Spices don't kill people. People kill people.
How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
11–20 of 200 posts
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds like a one-off incident that was caught by testing. Given increased awareness of the issue, it seems unlikely that any turmeric you buy in the US today would be contaminated.
Rather a large number of things are contaminated with heavy metals, because the food industry tends not to test for them and there's little regulation: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb... ( "Your Herbs and Spices Might Contain Arsenic, Cadmium, and Lead: CR tested 126 products from McCormick, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and other popular brands. Almost a third had heavy metal levels high en…
> ”Rather a large number of things are contaminated with heavy metals”
Sure, but usually it’s because products are grown in contaminated soil and “naturally” pick up traces from their environment. Pretty much all rice contains arsenic, for example, but the concentration varies significantly depending on where it’s grown and how it’s processed.
The turmeric problem is different because lead has been deliberately added during processing, and it’s been found in relatively huge quantities - as much as 2-10% by weight in some cases!
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#13Title is misleading: it's lead chromate (that producers mix into turmeric power) that does the killing, not turmeric.
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#14Can someone archive it?
fyi you can archive it, too. Just go to archive.is, paste in the link, and hit save.
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds like a one-off incident that was caught by testing. Given increased awareness of the issue, it seems unlikely that any turmeric you buy in the US today would be contaminated.
Rather a large number of things are contaminated with heavy metals, because the food industry tends not to test for them and there's little regulation: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb... ( "Your Herbs and Spices Might Contain Arsenic, Cadmium, and Lead: CR tested 126 products from McCormick, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and other popular brands. Almost a third had heavy metal levels high en…
Yeah this is kinda "well known" in the protein powder circles:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-hidden-da....
(essentially condensing down milk products that don't have a large % of heavy metals but this gets condensed down and the heavy metals are more likely to stay behind - 200 liters of milk to make 1kg of protein powder).
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rather a large number of things are contaminated with heavy metals, because the food industry tends not to test for them and there's little regulation: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb... ( "Your Herbs and Spices Might Contain Arsenic, Cadmium, and Lead: CR tested 126 products from McCormick, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and other popular brands. Almost a third had heavy metal levels high en…
> ”Rather a large number of things are contaminated with heavy metals” Sure, but usually it’s because products are grown in contaminated soil and “naturally” pick up traces from their environment. Pretty much all rice contains arsenic, for example, but the concentration varies significantly depending on where it’s grown and how it’s processed. The turmeric problem is different because lead has been deliberately added…
The Consumer Reports spice article I linked looks at turmeric too and found products on shelves, in 2021, in the highest category of concern.
I'm not convinced that these (turmeric with lead chromate pigment) are rare, one-off incidents. I think this "this is a South Asian problem" might be an American problem, too, to a lesser degree: we just don't have enough visibility and testing to notice it.
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds like a one-off incident that was caught by testing. Given increased awareness of the issue, it seems unlikely that any turmeric you buy in the US today would be contaminated.
Rather a large number of things are contaminated with heavy metals, because the food industry tends not to test for them and there's little regulation: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb... ( "Your Herbs and Spices Might Contain Arsenic, Cadmium, and Lead: CR tested 126 products from McCormick, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and other popular brands. Almost a third had heavy metal levels high en…
I thought XRF guns could go down to the ppb range? Why doesn't every food manufacturer test every batch?
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#18Spices don't kill people. People kill people.
By contaminating spices on purpose apparently
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#19It's not just India or Bangladesh. Lots of brands sold in the US are tainted with lead: https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2016/08/six-brands-of-turmeri... There are tests you can do at home, like leaving the powder in water and seeing if it leaves a yellow streak separate to the powder.
A public lab in Germany found 0.13-1.22 mg/kg lead in turmeric in 2020. The legal limit for vegetables is 0.1 mg/kg, 3 mg/kg for nutritional supplements; there is (or was, in 2020) no legal limit for spices. At 1 tsp/day, they don't expect any immediate health impact from turmeric alone, but you should be exposed to as little lead as possible.
https://www.ua-bw.de/pub/beitrag.asp?subid=2&Thema_ID=2&ID=3...
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#20> Yet adulterated turmeric looks like a major culprit almost everywhere, chiefly owing to poor practice in India, which produces 75% of the spice.
It’s really shocking to me that in the year 2023 people could be intentionally adding lead to food products at this scale. Is this mainly due to greed and corruption? Ignorance? Distrust of modern medicine and health advice?
I suppose it’s similar to the problem of people dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but the effects of poisoning people with lead just feel so much more direct and malicious.