How safe is our food? Recent studies have
shown that in fact, food that is provided for us by various brands on store
shelves may not be as safe as we believe. It has recently become evident that
there are dangerously high levels of arsenic in rice and rice products.
One of the world
leading food safety experts ‘Andy Meharg’ describes the evidence as “shocking” as
arsenic is one of the most toxic poisons and high level exposure over time can
lead to cancer and heart disease. This
naturally occurring inorganic arsenic is controlled in the water we drink but
those standards do not apply in our food.
Morland Snaders
investigates further into this through a channel 4 dispatches Documentary
‘Rice: How Safe is our Food’. He visits Bangladesh, where most of the people
eat rice at least 2-3 times every day and it is a major part of the diet in
their population. Doctor Fariba Masud currently treats around 101 asenic
patients per year in her clinic in Bangladesh, the patients possess dark spots
on their hands and feet and suffer severe swollen limbs which become infected
easily. It is believed that 1 in 5 deaths in Bangladesh are associated with
arsenic.
Doctor Diane Benford
who works at the UK Food standard agency explains that new regulations are
currently being negotiated to reduce the arsenic products sold in our
superarkets. The suspected new restrictions could be something up to 100 parts
per billion in products for children and 200 parts per billion for adults,
which is believed by Andy Meharg to still be far too high particularly for
children as he would say about 50 parts per billion for children. Doctor
Benford strictly states that once the new limits are created, any product which
exceed them will be “withdrawn from sale”
One of the main
cause of concern with this issue is the high amount of young children who
currently eat/drink rice products. Many parents are still unaware that rice
milk can be dangerous to young children and many still use it for weaning and
for children who are lactose-intolerant as an alternative to powder milk. Some
brands such as ‘Tesco’ until recently, did not advertise on their rice milk
labels that it is not suitable for young children.
Professor Erik
Millstone who is based at ‘The University of Sussex’ and who is in charge of
making sure that all of our food is safe demands that we need to “PUT CONSUMERS
FIRST!” by monitoring the levels of arsenic more closely in all rice and rice
products. He also exclaims that “when higher standards are imposed, companies
are able to make the changes’ which he believes are essential, particularly for
young children who are the most vulnerable.
In the USA it is
belived that high levels of arsenic can be linked to a person’s IQ. Professor Gail Wasserman who works at
Columbia University, agrees with this link and says that the findings that they
have found are “consistent with the rest of the world”. A girl named Carrington
Brennan is aware that for many years she was was drinking contaminated water
which contained high levels of arsenic and now she sruggles with her memory and
has a low IQ.
In the lab, many
scientists tested the levels of arsenic in different types of rice. It was
found that basmati rice had the lowest levels of arsenic of 40 parts per
billion but scarily the French red rice contains an astounding 310 parts per
billion which exceeds the recommended amount currently debated for our daily
intake. Taking into account all of this evidence from various researchers, it
could be said that this is a very important issue and it needs to be addressed
immediately. At home rinsing rice and using basmati rice will help keep the
arsenic levels at its lowest, however, we need to rely on the big brands to
make sure that rice and all of our food is safe. (Sanders,2014)
Reference
List
·
Sanders, M (2014) ‘Dispatches’ Rice: How Safe Is Our Food [Online] Available at: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/on-demand
(Accessed 10 November 2014)
