BEWARE ARSENIC: Missouri, Texas, Lousianna Brown Rice

[presence]

Just avoid the rice

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505269_1...rompt-concern/

"When there was cotton there they had to treat the cotton with arsenic pesticides to control the bowl weevil," he said. "Now a century later, that arsenic is still in the soil, the rice is very effective at pulling it out of the soil in and it concentrates in the rice."
[]
Arsenic causes lung, skin and bladder cancer, Landrigan said. He added that arsenic is also very harmful to babies' brain development. If a baby is exposed to arsenic in the womb because the mother is eating arsenic or if a baby ingests arsenic in the first months of life in cereal, rice milk or other food, the arsenic could interfere with brain development, reduce the child's intelligence, and cause behavioral problems.
[]
He added brown rice often contains more arsenic than white rice because it contains the plant's shells.

"Stay with California rice, stay with Asian rice or when in doubt go with barley, go with oatmeal,"

I recently picked up 50lbs of Lundberg California Organic Brown Rice. To each his own.

also:

Consumer Reports found significant levels of arsenic in apple juice earlier this year

For what its worth... non-organic peanuts are grown in rotation with cotton. Do the math. Yum.

reduce the child's intelligence, and cause behavioral problems.

...but there's always ritalin!

[acptulsa]

I recently picked up 50lbs of Lundberg California Organic Brown Rice. To each his own.

Unfortunately, crops can be grown in arsenic-laced soil and still get the 'organic' label. That pertains to how it's grown, not where.

[LibertyEagle]

Isn't it true that brown rice does not keep as long as white rice?

[Carlybee]

Lucky for me I don't care for rice much

[presence]

Isn't it true that brown rice does not keep as long as white rice?

Yes. There are oils in the husks which contain all the nutrients, but go rancid. Same paradigm w/ white vs whole wheat flour. Industry takes the turn it white and fortify route to preserve grains. In cool dry storage, hermetically sealed... (basement in corny kegs) brown rice has never done me wrong up to a year and half old.

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?t...spice&dbid=128

The process that produces brown rice removes only the outermost layer, the hull, of the rice kernel and is the least damaging to its nutritional value. The complete milling and polishing that converts brown rice into white rice destroys 67% of the vitamin B3, 80% of the vitamin B1, 90% of the vitamin B6, half of the manganese, half of the phosphorus, 60% of the iron, and all of the dietary fiber and essential fatty acids. Fully milled and polished white rice is required to be "enriched" with vitamins B1, B3 and iron.
[]
If purchasing brown rice in a packaged container, check to see if there is a "use-by" date on the package since brown rice, owing to its natural oils, has the potential to become rancid if kept too long.

[presence]

Unfortunately, crops can be grown in arsenic-laced soil and still get the 'organic' label. That pertains to how it's grown, not where.

At one point during the reign of King Cotton, farmers in the south central United States controlled boll weevils with arsenic-based pesticides, and residual arsenic still contaminates the soil. Today, rice paddies cover fields where cotton once grew, and a large market basket survey published in the 1 April 2007 issue of Environmental Science & Technology now shows that rice grown in this area contains, on average, 1.76 times more arsenic than rice grown in California.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892142/

highest levels of inorganic arsenic were in white rice grown in Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Texas — which collectively produce about three-quarters of the nation’s white-rice supply.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...a4a_story.html

I recently picked up 50lbs of Lundberg California Organic Brown Rice.

[Acala]

White rice is actually healthier than brown. The toxins and anti-nutrients that ALL grain produces in one form or another is concentrated in the germ and hull of rice. Do as most Asians do - eat white rice. Or skip the rice altogether.

[LibertyEagle]

Yes. There are oils in the husks which contain all the nutrients, but go rancid. Same paradigm w/ white vs whole wheat flour. Industry takes the turn it white and fortify route to preserve grains. In cool dry storage, hermetically sealed... (basement in corny kegs) brown rice has never done me wrong up to a year and half old.

Yeah, but that isn't very long. 50 lbs. of rice is a lot to eat in a year. Unless that is about all you have to eat, of course.

[donnay]

Hmm...the thing I question is how much arsenic would one get from a serving a brown rice? This is where the rubber meets the road. Because organic and inorganic arsenic is definitely different and key to know and understand. Believe it or not, we should have traces of plant derived arsenic, lead and mercury daily in our diets.

Arsenic (As) is an essential element, essential for general growth and for the maintenance of fibrous and bone tissue. Arsenic shares with selenium the unfortunate particularity to be an essential element, beneficial at low concentration and toxic above a certain level. Our food provides an intake of about 20-70 micrograms of arsenic per day. Arsenic toxicity arises for a continual intake of more than 200 micrograms per day (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry - 1989).

Arsenic, for example, helps facilitate neonatal growth and plays a part in metabolizing selenium, an element proven to be crucial to the health of the heart muscle. In a metallic form, on the other hand, arsenic can be deadly. In fact, it is 65 times more toxic than organically bound arsenic.

Arsenic

Arsenic (As) is an essential element, crucial for general growth and for the maintenance of fibrous tissue. As shares with selenium (Se) the particularity to be an essential element, beneficial at low concentration and toxic above a certain level.

One serving of Plant Derived Minerals contains 0.15 micrograms of Arsenic.

Table 3 present the arsenic content of one serving of 100 g. edible portion of some foods compared to the As content of one serving of Plant Derived Minerals. The food data is from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)


Sources:
http://www.longevinst.org/nlt/heavymetals.html
http://www.supremefulvic.com/documen...inorganic.html

[presence]

Yeah, but that isn't very long. 50 lbs. of rice is a lot to eat in a year. Unless that is about all you have to eat, of course.

Really? Family of 3 we roll through about 50lb in 6-8 months. We're a rice and potatoes for starches kind of family though; I'm gluten intolerant.

Annual per capita rice consumption in the US is about 25-30lb. In some Asian countries its as high as a pound a day per person.

in kg:

http://irri.org/index.php?option=com...=12109&lang=en

1. Brunei Darussalam: 245
2. Viet Nam: 166
3. Lao People's Democratic Republic: 163
4. Bangladesh: 160
5. Myanmar: 157
6. Cambodia: 152
7. Philippines: 129
8. Indonesia: 125
9. Thailand: 103
10. Madagascar: 102

[presence]

Hmm...the thing I question is how much arsenic would one get from a serving a brown rice?

You don't pee it all out though. Bio-accumulation occurs with inorganic heavy metals.

Very low concentrations of a bioaccumulative substance in water can result in markedly higher concentrations in the tissue

http://www.saferchemicals.org/resour...cals/pbts.html

The better question is

"how much rice does the average child eat age 0-18 years" x "how much arsenic would one get from a serving" - how much gets peed out.

Both studies show relatively similar levels of arsenic in rice. The FDA's analysis showed average levels of 3.5 to 6.7 micrograms of inorganic arsenic per serving, while Consumer Reports found levels up to 8.7 micrograms. The FDA released 200 samples, while Consumer Reports tested 223.

It is almost impossible to say how dangerous these levels are without a benchmark from the federal government. Consumer Reports uses New Jersey's drinking water standard — a maximum of 5 micrograms in a liter of water — as comparison because it is one of the strictest in the country.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireSto...4#.UFnpx1bQRXQ

[presence]

White rice is actually healthier than brown. The toxins and anti-nutrients that ALL grain produces in one form or another is concentrated in the germ and hull of rice. Do as most Asians do - eat white rice. Or skip the rice altogether.

The complete milling and polishing that converts brown rice into white rice destroys 67% of the vitamin B3, 80% of the vitamin B1, 90% of the vitamin B6, half of the manganese, half of the phosphorus, 60% of the iron, and all of the dietary fiber and essential fatty acids. Fully milled and polished white rice is required to be "enriched" with vitamins B1, B3 and iron.

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?t...spice&dbid=128

I was of the impression that white rice like white flour became the commodity of the city people because it was easier to distribute. Then the "rural poor" were left with unrefined products so these "unrefined/cheap" products became culturally associated with the stigma of "poor people", when in fact... to eat properly preserved and prepared brown rice is actually more nutritious.






Give me a link

[trey4sports]

No starch for me

[Acala]

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?t...spice&dbid=128

I was of the impression that white rice like white flour became the commodity of the city people because it was easier to distribute. Then the "rural poor" were left with unrefined products so these "unrefined/cheap" products became culturally associated with the stigma of "poor people", when in fact... to eat properly preserved and prepared brown rice is actually more nutritious.






Give me a link

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/is-ri...#axzz26wBBEgUB

[oyarde]

Just make sure nobody you know is feeding with rice baby food , go with some oats instead.

[enhanced_deficit]

At one point during the reign of King Cotton, farmers in the south central United States controlled boll weevils with arsenic-based pesticides, and residual arsenic still contaminates the soil. Today, rice paddies cover fields where cotton once grew, and a large market basket survey published in the 1 April 2007 issue of Environmental Science & Technology now shows that rice grown in this area contains, on average, 1.76 times more arsenic than rice grown in California.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892142/

highest levels of inorganic arsenic were in white rice grown in Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Texas — which collectively produce about three-quarters of the nation’s white-rice supply.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...a4a_story.html

Recently came across similar info while comparing brown vs white rice.

This consumer reports article is dated and further industrialization since then could have changed things but less industralized regions away from sources of pollution tend to have least amount of arsenic and white rice tends to have less arsenic than brown rice. Cooking method (cooking rice like pasta by draining water after boil) apparently can also mitigate some of the health risk impact.

Brown basmati from California, India, or Pakistan is the best choice; it has about a third less inorganic arsenic than other brown rices. Rice that's grown organically takes up arsenic the same way conventional rice does, so don't rely on organic to have less arsenic.
consumerreports.org › magazine › 2015/01

[donnay]

Healthful Rice: Report Shows Rice Least Contaminated with Arsenic

by Paul Fassa
Posted on September 5, 2014
Updated on February 17, 2021



Rice isn’t a terrible food, but it’s important to avoid questionable GMO rice rejected by China and contaminating U.S. crop fields. And it’s really important to avoid rice that’s contaminated heavily with arsenic. There have been reports of high arsenic content in rices grown in USA regions where cotton used to be grown and arsenic laced pesticides have seeped into that soil used for growing rice. Rice from China has cadmium issues as well.

According to Consumer Reports, it appears that organic basmati white rice from India, sold at Target and Trader Joe’s, has the lowest levels of arsenic they tested, and white rice generally has less arsenic than brown rice. The results are at the bottom of this article.

But there’s an even better, safer type of basmati (long-grain) white rice that is imported from India and recommended by Ayurvedic doctors as the most digestible and nutritious type of white rice. It’s known as parboiled basmati rice.

It’s not boiled or precooked the way we normally think. Parboiling rice is a method of removing the bran from rice while retaining most of the nutrients lost with other bran removal processes. Parboiled rice contains more fiber, magnesium, calcium, potassium, vitamin B3 (niacin) and vitamin B6 than regular white rice. So it’s close to brown rice nutritionally but much easier to digest.

Parboiled rice is harder to find than other organic basmati white rice because it’s sold in international Asian or Indian specialty food stores. But parboiled basmati white rice can also be purchased online.

Explaining Parboiled Rice
Here’s an excerpt from the SFGate online magazine health section:

“Unlike brown and white rice, the process [of bran removal] for parboiled rice begins before the hull is removed. The complete grain of rice is soaked, steamed and dried, then the hull is removed to make parboiled rice.

The steaming enables the rice to absorb nutrients and changes the starch so that it cooks into a firmer, less sticky dish of rice than regular white rice. The steaming does not precook the rice, so it still takes about 20 minutes to prepare.” [Emphasis added]

Cooking Details
The first step is to thoroughly rinse the rice’s protective mineral oil coating by running strong-pressured water through the rice in a strainer, which you shake rapidly from side to side. When the water turns clear, the rice is clean.

For cooking, use water purified with a combination of both carbon filter and reverse osmosis processing. Most health food stores and even regular supermarkets have machines that process tap water with that purifying combination for 25 to 50 cents per gallon.

All you’d need for steaming your rice is a heavy, medium-sized stainless steel, ceramic, or Pyrex glass pot with a heavy lid that seals well. Rice cookers are more suitable for steaming larger portions of rice to feed a banquet or party, and they should be aluminum free. Stove-top cooking parboiled basmati white rice is the same as cooking other white rices. Use slightly less than a two to one ratio of water (with a pinch of sea salt) to rice. When it comes to a boil, place the tightly sealing heavy lid onto the pot and bring the heat down to low.

Cook for 20 to 30 minutes without lifting the lid and releasing the steam (if you can resist). It should be done by then. If there’s still any water showing, continue for a few minutes more. Different brand/sources vary with their cooking time.

Enjoy a tasty, more nutritious, relatively arsenic-free rice any way you’d like.



Additional Sources:
MarketWatch

https://naturalsociety.com/get-away-...ice-healthily/

[oyarde]

I have a rice crispy about once a year but mostly I pick around the brown fried rice while eating my sweet n sour shrimp and ribs at the chinese place .

[The Northbreather]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to donnay again.