A coffee pot is not a coffee percolator. Also, are arsenic levels dangerously high in rice sold in America? Or is it simply that we should be alarmed because it’s bad?
Not sure if it is one of those “it’s bad because we can detect it” cases or if it really is harmful at those low levels… Folks in Asia have been eating it for ages and are usually cited as having a much lower cancer rate than the “West”.
Arsenic is also commonly found in soils in New England, especially where fields meet the hillsides, as that was traditionally where people planted their apple orchards. Arsenic was the known-to-work fungicide back in the day, used for dusting the crop and making sure everybody had apple pie all winter long. The levels are so low that it’s inconsequential now. Usually. Occasionally you hear about someone with arsenic in their well, but that’s not typically from old apple orchards leaching arsenic into the aquifer. That’s usually some other source.
Great, a fresh new health-food horror. Let’s just become breatharianists, shall we?
Rice that tastes like coffee? Ewwwwwwwwwwwww
Yeah, the inorganic arsenic levels in some types of rice sold in the US (and coming from the US) are high enough that kids shouldn’t eat it more than once a week at most. It’s much higher in rice from certain areas than others, even in the US - Southern states (e.g. Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas) are the worst, presumably because it’s being grown where they used to grow cotton (and heavily used arsenic as a pesticide). Brown rice is worse than white rice. The rice they sell at Whole Foods is, ironically, worse than other brands. Basmati seems better than other varieties. Californian and South Asian rice is better. Etc.
Texas white rice seems to be among the worst in the US and Cali Basmati is the best when it comes to arsenic content.
I’ll take the cancer over weird, mushy rice. You can pry my Zojirushi out of my cold dead hands.
I’m eating rice right now, and typing on Boing Boing!
I’m lazy. I’ll wait for the Keurig rice pods.
Rice is only good if the cooker burns it on the bottom 8(
Okoge! I only know the term in Japanese because of the film of the same name, which uses its slang definition.
We built this city on Rice a Roni.
Its a US thing, Arsenic was used as a pesticide in some southern states where rice is grown today, hence there is much more arsenic in the rice grown in some locations.
As for the scare and how significant this is, IDK.
You mean makes it a slightly brown hue on the very bottom layer? My cooker does that. I love my cooker.
I too, love your cooker.
Take heart, Texans: I bet if there was a Florida rice, that would be even worse.
Apples concentrate Arsenic in the woody tissues and the seeds. Not the skin or pulp. And a lot of the Arsenic in orchards comes from Lead Arsenate pesticides popular in the 19th and early 20th century. Just FYI.
Yep, that’s another way to state what I stated. But remember that the arsenic didn’t just land on the trees, leaves, fruit, etc, but also went into the soil during application and tends to stay there in isoclines.
