Originally published February 8 2014
Vegan protein heavy metals results republished by Natural News in new, improved charts
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) It's been a whirlwind week of activity on heavy metals in rice protein. Over the last week, here's a summary of what happened:
• Natural News released exclusive breaking news on tungsten, cadmium and lead in rice protein products.
• Over a million grassroots readers and food advocates took action to raise their concerns to industry leaders.
• Garden of Life and SunWarrior, the two largest producers of rice protein products in the USA, responded to the concerns and sat down with Natural News to negotiate a solution in the best interests of consumers.
• A solution was quickly reached which would require companies to meet strict heavy metals limits by July 1, 2015. Natural News will be the "fact checker" on whether these companies meet these limits, but all their products can of course also be tested by any ICP-MS lab to check at any time.
• For the record, no money changed hands on this issue at all. This did not involve money or payoffs or extortion or anything of the kind. This was Natural News and its fans using authentic grassroots activism to achieve an important change.
• Most people are thrilled with the announcement. Many people realize how RARE it is that a publisher like Natural News actually works in the interests of the community with no profit motive whatsoever. There are a few readers who are not happy that we removed our original article announcement as part of this agreement. I'm sorry that not everyone is happy about how we were able to achieve this breakthrough heavy metals limit agreement for the industry, but I do not think it would have been possible without us making that concession. I hope you agree the long-term gains for everyone are worth me removing a couple of articles from the website. (If there's a better way you think we can handle this in the future, we're open to suggestions. I've given considerable thought to this issue and I still think there might be a better way to approach this in the future... possibly with petitions.)
• Natural News has now repackaged and re-released all the original heavy metals data in a new, improved format which you can see right now by clicking here.
• This new data format has the following improvements, and it will be used for all future releases of heavy metals data for other product categories:
- Heavy metals data are released for entire product groups so that each product in that group can be compared to other products in the group.
- Concentration data is present in ppm instead of ppb. Apparently the ppb was not as easy for some people to understand.
- Actual numerical data is replaced with visual bar charts which show the same data in a graphic form.
- Products in the group are sorted by their lead content, from low to high, so that the lowest lead content appears first on the list.
- We are no longer going to be showing MRF and MCC numbers for individual products, at least not for the immediate future. It turns out this just raised more questions than anything else. These concepts are so new to the public that most people were not able to easily grasp what they mean yet. So perhaps we can revisit this after some additional public education on the matter.
Watch out for tungsten
By the way, there is no question in my mind that tungsten is an emerging environmental contaminant which we have only seen in food products coming from China and Asia.
Tungsten in high concentrations should never be present in any food, in my opinion. This element is not a common composition of soil in such concentrations, and those who are arguing that tungsten is not a problem "because the FDA has no limits on it" are really just invoking distorted logic. The only reason the FDA, EPA and USDA haven't taken action on tungsten is because nobody has been aware of it yet. I happen to be the very first food science researcher to have ever documented tungsten in dietary products. So this has only been known across the industry for one week.
It will take time for other scientists to replicate this research and for government agencies to start taking a closer look at why tungsten is showing up in dietary products.
Thank you for your incredible support!
As always, I thank you for your amazing grassroots support during all this. Together, we made history this past week, and we have much more to achieve in the immediate future.
As I promised months ago, we have indeed changed the food industry forever. Even right now, everybody across the industry is scrambling to start testing their raw materials for heavy metals. Some online retailers are even announcing that they will now follow Natural News in conducting their own in-house metals testing.
Once again, we are pioneering the new course for the future of the natural products industry, setting new standards for product safety and total transparency with customers. In fact, did you know that everything we carry in the Natural News Store is tested for heavy metals? Every single thing! And my own limits are very, very strict (far more strict than the limits we agreed on for the rice protein companies).
That's why I reject most raw materials. It's also why our store product selection is so small. Most things simply don't meet my strict requirements, so I won't sell them!
My philosophy is that I won't sell anything that I wouldn't be absolutely thrilled to eat for myself. If I don't feel right about a product, we don't carry it, period.
I just wish everybody in the industry had the same ethics.
Nevertheless, we are of course going to be revealing, in the months ahead, exactly whose products are clean and whose products have much higher levels of heavy metals. You can look forward to that in the days and weeks ahead, right here on Natural News. Some of the future categories of heavy metals results we will be releasing include:
• Cacao products
• Liquid mineral supplements
• Grasses and greens powders (watch out for lead!)
Subscribe to my email list below to be alerted as these results are released.
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