Food Arsenic Levels

[Harrison]

As I finished my "healthy" meal tonight, which included brown rice, I read the recent issue of Consumer Reports. Is no food safe now?!

Jeez Louise!

Arsenic in Your Food | Consumer Reports Investigation

[JEVE19]

When my daughter was in pastry school, I took the ServSafe class with her.
It was a really interesting class and it really opens your eyes as to food safety.
One thing that surprised me was the Chef asking us students what is one food that makes people sick the most? The answer...was rice!
It's hard to keep rice at the proper temperature, especially in restaurants because it gets mushy when over cooked and people complain, so they leave it at a temperature that easily breeds bacteria. What you catch from rice is called Bacillus cereus.
Check out the link below to read about it:

Bacillus cereus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

After taking this class, there were two foods that stood out to be very careful of.
One was rice, and the other...oysters. I only eat rice at home and I don't do oysters!

Oysters (from Wikipedia):

Oysters can contain harmful bacteria. Oysters are filter feeders and will naturally concentrate anything present in the surrounding water. Oysters from the Gulf Coast of the United States, for example, contain high bacterial loads of human pathogens in the warm months, most notably Vibrio vulnificus and Vibrio parahaemolyticus. In these cases, the main danger is for immuno-compromised individuals, who are unable to fight off infection and can succumb to septicemia, leading to death. Vibrio vulnificus is the most deadly seafood-borne pathogen, with a higher case-to-death ratio than even Salmonella enterica and Escherichia coli.

The chef teaching this class about food safety said there is no such thing as a 24 hour bug/flu.
He said this is food poisoning. It can take hours to 7 days depending on what kind of bacteria/virus you ate for the
symptoms to show themselves.

I learned a lot in this class and it is so important to wash your hands, and keep things at the proper temperature.
Some states have website where you can look up any restaurant and see their health code violations.
Google website that shows restaurant food violations and look for your state.

We looked up alot of places we ate at....some we don't visit any longer...LOL

Another great website is:
http://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/charts/mintemp.html

Sorry, got off topic a bit but this just reminded me of the class I took and how ill you can
become by things we never think about or knew about.

[Harrison]

Thanks Vicki, very helpful. And this information is actionable. Your last line explains the course of my research and documentary in the last five years...and the weird thing is that it relates to food safety too:

"...how ill you can become by things we never think about or knew about..."

[Lillyth]

Weird. I've been eating oyster all my life and have never gotten sick from them.

But back to the original topic, that is just crazy! So all the gluten free stuff that I am eating to keep from poisoning myself with gluten might be poisoning me with arsenic instead?! Greaaaaaaaaat...

Good think I don't much like grains!

[Harrison]

More food sources of arsenic -- in poultry! I hope and assume that organic poultry does NOT have this additive...but NOT sure. Even the organic chicken had low levels, perhaps that's environmental...

Study Finds an Increase in Arsenic Levels in Chicken
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: May 11, 2013

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University said they found levels of arsenic in chicken that exceeded amounts that occur naturally, and warned that they could lead to a small increase in the risk of cancer for consumers over a lifetime

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/he...cken.html?_r=0