Heavy Metals In Health Foods (And How To Reduce Them)

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

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In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝Question for you, Why is it that some of the healthiest foods E.G. fish, whole grains, turmeric, are also some of the highest contaminated with heavy metals, and is there any reliable way around this? Thanks❞

It sure is annoying, isn’t it?

And the short answer is: no, there is not currently any reliable way around it (aside from abstaining from those foods completely, or else farming your own and micromanaging everything).

However! There are unreliable ways around it, that is to say, things that may help, or things that will generally help, and employing these things will mean that while it won’t guarantee avoiding heavy metals, and for that matter won’t even always guarantee a reduction in heavy metals, it will—on average, over the long term—definitely* result in lower heavy metals than if you don’t do these things.

*Well, as close to “definitely” as can be for something that for each item is a non-zero chance of not working, but to implement all these things in the long term and still not have a reduction compared to not doing them, would be the equivalent of flipping countless coins and getting tails every single time when you want heads.

About fish

Heavy metal content will vary depending on:

• location
• the kind of fish (fish further up the food chain accumulate more heavy metals)
• the age of the fish (younger fish have had less time to accumulate heavy metals than old ones, so if you’re visiting the fishmonger, choose the smaller ones)
• the lives they have led (e.g. wild vs farmed; the latter usually having more heavy metals than the former)

See also: Farmed Fish vs Wild Caught: Antibiotics, Mercury, & More

Additionally, here’s an FDA resource that’s a little dated now, but the trends probably still stand, and it lists the contamination levels of different kinds of fish (and shellfish):

Mercury Levels in Commercial Fish and Shellfish (1990-2012) ← see for example how shark has nearly 100x the mercury of shrimp; remember what we said about size of animal, food chain position, age, etc (sharks are much, much more long-lived than shrimp, in fact some sharks live for hundreds of years)

About grains

The issue here is mostly with rice, and the news is not good:

❝Arsenic was found in 100% of rice samples tested from stores in 20 metro areas and exceeded 100 parts per billion in 1 in 4.❞

Toxic Metals Found in All Rice Samples in New Report

The report offered the following advice:

❝Cook rice like pasta. Use 6 to 10 cups of water per 1 cup of rice, then drain any extra before eating.

Try alternatives. Foods like quinoa, barley and couscous have lower levels of heavy metals.

Choose rice wisely. White rice from California, sushi rice, Thai jasmine and Indian Basmati tend to have lower levels of heavy metals and elements. Avoid brown rice, white rice grown in the Southeastern U.S. and arborio rice from Italy, which were shown to have higher levels.❞

Also, while we do not have empirical evidence to back this up, we would suggest that it cannot hurt to use a rice cooker of the kind that has a rice-holding part with tiny holes, and a water-holding part that the aforementioned part sits in, that then soaks the rice in cold water for a period of time before cooking; here’s an example of this kind of rice cooker on Amazon. The commercial intention of this setup is to reduce starch by 30% (it works), but it seems very reasonable some heavy metals must also surely bleed out into the water below that is then discarded. Again, this latter is just a hypothesis though, no matter how reasonable a hypothesis and how common-sense it seems.

What we do have evidence for is:

❝We observed 33%, 35%, and 27% average removal of As, Cd, and Pb accordingly from rice when cooked with a rice to water ratio of 1:6 after washing 5 times.

We also found a significant reduction in essential elements: Zn (17%), Cu (10%), Mn (22%), Se (49%), and Mo (22%), when rice cooking was performed as in traditional practice. Daily dietary intakes were found to be between 0.36 and 1.67 µg/kgbw for As, 0.06 and 1.15 µg/kgbw for Cd, and 0.04 and 0.17 µg/kgbw for Pb when rice was cooked by the rice cooker method (rice:water 1:2), while in the traditional method (rice:water 1:6) daily intake rates ranged from 0.23 to 1.3 µg/kgbw for As, 0.04 to 0.88 µg/kgbw for Cd, and 0.03 to 0.15 µg/kgbw for Pb for adults.

The HQ and ILCR for As, Cd, and Pb revealed that there is a possibility of noncarcinogenic and carcinogenic risk for As but no appreciable risk for Cd and Pb from consumption of rice.❞

(which is also interesting to note that the risk from rice is mostly arsenic, not lead)

Source: Removal of Toxic and Essential Nutrient Elements from Commercial Rice Brands Using Different Washing and Cooking Practices: Human Health Risk Assessment

About turmeric

Unfortunately, the heavy metals in turmeric come from the soil, not the processing, so getting fresh turmeric root won’t reduce this, despite that media talking about it has focused on supplements and/or ground turmeric powder (probably because they are easier to test).

However, counterintuitively, turmeric that is marketed as “organic” is usually higher in heavy metals, so avoiding those may actually be beneficial:

Tests Reveal Heavy Metals In Organic Turmeric Powder: Non-organic brands perform better in tests

That’s a PDF fact sheet, so you may be wondering about the source; it’s from here: EIACP PC Resource Partner on Environment Literacy – Eco-labelling and Eco-friendly Products, Hosted by Consumer Education & Research Centre, Sponsored by Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Govt of India.

Any other options?

Here’s a surprising one:

Heavy Metal Detox In A Pill? ← sometimes our research review articles take us to fascinating places while doing the research, and this was one of those times!

Want to learn more?

To get a lot deeper into the topic, you might like this book we reviewed:

Healthy Living in a Contaminated World – by Dr. Donald Hoernschemeyer

Take care!