Last year, I put up a post about how arsenic was temporarily banned for use in conventional chickens.

Whether conventional chicken growers actually paid attention to the ban is anyone’s guess, but a column I read yesterday in the New York Times just made me shake my head even further.

In his column, Nicholas Kristof talked about recently released studies that suggest that poultry on factory farms are routinely fed caffeine, active ingredients of Tylenol and Benadryl, banned antibiotics and arsenic.

He went on to say that chicken from China showed that it contained an antidepressant whose active ingredient is in Prozac. Yes, chickens are getting antidepressants. Can you imagine? Read more »

There is a new arsenic controversy in the news. Instead of apple juice, this time it is organic brown rice syrup.

Researchers from Dartmouth College announced in Environmental Health Perspectives that they discovered very high levels of inorganic (not naturally occurring) arsenic in organic baby products, whose top ingredient was brown rice syrup.

While the EPA regulates the amount of arsenic in water, no more than 10 parts per billion is allowed, there are no such standards for arsenic in food, except for fruit juice.

So, when the researchers did their testing, they found that the arsenic levels in the organic baby food were 6 times higher than the allowable limits for water.

Even though other products, such as energy shots and cereal bars failed this arsenic test as well, the organic baby formula raised more of a red flag because this is the primary source of nutrition for babies. Read more »

Several months I wrote a story about Bisphenol-A (BPA) in organic food cans.

The post continues to get a lot of views because people are becoming increasingly aware and concerned about the packaging that their food comes in, even in organic food products.

With news coming out of Maine this morning, parents now need to take extra precaution about what they feed their young kids. Why?

BPA, which is known as a developmental, neural, and reproductive toxin, was found in 11 of 12 baby and toddler foods tested by The Alliance for a Clean and Healthy Maine.

Read more »

For people who are new to organic or have very limited financial means to buy organic, the one thing that I always say is the following:

The absolute number one priority in your household should be organic milk for your kids.

Even if a family thinks that organic food is out of their budget, organic milk cannot be compromised under any condition.

Organic milk is about the health of the kids, and that comes before everything else.

THE SERIOUS HEALTH RISKS OF HORMONAL MILK

Approximately 20% of the milk in the U.S. is hormonal milk. But what exactly is hormonal milk? Read more »

Stories about the toxicity of our food supply just keep rolling in.

As I wrote about recently, numerous samples of conventional apple juice were found to have unsafe and illegal levels of arsenic. And now orange juice is having its own set of problems.

Coca-Cola, which makes Minute Maid and Simply Orange, reported to the FDA on December 28th that some Brazilian growers of oranges that are used in the company’s juices and those of its competitors had sprayed their trees with carbendazim, a toxic fungicide.

As a result, the FDA has temporarily halted (PDF) all shipments of imported orange juice while it conducts field tests. Products already on supermarket shelves that have “low levels” of carbendazim (80 parts per billion) may still be sold. Read more »

As I have been predicting, the class action lawsuits would continue against major food companies for using genetically-modified ingredients (GMOs) and/or synthetic substances in their “all-natural” products.

The trend started first started with Con Agra then moved to Kashi and Naked Juice. Now it is against PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay.

In a class action lawsuit filed (PDF) by law firm Milberg LLP against Frito-Lay, the claim states that the company markets its Tostitos and Sun Chips products as “made with all natural ingredients” when in fact they are not “all natural”.

The lawsuit contends that the ingredients are not “all natural” because the corn and vegetable oils (soybean, corn and canola) that they are using are all genetically-modified. Therefore, they are not “all natural” and are counter to what Frito-Lay is marketing them as. Read more »

I have been writing about the genetically-engineered salmon issue for quite a while now, and last week I put up a story about how Congress held hearings for the first-time ever about this FrankenFish.

As I mentioned in the post, it was a great step in raising awareness of this abhorrent technology and hopefully it will never get approved.

AquaBounty, the company that is trying to receive FDA approval for genetically-engineered salmon, has been telling the public that this “fish” is safe – safe for humans and safe for the environment, both of which is completely absurd in my opinion.

Now we have documentation that calls into serious question the credibility of AquaBounty and its willingness to tell the truth.

According to recently released documents (PDF file), AquaBounty’s research site in Canada was contaminated with a new strain of Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA), the deadly fish flu that is devastating fish stocks around the globe. Read more »