Everything is Toxic!

I'm never surprised when I read an alarmist headline reporting that some new dangerous chemical has been found in our food supply.  Most of the time these headlines are purely click-bait, with the article itself actually playing down the cause for alarm.  Nevertheless, these headlines are enough to fuel chemophobes and orthorexics alike, so I thought it might be nice to write a quick post on the so-called poisons in our food.

My attention was recently brought to this subject from an article posted at Reason.com.  The gist of the story was that a recent study found trace amounts of glyphosate - the herbicide better known as RoundUp - in some popular cereals and other foods.  From the article:

So a new set of environmentalist pit bulls calling themselves the Alliance for Natural Health USA is reporting that they tested a bunch of commercial brands of cereals, some eggs, bagels, and coffee creamers. What horrors did they uncover? Take corn flakes, for example. AHA-USA reports that the glyphosate was detected at less 75 ppb which even they acknowledge is 66 times lower than the EPA's safety threshold of 5,000 ppb. Their highest detection was for an instant oat meal which was 22 times lower than the EPA's safety threshold for oats 30,000 ppb. The AHA-USA did manage to find organic cage free eggs in which glyphosate residues were double to triple the EPA's very low threshold of 50 ppb.

This particular article reminded me of another unwarranted scare I had to deal with a few years ago when I still worked at GNC.  One day I started receiving a large influx of customers wanting to return their protein powders because a recently published consumer report wrote that they contained 'potentially dangerous' levels of heavy metals.  I was fortunate enough to have a customer bring me a printed copy of the actual article in question.  As usual, the headlines totally outweighed the actual cause for concern.  In most of the cases, the actual levels of heavy metal contamination were below the threshold of the FDAs allowable amount.  In fact, all of the protein powders in question were within safe limits when used properly.  I find it necessary to emphasize 'when used properly', because the levels of heavy metals listed throughout the consumer report were all based on 3 servings of protein powder.  Their only justification for using such a high dose was that, "Nutritionists and trainers say they commonly see people who consume three servings a day."

Shoddy research methods aside, articles like these are not hard to produce, as there is an abundance of potentially toxic contaminants in all of our food supply.  In fact, the very food itself can sometimes be toxic as well.  The reason is simple: Toxicity is based on dosage.  All chemicals have a level at which consumption can be harmful or even life-threatening.  This includes all the conventionally accepted 'healthy' foods, from organics to all-naturals to non-GMO to conventional.  Over-consumption of anything can have negative consequences, and moderation and variety should always be a staple of a balanced diet.

The good news is that all chemicals also have a safe level for consumption - even scary sounding ones like cyanide, arsenic, and yes, even glyphosate.  Running any kind of headline claiming that certain scary sounding chemicals may be in our food, only to eventually admit that the chemicals in question pose no risk to the average consumer is absolutely irresponsible. It only continues to feed in to the culture of misinformation and pseudoscience that is already far too prevalent in the areas of health and nutrition.  One can only cry wolf so many times before the general population stops listening, and may even eventuslly ignore a real cause for alarm.