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this post was submitted on 16 May 2025
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~~Dangerous~~ Normal levels of arsenic and cadmium found in samples of store-bought rice from more than 100 different brands purchased in the US.
The highest levels described was 129 parts per billion. The FDA limit for 2-year old infants (for 'rice cereal') is 100ppb. The 'purest' rice in the study is 55 ppb.
There is no study to suggest 129 ppb of Arsenic is dangerous. The headline just baselessly asserts this. The methodology for 'arsenic exposure' also doesn't account for what they mention - that the majority of arsenic in rice actually leaches into the water, which many people throw away. Even people eating the 'worst' US rice are getting more arsenic from fruit and vegetables.
Lying headline. Rice is fine. These shitty headlines hurt people more (by instilling anxiety while also turning them away from healthy options like rice) than they help.
PPB you say?
One hundred and twenty nine of them.
No amount of heavy metal exposure is healthy and this is just one of the many ways people are exposed to it. Limiting potential exposure, especially in children under two, is pretty serious. Rice is the largest single exposure food of any food type, and for communities that eat rice for multiple meals a day, rice accounts for up to 50% of their children's exposure to arsenic, not to mention other heavy metals. If switching to a different grain is all it takes to greatly reduce that number, it seems pretty silly to hand wave the research.
In a world where exposure to heavy metals, PFAS, microplastics, formaldehyde and other dangerous substances is both a daily occurrence and being monitored less rigorously by the state organizations designed to keep exposure low, it's definitely good to be aware that staple foods which billions rely on every day can be settings kids up for a lifetime of adverse health outcomes. Edit: also want to add that consistently getting covid fucks your immune system too so adding all the virus and sickness we are collectively dealing with to carcinogens and heavy metal exposure... It's just good to limit what you can when you can
Edit: also, who throws away rice water? You steam the rice in the water which is absorbed by the rice. The article suggests cooking rice like pasta and tossing the water to reduce arsenic but to suggest most people already do this is absolutely false
Don't people rinse rice before cooking it? I believe that is the rice water that is thrown away, not after cooking.
But also that rinsing water is often used in many parts of the world as a baby formula substitute. So, that's not great if that's where most of the heavy metals are going.
Rinsing before cooking does not reduce arsenic amounts. If you soak it over night and dump that it will help, especially if agitated during the soaking, but the research cited in this article explicitly says rinsing without at least a 30 min soak doesn't do it. The best method is to cook one cup of rice : 6-10 cups of water and then draining that water, adding fresh water and finishing the cooking
Thanks for the clarification, I did not see that part.
I do not disagree with literally anything you've said here, so I'm not sure why you're presenting it as such.
Nor am I 'hand wave'ing the research, I'm reading it and seeing what it actually says, like you also have. What the cited research definitively does not claim (or even imply) is "Dangerously high levels of arsenic and cadmium found in samples of store-bought rice from more than 100 different brands purchased in the US.".
You said there is nothing stating arsenic is dangerous, which is false. No amount of heavy metal exposure is safe. These products contain heavy metals, including cadmium. The reason no amount is safe is because it accumulates in the body and can't be removed, and it accumulates from a variety of sources both known and unknown. It is especially dangerous for children, but adults also get heavy metal poisoning. You presented this as if everything is fine, nothing to see here and that isn't the case. You also said the majority leaches into water which is thrown away, which is false.
No, I 100% didn't say that.
I literally said up front that reducing heavy metal intake is a good and ideal thing to do.
I'll absolutely admit I failed to clarify this applies only to certain common cooking methods. Still, the underlying point is still valid - the methodology did not account for this seemingly significant factor.
We still seem to entirely agree. Perhaps depending a bit on your definition of 'safe'. It might just be I'm not communicating my points well - so apologies if that's down to me.
Sorry but I don't really see how this quote of yours is much different from what I paraphrased.
You did say reducing is good but that was one line couched in a lot of language implying that this article should be disregarded and you said that rice is fine and that heavy metals in rice is normal. While it is true that heavy metals can be found in foods sometimes, I don't think implying that this study should be disregarded is ideal, and if you didn't mean to imply that, it did come off that way to me.
They do talk about this and encourage people to do it, but I really don't think it is a common cooking method to use 6-10 cups of water per cup of rice and dump the water out. I come from a rice eating culture and married into a different one, I've worked in restaurants, I've never heard of anyone doing this. It is certainly not a "common cooking method."
I'm not trying to be combative or anything, I just saw your comment as the only one and got a totally different read from the piece and didn't want the default comment people read to be "nothing to see here folks," which is what it looked like to me. I know too many kids and adults who have gotten heavy metal poisoning, among the myriad other unnecessary and avoidable health risks people face, to see that and not offer another perspective