Known Toxic Chemicals in our Food Supply
Nov 05, 2019HI, I’m Andrew from the Foolish Couple.
In our blogs we typically talk about the things that money can’t buy, which are: Health, Time, and Love. Today, I want to talk about something that is affecting our health that you may not be aware of.
I am talking about the Known toxic chemicals in our food supply.
While many of you may be following the latest sports scores, Hollywood scandal or the political issues that are happening, did you catch the news that can affect your health and the health of your family? I bet you, most of you probably missed it. It was buried amongst all the glorious mumble jumble of politics, scandals and sports. But I read it, and I’m here to share my thoughts with you.
There were two very important reports that just came out last week. One was from EWG which stands for The Environmental Working Group. EWG released the latest results of their testing for potentially hazardous chemicals in our drinking water across the United States. This report even made its way into my local city news.
What they found with the Alameda County water district, which is where I live, totally shocked me.
They found that there were 14 contaminants found and that 3 of these contaminants exceeded EWG’s guidelines.
Of course, all 14 contaminants are under the federal government’s Legal limits, but what is legal does not mean it is safe.
The EPA has not set a new tap water standard in almost 20 years.
Some of the standards that are still being used are over 40 years old. There is lots of current research that shows that these legal limits are not safe.
What is scary is that in my local drinking water, the 3 that exceeded EWG Health guideline levels can potentially cause cancer, and they are anywhere from 2.3X to 360X over the healthy limit. So I looked up the water supplies around the Bay Area, and the others water districts that supply to the rest of the Bay Area are even worse than mine.
They range from 11 contaminants with more than 5 that exceeded the health limits to the worst one, which supplies to Mountain View and Santa Clara. They have 23 and 25 total contaminants respectively and 11 of them exceeds the EWG health guidelines.
Water is the most important substance. We need to drink water to survive. But now we know that there are contaminants in our water, we can’t even safely drink the water out of the taps.
The other report that came out was from the US food and drug administration or the FDA. And it basically states that US consumers are eating chemical pesticides in their conventional grown fruits and vegetables.
They found that 84% of domestic fruits, 53% of vegetables, 42% of grains, and 73% of samples categorized as “other” (nuts, seeds, oils, honey, candy, beverages, spices, multi-ingredient products, and dietary supplements) have chemical pesticide residues.
More disturbing is that the pesticides were highest in the most popular trendy healthy vegetables and fruits:
- 88% of apples and apple juice
- 87% of grapes, grape juice, and raisins
- 91% of lemons and lemon juice
- 6% of nectarines and nectarine juice
- 84% of strawberries
- 87% of kale
- 82% of spinach
- 6% of cucumbers
- 80% of refined oils
The FDA claims that the chemicals they found are within safe limits. But when is it ever safe to put toxic chemicals into your bodies? There is abundant evidence that pesticides do pose a risk to human health.
Besides, the limits they deem safe are done in short term studies, not over a lifetime and they are usually done on mice.
The last time I checked, we are very different from mice. The scariest part is that the FDA is slowly raising what is considered safe limits for these toxic substances. These new safe limits are substantiated by research that is done not by third party independent researchers such as EWG but researchers from the manufacturers of the toxic chemicals themselves.
Essentially, the FDA is not setting the limits, the chemical manufacturers such as Monsanto or Bayer now is policing what is considered a safe limit for toxic chemicals in our food supply for consumers.
So here is the dilemma, to stay healthy, we need to drink about half our body weight (lbs) in ounces of water. So if you weigh 160 pounds, you should be drinking about 80 ounces a water a day or about 10 cups of water. We know that vital minerals, vitamins and phytonutrients come from our fruits and vegetables and we are encouraged to eat about 7-9 servings a day to get all the nutrients that our bodies needs. But if we follow these guidelines, we are not just drinking water and vital nutrients from our foods, we are also consuming all these added chemicals that are known to be toxic to our bodies long term.
So, what can we do about it?
First you need to know, because this actually affects you and your family. To see the your tap water quality in your area, log onto EWG.org and type in your zip code to see how contaminated your water supply is and take precautionary measures to filter out these chemicals. We use a carbon filter for our whole home along with Reverse Osmosis for our cooking and drinking supply.
As for the chemical pesticides in our fruits and vegetables. I suggest you log on to EWG.org and download the dirty dozen and clean fifteen list. They publish a new list every year testing all the fruits and vegetables in the United States.
Always choose organic for any of the fruits and vegetables listed in the Dirty Dozen, and eat conventional non-organic for the clean 15.
But if you really care about your health, just chooses organic whenever you can, especially when you are shopping and cooking at home. It’s hard to control what we eat when we eat out, but we can at least know we are eating clean at home. Also try to cook and eat 75-80% of your meals at home to limit the exposure to toxic chemicals in our food sources. More then likely most restaurants will not be using Organic vegetables in fruits in their dishes and I doubt they have a reverse osmosis system to filter the tap water they serve.
My goal is to give you the latest news on your health so that you can take the proper actions to protect you and your family. I hope this helps you, and I’d love to hear from you so please leave your comments below.
As always, Love what you live, and Live what you Love!
If you are experiencing brain fog, weight loss resistance, digestive problems, hormone dysregulation, muscle and joint pains, and many other chronic problems, the underlying cause to your problems may be due to toxins and heavy metals that are in your body. If you want to find out more about the effects of heavy metal and toxins in your body and what you can do about it, sign up here for our upcoming True Cellular Detox Webinar!
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