The US poultry
industry has a disturbing habit of feeding arsenic to chickens. Arsenic, it turns out, helps control a common bug that infects chicken meat, and also gives
chicken flesh a pink hue, which the industry thinks consumers want. Is all that arsenic making it into our food supply? It appears to be doing so both in
chicken meat and in, of all things, rice. In a just released report, Consumer Reports says it found significant levels of arsenic in a variety of
US rice products including in brown rice and organic rice, and in rice-based kids' products like cereal and even baby formula.
Driving the point home, CR's analysis of a major population study found that people who consume a serving of rice get a 44 percent spike in the
arsenic level in their urine.
Rice is particularly effective at picking up arsenic from soil, CR reports, "in part because it is one of the only major crops grown in
water-flooded conditions, which allow arsenic to be more easily taken up by its roots and stored in the grains."
industry has a disturbing habit of feeding arsenic to chickens. Arsenic, it turns out, helps control a common bug that infects chicken meat, and also gives
chicken flesh a pink hue, which the industry thinks consumers want. Is all that arsenic making it into our food supply? It appears to be doing so both in
chicken meat and in, of all things, rice. In a just released report, Consumer Reports says it found significant levels of arsenic in a variety of
US rice products including in brown rice and organic rice, and in rice-based kids' products like cereal and even baby formula.
Driving the point home, CR's analysis of a major population study found that people who consume a serving of rice get a 44 percent spike in the
arsenic level in their urine.
Rice is particularly effective at picking up arsenic from soil, CR reports, "in part because it is one of the only major crops grown in
water-flooded conditions, which allow arsenic to be more easily taken up by its roots and stored in the grains."