong end, stomach actually. General anesthesia and all that.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Sunday February 26 2017, @02:51PM
Ah, right. I was only in gastro for 6 months and it was a loooong time ago!