Anyone switching from brown rice after Consumer reports arsenic study?

[Barbara H]

Has anyone read any solid information on whether rinsing or soaking lowers arsenic levels?

[nmoira]

Has anyone read any solid information on whether rinsing or soaking lowers arsenic levels?

 

IIRC rinsing by itself removes 5 to 10% of the arsenic.

[Sevilla]

I stay awake at night because I'm angry and stressed. My pantry is filled with rice.

 

Rice flour, rice pasta, rice cereal, rice granola, whole grain rice, rice baking mixes are things we eat daily. Yesterday we had pancakes...rice. For lunch we had chicken noodle soup....rice. I made bread.....rice. All of my gluten replacement is rice based.

 

I'd love to switch to quinoa. Can't.

 

My dh says I need to let this go, and just continue on as we have been and not think about arsenic in rice. How is that it doesn't even cross his mind? He says it's not even on his radar for being concerned about. I can't even sleep.

 

I guess I'm going to try switching the family to a paleo diet. The problem with that is the nut allergy in my kid.

Can you still do coconut? That helps a lot with being paleo. I'd also recommend the cookbook Practical Paleo as its very easy to do nut-free - every recipe has no nut substitutions and suggestions. Can you do sesame/tahini?

[Mom0012]

No, I'm not changing my rice buying or eating habits.

Same here. We eat a lot of rice and my kids use rice milk because of allergies. When I first read the report, I tried to switch to coconut milk, which my kids hated, and cut back on rice. In the end, after reading more about the situation, I was left with the impression that it is not new for rice to contain arsenic and that it was naturally occurring and I decided It was another alarmist report. I mean, what can we eat that is okay? I know there was something issued about not eating chicken more than "x" times a week because of the arsenic. Then I found out grilling caused the food to contain carcinogens. We all know about fish containing mercury and red meat being bad for you.

 

Honestly, I've chosen to feed my kids the best I can with mostly whole foods and not worry about it.

[PeterPan]

http://www.lundberg.com/info/Arsenic/arsenic-in-food-the-science.aspx  Lundberg has multiple pages on their site about this.  It does seem like it's getting blown out of proportion.  Apparently you'd have to eat 650 servings of rice a day to approach the internationally suggested limits on arsenic, and most of us PROBABLY aren't doing that.  It is an issue in some dog foods, because you have an animal eating a large amount of it every day for a huge percentage of his diet.  That makes sense to me.  But when you're talking just a little here or there, you eat your salad, it chelates out.

 

You can find creepy things in EVERYTHING you eat.  Maybe Consumer Reports should harp on contaminants in something people actually use a lot of, like the aluminum in cake mixes, baking powder (unless you are careful and buy the kind without), pickles, your deoderant, OTC medications... 

 

I think I'll go eat my rice cakes now.  ;)

[Murphy101]

Well I'm doing whole30, so no rice for me anyways and I stopped buying baby food for my babies after the second baby was born, so no worry about doubling the cancer risk of my baby by feeding them baby cereals. (As per the article.)

 

However, the brand of white rice we buy in bulk from Sams isn't listed as tested and the family only has it about twice a week. Though I bet our servings are much bigger than listed.

 

And I know all my grand nieces and nephews are fed quite a bit of infant rice cereal usually mixed with formula and juices. So if done multiple times a day, as is very common, that's quite the arsenic load going into a developing baby brain.

 

I sent the info to them. They can brush me off as the luny old aunt. That's fine. But at least they know to make a decision.