Food Forensics. Mike Adams
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in high levels due to heavy industrial contamination of the farms where the food is grown.
Step 4: If steps 1 through 3 are unsuccessful, lie to customers by telling them that heavy metals are good for them! This strategy has already been invoked by one company whose products tested at high levels of lead and cadmium. Instead of announcing they would reduce the level of these metals in their products, they posted an article that claimed heavy metals were good for you and people shouldn’t be concerned about eating them.
Sheer deception and consumer fraud
The process of denial and obfuscation I’m describing here is routinely pursued by companies of all sizes, including some companies catering to organic consumers, raw foodies, vegans, vegetarians, detox patients, and health-conscious buyers.
The deceptions are quite incredible. One company that imports nearly 100 percent of the rice protein used by all the vegan protein manufacturers in the United States is fully aware that their product contains high concentrations of toxic lead, cadmium, tungsten, and mercury. On their website, however, they claim their material is “Prop 65 compliant,” referring to Proposition 65 in California.
Prop 65 says that if your product exceeds 0.5 micrograms of lead per serving, then you must put a cancer warning on your product label. The rice protein material being imported by this company delivers over 16 micrograms of lead per serving, which is 34 times higher than the Prop 65 lead limit. So how is that “compliant”? Because companies using the material place a small cancer warning on their product labels to “comply” with Prop 65. So even though this material contains 34 times more lead than is allowed under Prop 65, the importer claims the material is “compliant” with Prop 65, thereby grossly misleading buyers into thinking the material has low lead composition.
This sort of deception and consumer fraud, I’ve found, is routinely carried out across organic foods, natural products, superfoods, and dietary supplements companies. Many companies that sell products emblazoned with phrases like “better than organic” or “high raw” are actually poisoning their own customers with toxic heavy metals. And they almost never test their own products for heavy metals, which is why they are so surprised when I confront them with the truth about what’s found in their products. Even then, when made aware of the heavy metals concentrations found in their products, they invoke denial and obfuscation rather than transparency. Just like drug companies, weapons manufacturers, or Wall Street investment houses, many natural products companies seem to be run by people who place profits over consumer safety . . . almost by default.
That’s why this book is such an important public record of scientific truth. This book documents the heavy metals that are really found in these products, mapping out the actual metals composition of products that were acquired in 2013 through 2016, then analyzed via atomic spectroscopy for their elemental composition. In early 2016, we expanded our laboratory to include liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS) instrumentation for the detection of pesticides, herbicides, and other organic molecules. We hope to report on those findings in subsequent books and website reports. (See labs.naturalnews.com for the latest analysis reports.)
This book will spur widespread denials and possibly even a few lawsuit threats. It will enrage unethical product manufacturers but empower consumers with a new source of information that should appear on Nutrition Facts labels but doesn’t. This book will not only indict dishonest companies selling contaminated products, but it will also celebrate those many companies whose products are remarkably clean of toxic heavy metals (and yes, they do exist).
Substantial efforts to silence this work
I have been offered money not to publish this book. I’ve been offered large advertising contracts to leave certain products out of this book. I’ve been threatened with lawsuits for publishing laboratory results on the Internet. One of the largest natural products retailers in the United States, a $12 billion company, deliberately trained its employees to lie about me in very specific terms by telling customers that “Mike Adams doesn’t have a lab” and that all the laboratory results I’ve been publishing are fictional.
Substantial efforts have been made to discredit me and silence this work, and yet the fact that you hold this book in your hands is proof that all of those efforts failed. No matter how much I am threatened, I refuse to remain silent on this crucial issue for public health and food transparency.
We live in a world that’s heavily contaminated with industrial waste. Much of our organic food now comes from China, where the term “organic” is a cruel joke. Air quality in Beijing was recently recorded as being 1,100 percent higher than the maximum air pollution limits set by the WHO, reaching the astonishing pollution concentration of 268 micrograms per cubic meter.6
Much of our food is now grown on lands where industrial waste is intentionally dumped and used as “fertilizer.” As a result, many foods are heavily contaminated with toxic substances. The environmental science cannot be denied, and the scientific findings of this book can be replicated by any competent laboratory running ICP-MS instrumentation.
Please value what you now hold in your hands and understand how incredibly rare it is for this information to have finally been made public, despite all the threats and intimidation attempts that were unleashed in a desperate effort to keep this information hidden. Ask yourself this question, too: “Why isn’t the FDA conducting this research and publishing the results for the public to see?” I ask myself that same question every time I step into my lab. If the FDA really cared about food safety and public health, it would never have left this task to private citizen scientists like myself. The only reason I’ve taken up this task is because everybody else refuses to do it. The FDA, food manufacturers, and mainstream media outlets funded by food advertising are all colluding to ignore this science and prevent the public from learning the truths you’ll read here.
To stay up to date on the latest findings in this realm, visit the website of which I am the editor, www.naturalnews.com.
Laboratory methodologies and accuracy
Can you trust the data presented in this book? My laboratory is accredited by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) under its global analytical accuracy standards program known as ISO 17025. This is the gold standard for internationally recognized analytical laboratory accuracy, and it means we operate under a strict set of rules, guidelines, and procedures that are enforced by a third-party audit.
The scientific methodologies we use for testing food and water are universally recognized by the scientific community and are sourced from organizations such as the Association of Analytical Communities (AOAC), the EPA, and the FDA. For example, we use a minor variation of AOAC 2013.06 for testing heavy metals in foods.7
For testing water samples, we use methodology EPA 200.8.
My lab was accredited in 2016 after two years of preparation involving analytical repeatability determinations, validation of analytical methods, and exhaustive documentation of our laboratory quality control procedures and error-correction processes. Because of this extensive experience in ICP-MS analysis and laboratory protocols, I even plan to announce my availability as a science consultant to food manufacturers or retailers who wish to set up similar testing for their own operations.
But what is ICP-MS? How are heavy metals really tested in foods and beverages?
To help understand analytical accuracy a bit further, it’s important to understand the nature of ICP-MS testing.
ICP-MS results across competent laboratories can and do vary by as much as 20 percent due to differences in methodologies and instrument sensitivities. Within the same lab, variation in results from different samples of the same product may vary as much as 10 percent due to several reasons, but competent laboratories demonstrate strong repeatability within a range of plus or minus 10 percent.
From lab to lab, analytical results of the same substance may vary slightly. So if two different labs test the exact same protein powder, for example, it is perfectly reasonable that one lab