Home
Newsletter
Events
Blogs
Reports
Graphics
RSS
About Us
Support
Write for Us
Media Info
Advertising Info

Rice protein and heavy metals: Petition effort a huge success for safer products with less lead, cadmium, mercury and tungsten

Wednesday, April 16, 2014
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: rice protein, heavy metals petition, organic superfoods

Rice protein

(NaturalNews) I can now report to you the extraordinary results of our efforts to drastically reduce heavy metals concentrations in rice protein products sold across North America. In a nutshell, we have now received confirmation from nearly every significant manufacturer in the industry that they have agreed to the voluntary heavy metals limits Natural News defined, and a monumental shift is already under way across the industry to improve sourcing of raw materials and / or reformulate products to use lower-metals ingredients.

As background for this story, recall that I discovered significant levels of lead, cadmium and even the heavy metal tungsten in many rice protein superfoods, including certified organic products. Tungsten levels were detected at over 10 ppm, in fact, and lead levels were found at over 500 ppb.

In the public interest, I published these figures and called on rice protein manufacturers to commit to reducing the levels of lead, cadmium, mercury and tungsten in their products. The proposed new limits were:

Lead limit: .25 ppm
Tungsten limit: .05 ppm
Cadmium limit: 1 ppm
Mercury limit: .05 ppm

Thousands of Natural News readers joined the petition effort. Many of the top manufacturers responded almost immediately in a positive, professional and responsible manner: companies like Garden of Life, SunWarrior, Vega, and Boku immediately said YES to meeting the new limits by the target date of July, 2015.

In the following weeks, we received even more YES answers from a number of companies, including:

- Nutribiotic
- Perfect Fit
- Healthforce
- Sprout Living
- Nutribody
- Living Fuel
- Organic Food Bar

In fact, so far the only company we have not yet received a "yes" from is Jarrow Formulas. Jarrow seems to be conducting a significant amount of due diligence to determine whether they can meet the limits, and they have asked us for more time before they make a decision. This has gone on for several weeks now, and while I can appreciate their effort to do their homework, I can't hold the story any longer. So Jarrow Formulas currently stands in the "maybe" category, with my hope that they will join the effort at some later date (considering they are the only significant manufacturer who has so far not joined the effort).

I personally want to thank all those companies that made the effort to respond to these customer concerns and commit to the voluntary heavy metals limits described here. This is a positive step forward for the entire industry, and it helps improve customer trust across all natural health products.

A breakthrough heavy metals standard for public health and product safety

So the good news is that your support of our efforts -- and your signing and sharing our heavy metals petition -- has been an extraordinary success, achieving the first voluntary heavy metals limit ever announced in the natural products industry.

There's also good news in the fact that many manufacturers have been actively reformulating their products and seeking cleaner sources of rice protein. We have already seen positive developments in this direction, and we expect to see substantially lower levels of heavy metals present in retail rice proteins over the next year or so.

Natural News will continue to conduct off-the-shelf testing of the heavy metals content of rice protein products to determine whether the situation is improving. We do this at our own cost, and we never accept money from outside companies for testing their products. The Natural News Forensic Food Lab is also in the process of achieving ISO 17025 certification / accreditation. ISO 17025 is "the global recognized standard that was developed specifically for testing and calibration laboratories" according to Standards.org.

My ongoing concerns with rice protein

That's the good news, then. On the other side of the coin, there are still issues with rice protein that are worth noting:

• Nearly all the rice protein used in superfoods and supplements sold in North America still comes from China and other Asian nations. To my knowledge, no company offering these products has yet been able to provide its customers an accurate "country of origin" statement for its rice protein materials.

• To my knowledge, there is not yet a rice protein available in the marketplace made from rice grown in the USA. This continues to baffle me, as there is very clean rice grown in California, Texas and Louisiana. The fact that no one has jumped on the huge opportunity to produce made-in-USA rice protein seems odd. Perhaps domestic labor costs are simply too high to make such products economically feasible.

• Many of the manufacturers using this rice protein material describe their material as "sprouted" or "raw." These terms are not regulated by the FDA. My investigation so far into the production process of rice protein leads me to believe this rice is not "sprouted" by a reasonable definition of the word. No one using this material, for example, has been able to produce pictures of the very large sprouting facilities which would be necessary to support the extremely high volumes of this material being sold and consumed. I still have serious doubts about the "sprouted" claim on this material, and I specifically would ask that someone growing this material post a video showing where and how this material is sprouted in the enormous quantities being consumed. This area warrants more investigation...

• Lead, cadmium and tungsten are still present in every rice protein product we've tested so far, at concentrations that consistently exceed those found in pea protein, hemp protein, whey protein or any other protein source we've tested. While I expect this situation to steadily improve, there is without question still lead, cadmium and tungsten in rice protein products sold on store shelves right now at retailers like Whole Foods and Amazon.com. To my knowledge, none of these retailer test the products they carry for heavy metals. The Natural News Store is the only retailer in the world (and on the internet) that tests everything it sells for heavy metals. (Most retailers never do this because it is not required by law. Heavy metals testing is only required by manufacturers of products, not resellers of them.)

The bottom line? Keep reading Natural News for updates over the next 15 months about heavy metals test results for off-the-shelf protein products. Nobody is testing more off-the-shelf foods, superfood and nutritional supplements for heavy metals than Natural News.

Receive Our Free Email Newsletter

Get independent news alerts on natural cures, food lab tests, cannabis medicine, science, robotics, drones, privacy and more.




About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation.

Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and Native American Indians. He's also of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution.

Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journal Natural Science Journal, the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books.

In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released over a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

comments powered by Disqus
Most Viewed Articles



Natural News Wire (Sponsored Content)

Science.News
Science News & Studies
Medicine.News
Medicine News and Information
Food.News
Food News & Studies
Health.News
Health News & Studies
Herbs.News
Herbs News & Information
Pollution.News
Pollution News & Studies
Cancer.News
Cancer News & Studies
Climate.News
Climate News & Studies
Survival.News
Survival News & Information
Gear.News
Gear News & Information
Glitch.News
News covering technology, stocks, hackers, and more