Food Forensics

An eye-opening expose of the epidemic of toxic food and a guide to biological redemption.

This is a dense science book (+900 scientific footnotes) that thoroughly validates the concerns of the health-conscious about food toxicity. If you think that alarm over toxins in food (and a lot of other things we consume) is mere scaremongering you may want to read this book as it thoroughly documents this catastrophic problem that we each face personally and collectively as a civilization.

Think the FDA or EPA will keep you safe? Think again...

Neither the FDA nor USDA has any official, universal limit on heavy metals in foods, beverages, and dietary supplements sold to U.S. consumers. This fact is, of course, astonishing. Most consumers of USDA-certified organic foods automatically assume those foods are substantially free of heavy metals because they are labeled organic.

The author, Mike Adams, operates a popular website, NaturalNews.com, and one of the top mass spectrometry labs in the United States.

The fight he's chosen to fight is testing common foods and consumables for toxicity and exposing some of the most poisonous offers available on store shelves near you...

Some observers find it quite curious—perhaps even bizarre—that a private sector company is doing a better job of policing the U.S. food supply for heavy metals than the entire federal government, with a seemingly infinite budget. I find it bizarre, too.

If you Google Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com, you'll find several hit pieces done on him. And, like myself, he's been kicked off YouTube and other mainstream social media websites. A wise man once told me, if you tell the truth you'll be hated. If you make enemies of major food and supplement companies by exposing the toxicity of their products, they are going to spare no expense in vengefully smearing your reputation online. Mike also appears to have drawn the ire of some in the "skeptic" community, online "skeptics" are these terribly boring people who vociferously defend the CNN-version of reality and the status quo which is comfortable to the dominant institutions in society - "skeptics" are the kind of people obsessed with "debunking" and disparaging natural cancer cures or holistic medicine. Having read this book I'm confident that the criticisms you can find of Mike online are made in bad faith, the book is meticulously footnoted and the furthest thing from hysterical scaremongering. It's as well-researched as any other scholarly health science book I've read recently. The author also publishes a massive table of heavy metals testing data for hundreds of popular foods and products.

Is "Organic" Bullshit?

Even USDA-certified organic foods are not tested for heavy metals like cadmium, lead, arsenic, or mercury. Thus, there are no limits on heavy metal levels in these foods, including those sold in upscale healthy food retailers such as Whole Foods. The organic label simply describes the process through which the food was grown and that a farmer hasn’t used additional pesticides, herbicides, or other petrochemicals during that process. “Certified organic” in no way requires any heavy metals testing of soils, irrigation water, or even the final food product.

"Everything causes cancer..."

Is a sentiment you'll hear a lot. Indeed there are so many toxins in our environment that cause cancer...

Emerging science reveals that toxic elements, including heavy metals, have a greater propensity than previously thought for damaging DNA and disrupting cellular processes. Not only are these metals shown to cause cancer, but there is increasing evidence now confirming their potential roles as co-carcinogens that increase mutations and disruptions when combined in the body with other types of toxins.

But the truth is that our bodies are actually pretty good at dealing with toxins. This is why you just get an upset stomach and diarrhea from cheap Chinese takeout as opposed to dying! Since we're never going to be in a pristine toxin-free environment it's crucial to do everything you can to feed your mitochondria so they have the energy for your body to the crucial detoxification processes. My article “Everything gives you cancer” delves deeper into this. 

The future is F*cked thanks to toxins.

Epigenetic inheritance of toxic side effects from dietary exposure to heavy metals means that toxicity is trans-generational. This means that the toxic environment in which we live today will negatively impact future generations for an unknown number of generations even if we eliminate all exposure starting tomorrow. 

In many ways, we are already too late to save future generations from the harmful effects of exposure to toxic elements. And because exposure is only getting worse, not better, trans-generational negative effects are likely to significantly worsen with each subsequent generation. This cycle may place the very sustainability of the human race in a precarious situation, with its effects only becoming more widely apparent in the coming years. Broadly speaking, we may already have doomed ourselves to global increases in infertility, devastating cancer rates, and a planet-wide decline in cognitive function due to heavy metals exposure in modern-day foods.

The future of our species on this toxin-ridden planet may seem bleak but I've made the case that gene-editing technology is the lesser evil and maybe the cure to all that ails us. Smarter, better humans will figure out how to detoxify our environment given a sufficiently free market for them to thrive and invent.

Detoxification

The first step toward detoxification is to stop the influx...

Health-conscious consumers naturally want to find ways to remove heavy metals from their bodies. The most important method for accomplishing that is to eliminate dietary exposure to toxic heavy metals.

Sweat. Unsurprisingly, working up a sweat is awesome for detox.

The body’s mechanisms for excretion also play an important role in detoxification; in studies, sweating in particular has been shown to remove heavy metals in vastly higher quantities than are expelled through urination.

Sweat in the sauna

One other option for healthy detox is infrared saunas. These saunas can be extraordinarily useful but only if these two conditions are met: 1.​The sauna must cause your body to produce sweat. If there’s no sweat, there isn’t much health benefit; the toxins aren’t exiting your body. 2.​You must wash off the sweat immediately after exiting the sauna. (Otherwise, the toxins can be reabsorbed through your skin.)

Drink LOTS of water.

Your body won’t eliminate water-soluble toxins very well if you’re dehydrated, so drinking plenty of water is the first and simplest way to support your everyday detox strategy.

 Chelation is the cure! Chela means claw in Latin, so you want to imagine chelation agents clawing the microscopic toxins out of your system. It's a really smart idea to have an abundance of chelators like (Quercetin, Chlorella, Spirulina, Astaxanthin, etc - more described below) in your diet and supplement regimen.

One way to remove heavy levels of tin in the body is through the chelation properties of quercetin, a flavonoid found in many fruits and vegetables, according to a study that revealed it was effective for removing stannous versions of tin.

 Supplement Chlorella. There are 25 human clinical trials done with Chlorella, many documenting its detoxification properties.

By consuming chlorella (an extremely nutritious green algae), strawberries, fruit fibers, or even activated charcoal at the same time you are eating a meal with a high likelihood of containing toxic substances, you can “bind up” those toxins, push them through your digestive tract, and avoid absorbing them into your blood and tissues.

Clean Chlorella

 

3.7

Category: Nootropics & Anti-Aging

I won’t eat at a restaurant without bringing a bottle of chlorella with me. I never eat meat unless it’s accompanied by a fresh salad or whole fruit.

It’s also smart to support the healthy function of your detox organs (liver, kidneys, and digestive system) with medicinal herbs, superfoods, and other dietary strategies. Herbs such as yarrow, dandelion, and yellow dock are well known to support liver function. Superfoods like chlorella help support the body’s natural elimination of toxic elements through its ability to remove chemicals and heavy metals. Even everyday foods like beets and white carrots are “liver cleansers” that give the liver added support to carry out its job.

Another notable liver-support herb is Schisandra - which tastes amazing!

Schisandra Chinensis

Category: Nootropic Ingredients

Get the toxins out of your home.

An important strategy here centers around the replacement of toxic products with non-toxic products. For example, after you throw out your toxic laundry detergent, you’ll need to discover non-toxic brands that still clean clothes without saturating them in synthetic chemicals. (Ecos is my favorite brand of natural laundry detergent.) Nearly all the toxic soap products in your home can be replaced with Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps.

Let's move on to discuss the most offensive of the toxins...

Mercury

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) maximum containment level goals for mercury in drinking water is 2 ppb.

Acceptable Mercury toxicity in food

Mercury, for example, becomes worrisome at relatively low levels in foods (50 ppb, for example), while cadmium at 50 ppb is generally not much of a concern. But at 500 ppb, cadmium may begin to warrant attention, and if cadmium is present at 5,000 ppb, then it’s clearly a concern.

Avoid CFL fluorescent light bulbs.

In addition to its use in thermometer bulbs, mercury is also used in batteries, pesticides, and now in large quantities as an element of energy-saving CFL fluorescent light bulbs... A health study found that if a single CFL bulb breaks, mercury gas concentrations released can reach 800 µg/m3, more than eight times the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) limit...

 The vaccine question...

Mercury is even used in vaccines given to children. On October 9, 2015, California Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Diana S. Dooley issued a directive that suspended the ban on mercury in vaccines given to children, allowing those children to be injected with a mercury-containing vaccine preservative known as thimerosal.

Flu shots, by the way, typically contain over 50,000 ppb of mercury—about 25,000 times the concentration limit of mercury allowed by the EPA in drinking water.

If you're remotely libertarian and informed you should see the big issues with vaccines - they are not all bad - but many don't undergo proper safety studies, they don't undergo true placebo-controlled trials, their manufacturers have special immunity from lawsuits and in some cases, the government forces you to take them.

Are your dental fillings poisoning you?

Dental amalgam has also been shown to leach mercury into the mouth, which can emerge in the form of vapors or be swallowed if pieces of amalgam break off. Studies vary widely on the quantities of mercury people are exposed to in this fashion.

Studies on the impact of mercury-containing fillings have concluded that amalgams contribute the vast majority of mercury that accumulates in the human body...

Dental fillings and EMFs - a match made in hell...

Studies have also revealed that microwave radiation from cell phones and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) significantly accelerated the leaching of mercury from dental amalgams, giving cause for concern about people who have these fillings coming into everyday contact with electromagnetic fields (EMF), including the ubiquitous Internet Wi-Fi hotspots found in most urban and suburban areas.

Yikes! You're probably not going to be putting down your smartphone anytime soon so it would be smart to ask your dentist if you have old fillings that might contain mercury and could be replaced.

Eat Nori seaweed with your sushi

In fact, mercury is the easiest of all heavy metals to capture in this fashion, and seaweeds tend to have very high efficiency in capturing free mercury during digestion. Even the nori seaweed often used in sushi is able to capture around 85 percent of dietary mercury, according to my lab tests.

Eat strawberries

The original research I have conducted at the Natural News Forensic Food Lab shows that fresh, raw strawberries, when eaten in conjunction with mercury-tainted meals, bind with and capture over 90 percent of dietary mercury during digestion, effectively “locking up” the mercury in fibers that pass through the body undigested.

Awesome! I love strawberries.

Arsenic

By far the biggest source of total arsenic in foods comes from seafood, including fish, crustaceans, and seaweed.

Avoid brown rice

Brown rice was also found to have more arsenic overall than white rice in every sample Consumer Reports tested.

Bummer! If you haven't already, stop snacking on those tasty brown rice treats.

Lead

According to the EFSA’s Scientific Opinion on Lead in Food, cereals were found to contribute most to a person’s daily dietary lead intake.

Makeup and cosmetics are poisonous!

Studies continue to show that, even though not directly ingested in large amounts, repeated daily application of lead-containing cosmetics can add up to significant and cumulatively dangerous exposure. The FDA commissioned a study of lead in popular U.S. cosmetics in 2010 and found that, of over 400 lipsticks, including samples of the most popular brands purchased at retail stores, every single one contained lead—all of them.

Turmeric is NOT as healthy as you might think it is.

(Be careful with consuming turmeric to acquire more curcumin, however. Nearly all common sources of turmeric are contaminated with lead and sourced from India. In my lab testing, it is rare to find a turmeric raw material that isn’t significantly contaminated with lead. The only way to find low-lead turmeric is to ask the manufacturer or retailer for scientific lead test results on that particular batch. Sadly, virtually no one in the industry tests their turmeric for lead.)

Especially for those of us who love to spice our food with ample amounts of Tumeric and black pepper that's troubling, isn't it? Here are some credible Tumeric sources...

Organic Turmeric by Health Ranger Store

Category: Nootropics & Anti-Aging

I'm going to cut back on Turmeric, because one of my favorite supplements Neuro-Stack that I use almost daily, contains 300 milligrams of patented, pure Curcumin C3 Complex® in combination with the potent cofactor Bioperine®, a black pepper extract, which increases the bioavailability by 2000% or 20x!

Cadmium

There is substantial research proving cadmium’s ability to adversely affect all body systems; however, possibly the most troubling is its ability to interfere with mechanisms responsible for DNA repair, according to some scientists.

 Take Spirulina

High doses of antioxidant-rich spirulina, for example—the protein-rich, blue-green, freshwater algae—were found to dramatically decrease fetal abnormalities caused by dosing pregnant mice with cadmium.

Health Ranger Select Spirulina

Category: Nootropics & Anti-Aging

Aluminum

Aluminum causes Alzheimer’s?

a recent study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease concluded, “The hypothesis that Al significantly contributes to AD is built upon very solid experimental evidence and should not be dismissed. Immediate steps should be taken to lessen human exposure to Al, which may be the single most aggravating and avoidable factor related to AD.”

Aluminum causes autism?

The same researchers published another study in the same year in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry in which they investigated the correlations between exposure to aluminum adjuvants and the rise of autism in seven Western countries, including the United States, over the past two decades. Children in these countries are often administered multiple doses of up to eighteen aluminum adjuvant–containing vaccinations. The researchers concluded that the aluminum in vaccines may in fact share a causal relationship with the rise in autism.

Food Additives

Aspartame is bad news.

Aspartame has been studied as a ligand for copper, leading scientists to only recently discover in the fall of 2013 that the two interact in the body and the resultant complex binds to DNA much more strongly than aspartame alone.

Due to all the horrid side effects, Dr. Hyman Roberts spent two decades researching the additive, which culminated in a 1,038-page book titled Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic that coined the phrase “aspartame disease” in 2001.

Are you unwittingly consuming MSG?

The FDA requires “added MSG” to be listed on the ingredients as monosodium glutamate; however, it does not require ingredients that contain MSG to state that they contain MSG as a molecular component. Thus, many confusing, cryptic, and coded ingredients are frequently found in processed foods of all kinds, contributing to high levels of MSG consumption by unwitting food consumers.

Some food additives, like MSG and its derivatives, add flavor to a food product while simultaneously preserving its shelf life. In effect, this allows low-quality, bland, and even stale foods to be perceived by the consumer as fresh, tasty, and wholesome while hiding behind layers of cosmetic food treatment, no matter how nutritionally void a substance it might be. 

Supplement Magnesium

Magnesium plays a particularly important role in modulating MSG’s toxic effects, as it is known in studies to block the neurotoxicity of glutamate and other excitatory amino acids, and it acts as a neuroprotectant.

Magnesium

Category: Nootropic Ingredients

 Food coloring is bad news.

Seeing a rise in the prevalence of disease and behavioral problems in children coinciding with the advent of numerous artificial additives first available on the consumer market in the 1960s, Feingold focused his research on the growing intake of processed food additives and their increasingly adverse effects on mental and physical health.

the Kaiser-Permanente Medical Center recommended a detailed artificial additive elimination diet for treatment of these issues, which worked for other allergens, too.613 Feingold successfully treated some six hundred children with this method, and found even greater effectiveness after also eliminating the synthetic antioxidant additives butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) and butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA)...

Toronto researchers tested Dr. Feingold’s theories on diet with twenty-six hyperactive children, validating much of his treatment.

Artificial colors cause ADHD?

Dr. David Schab of Columbia University Medical Center in 2004 seemed to conclude once and for all that these artificial colors are indeed contributing to behavioral disorders, including ADHD.

Bottom line: Stay away from all those fake foods made so colorful and appealing with food coloring. Check the label's nutrition facts for ingredients like Red #40 and stay away from these Colors to Die For!

BPAs are bad news.

Minimizing body fat is the number one best way to keep down BPA.

Soy Lecithin = Hexane

Many soy food additives are derived through a process that uses hexane. Soy lecithin, an emulsifier, is commonly found in a vast array of products on grocery store shelves including everything from chocolate to margarine to bread and beyond.

Because it is added to so many foods by its numerous by-products, soy is by far the biggest potential dietary source of hexane.

Glyphosate is bad news.

A study on the negative health impacts of human exposure to glyphosate concluded that, “Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body.” If this study holds true, it indicates that glyphosate could be inflicting long-term, virtually untraceable damage to the health of millions of individuals.

Hydrogenated oil is bad news

Hydrogenated oil shares a molecular resemblance to plastic. It’s non-essential, serves no nutritional purpose, and has no known human health benefit whatsoever. So why would food manufacturers knowingly put it in people’s food? Simple. It’s a cheaper, taste-free butter alternative that extends a product’s shelf life.

Sodium Benzoate is bad news

Since the end of the twentieth century, researchers have chronicled sodium benzoate’s potential to damage DNA through mutagenesis and promote oxidative stress in the gastrointestinal tract.

If you're using cheapo shampoo, conditioner, and soap you're in all likelihood getting a daily dose of Sodium Benzoate. Spend just a little more and you can get Sodium Benzoate-free hygiene products.

Sodium Nitrites are bad news

When sodium nitrite hits the human digestive system, all hell breaks loose. At high temperatures, nitrites in processed meats combine with the proteins in meat called amines, forming toxic, carcinogenic nitrosamines in the stomach that can enter the blood stream and wreak havoc on the body.

Parabens cause breast cancer?

a study in 2012 analyzed 160 breast tissue samples from forty women with breast cancer for five different parabens. This time, parabens were detected in a whopping 99 percent of samples. Propylparaben and methylparaben were found in the highest concentrations, respectively, but over 60 percent of samples analyzed contained all five parabens considered. While many underarm deodorants contain parabens that have been postulated as a potential breast cancer agent due to the close proximity of the underarms to the breasts and the typical daily usage of deodorants, the researchers noted that parabens were even present in the breast tissue of women who do not use deodorant.

 Where does toxin-free food come from?

The grocery store, of course, especially the center aisles

Instead, go to the farmers' market

Local farmers’ markets in North America or Europe are likely to offer foods with very low levels of toxic heavy metals. Purchasing and eating more of these foods is a smart way to avoid toxic heavy metals in your diet.

In many cases, local producers, including those represented at farmer’s markets, have the best commercially available meats and eggs.

Ever since I started going to the farmers' market in Medellin to daygame Colombianas I've been a big fan of farmers' markets, they are simply a better alignment of economic incentives for better food. Whenever I purchase something from the shelves of a big box store I wonder how much of the price is going to the shareholders of a corporation or towards the salary of some corporate apparatchik. Their incentive is, of course, to get goods at the cheapest possible price and mark them up to the highest price that customers will pay. Whereas at a farmers' market, you're handing your cash over to someone who probably actually produced the fruit, meat, or cheese you're consuming. They probably eat and feed their family the same thing and they know that if they sell you something bad you're liable to come back to the farmers' market and complain.

As I also documented, many organic foods and superfoods can be surprisingly high in toxic heavy metals. As a general rule, anything imported from China, India, or Thailand has a much higher risk of being contaminated than foods from North America, Europe, New Zealand, or many South American countries like Bolivia.

Made in China? No thanks!

China’s agricultural sector is widely contaminated with heavy metals, so almost anything you get from China is immediately suspect.

The researchers also determined that estimated daily intake levels for the foodstuffs from China for parabens were approximately three to, in some cases, ten times as high as was found in the U.S. study.

Also, avoid Indian-sourced food-stuffs

almost all spices from India are consistently contaminated with lead.

What to do about bad air and pollution?

For serious HEPA air filtration, the best unit on the market today, to my knowledge, is the IQAir system. It’s European-made and very expensive, but it works flawlessly, moving a tremendous volume of air through its HEPA filtration modules.

If you can't afford the IQAir system...

Living plants are living air filters. The more plants you have thriving in your home, the cleaner and more refreshing your indoor air will be.

Green homes are fake news

Indoor air quality is atrociously bad in newer U.S. homes due to the “green building” phenomenon. Although it seems counter-intuitive, “green” construction techniques actually make homes more airtight (and thus, because of reduced air loss, less expensive to heat and air condition, which is what most of the “green” claims are based on), not less toxic. By making your home more airtight, this construction method also means toxic chemicals remain at a higher concentration inside your home. With less outside air mixing with indoor air, there’s nowhere for toxic off-gassing chemicals to go. That’s why so-called “green homes” can actually be extremely toxic environments,

The Water Question

Never drink unfiltered tap water! It contains many toxic chemicals, including some that were not added by the water treatment plant but rather formed in the pipes as the water made its way to your home. One example would be chloramines, carcinogenic chemical compounds that form when ammonia and chlorine are added to treated tap water.

I tested all the popular gravity water filters, including the Big Berkey, ProPur, Zen Water Systems, and other brands. All the results are published on www.waterfilterlabs.com. The bottom line from the results? The Big Berkey (with fluoride filters) and Zen Water Systems filters removed the most toxic heavy metals in our tests. For countertop water filters, the Zerowater brand did the best job by far. In fact, many cheaper brands of countertop water filters barely removed any toxic heavy metals at all. Reverse osmosis (RO) water systems do an excellent job of removing toxic heavy metals.

The Meat Question

Though you’ll pay a premium for them in grocery stores, purchasing USDA-certified organic meats are the best way to avoid the issues discussed here.

The best way to avoid sodium nitrite is to stop buying processed meat products containing the ingredient all together, and if meat is on the dinner menu, look for fresh meat and meats that explicitly state “no nitrites” on the packaging.

Vitamin C has been shown in studies to protect people from the damaging effects of nitrites.In addition, consuming large amounts of vitamin C, as well as E, will reportedly protect one from the cancer-causing nitrosamine conversion process if taken before processed meats are to be consumed.

The Good News

You're probably sufficiently unsettled by the specter of food and environmental toxicity by this point. The good news is that you can avoid a lot of this nasty toxicity by demanding to look at certificates of analysis for products and supplements before you consume them. COAs will reveal the parts per million (or billion) of mercury, lead, arsenic, and other toxins present. It's unlikely that you'll find supplements with zero toxins but if you're selective you can keep your consumption within these acceptable limits...

According to the author's research, you should demand Grade A and above levels of toxicity. If there's more or if the manufacturer is shy about sharing their COAs give the product a pass.

As I explained in my book review of Head Strong by Dave Asprey, a sapient biohacker takes a dual-pronged approach to toxicity: a) Avoidance of toxins b) Biohacking your mitochondria so your body has the additional energy to handle the toxin load.

In Conclusion...

This book cuts through a lot of the detox myths and will help you to live a longer, happier more toxin-free life. I'm not sure if I recommend everyone reading it though because it is a quite dense science book. If you love health science books check it out if not the author has a (rather Red-Pilling) podcast and video channel that discusses the same stuff that I have learned a lot from. The author also uses his spectrometry lab to test all the products and supplements that you can find for sale on the Health Ranger Store (which I'm an affiliate of), considering the very high testing standards for purity the offerings there seem very reasonably priced to me. I hope to try and review more of them in the future.