Dr. McDougall's Online Discussion Board

This is a link to the FDA site where they show results for 200 samples of rice: http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/FoodContaminantsAdulteration/Metals/ucm319924.htm

It has some good info, but they only identify the samples by an ID number and not by brand, and there is really only data for the U.S. and India.

I took this data and stuck it in an Excel spreadsheet with an interesting result.

The average inorganic arsenic for all samples from India is 3.26 ppb, and for the U.S. is 6.22 ppb.

The highest sample from India is 6.5, and the highest 25 with country identified are all from the U.S.

The lowest sample is 1.2 ppb for a white basmati from the U.S., but after that the next 11 lowest are from India.

The samples of whites are much lower than that of brown, the lowest brown rice sample is 3 ppb for an organic brown from the U.S.

Thanks for the link. I'll look up my favorite rice that I've been buying in 5 lb bags, Eden Organic brown rice.

Lasko77 wrote:Okay.....I know I said I was not going to worry about this but I am now officially worried. This sounds really scary. What are you all going to do with this new info? 2 servings a week!? really?!
And what does "two quarter dry" servings even mean?

This bothers me too. I love rice, it's my favorite grain. I normally eat a batch of rice per week made from three cups of dry rice.

Yeah, when I saw the "only 2 servings a week" recommendation, that is when I became actually alarmed, too.

HealthFreak wrote:Thanks for the link. I'll look up my favorite rice that I've been buying in 5 lb bags, Eden Organic brown rice.

No, you can't identify the rice by brand, only by type of rice and country.

Urvashi Rangan: We know things like wheat and corn and oats have 5 to 17 times less arsenic than rice does. So it's another good reason to diversify your grains.

That really struck me. That's a huge difference.

danmc wrote:The average inorganic arsenic for all samples from India is 3.26 ppb, and for the U.S. is 6.22 ppb.

The question is, what's considered a carcinogenic level of inorganic arsenic?

I would also like to know what specific brands tested the lowest. There were apparently some brands that showed "negligible levels."

So frustrating... I was increasing my use of rice. Now I'm not so sure about that.

Yes, frustrating! If I only ate 1-2 servings a week I wouldn't worry about it, but since I'm eating close to 6 cups of cooked rice a day...

The thing is, also, that the reports from the FDA and Consumer Reports only address the arsenic levels, what about the pesticide levels?

Searching on Google shows that rice from India has, as recently as this month, been stopped from being imported to the U.S. because of banned pesticide residues.

So here's my thinking; the safest rice is organic Indian rice. White is even safer than brown, but white is so lacking in nutrients that it's not worth eating, in my opinion.

I found a seller of Indian organic brown basmati rice on ebay here:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5713.m570.l1313&_nkw=organic+basmati&_sacat=0

With free shipping it only works out to be about $2/lb which is a great price, considering that organic Californian brown rice is about the same price, depending on where you get it from.

I ordered 20lbs of the rice I linked to above. I'll try to find it locally but I doubt greatly that I can find organic Indian brown rice here.

danmc wrote:White is even safer than brown, but white is so lacking in nutrients that it's not worth eating, in my opinion.

I don't think white rice is quite so bad as it's made out to be.

White long grain rice, unenriched (1 cup cooked):


Brown long grain rice (1 cup cooked):


Asians have been thriving on white rice for millennia.

I found a seller of Indian organic brown basmati rice on ebay here:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid= ... i&_sacat=0

Looks good. I may try some next month. Let us know how the order goes.

I was looking at a comparison also yesterday; one thing that sticks out is that brown rice has about 8 times the dietary fiber of white.

danmc wrote:I was looking at a comparison also yesterday; one thing that sticks out is that brown rice has about 8 times the dietary fiber of white.

Yes, much higher in fiber. I'm seeing .6g for a cup of white vs. 3.5g for a cup of brown. And the boost in selenium for brown rice is significant, as there are limited other sources for it.

You guys are awesome for sharing all of this information with everyone. Thank you.

What bothers me is that, that Dr. said that 2 (1/4) servings was what an adult should eat a week. All of us on this program eat more than that in a day or even in a meal. The rice would be the base of our meal. Americans most likely don't really care about all of this because people eat about 2 (1/4) servings a week, if that. And the rice is their side dish not their main dish staple. Most of the people I talk to about it just say "I am not worried I don't eat much rice anyway." For us on this site it is much, much more than that.

I would love to hear what Dr. McDougall would say/do. I wonder if his next newsletter will have an article about this issue.

Seriously, radioactive isotopes from Chernobyl and Fukushima entering the food chain will end up killing us sooner than inorganic arsenic.

They did a really great job to make sure that nobody is paying attention to any mutations from nuclear fallout:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AupyLDGHKk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piiSJMuCpV4

Are we barking up the wrong tree or what?

Personally I am mixing whole bunch of grains and putting everything in my rice cooker:

http://www.arrowheadmills.com/product/amaranth

http://www.arrowheadmills.com/product/hulled-millet

http://www.arrowheadmills.com/product/pearled-barley

http://www.arrowheadmills.com/product/buckwheat-groats

http://www.bobsredmill.com/organic-regu ... -oats.html

http://riceselect.elsstore.com/view/pro ... &cid=12871

http://riceselect.elsstore.com/view/pro ... &cid=12871

http://www.lundberg.com/products/rice/O ... _Rice.aspx

http://www.lundberg.com/products/rice/8 ... _Rice.aspx

http://www.lotusfoods.com/Bhutan-Red-Rice/p/LOT-00160

http://www.lotusfoods.com/Organic-Forbi ... /LOT-10260

http://www.lotusfoods.com/Organic-Volca ... LOT-503219

http://www.lotusfoods.com/Organic-Brown ... LOT-502212

http://www.alterecofoods.com/products/r ... urple-rice

http://www.alterecofoods.com/products/r ... y-red-rice

http://www.alterecofoods.com/products/q ... bow-quinoa

Simply tweak the strategy by altering the ratio of rice to other grains. Or just add more varieties like beans for a broader spectrum of nutrients.

Besides, are we supposed to really make an effort to stop Bill Gates from testing genetically modified rice with innocent children in China?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ldren.html

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/agricult ... -rice.aspx

IMHO we actually have far more dangerous stuff to worry about and the priority of arsenic might not be our top priority at this point.

In florence italy where i live, i can buy brown basmati rice from india and so i have taken that.

Someone know a site on internet where i can buy a "usual" (i dont know the name, maybe arborio) "sure" brown rice (maybe chine rice)?

However for me there is still the problem of the lunch. Because at work of whole grain food there is only brown rice and i eat it every day. And i presume that it come from italy and so it have very much arsenic.

It is incredible how the richest countries have contaminated also the most used food in the world. And that now we have to buy it from other countries.

bbq wrote:IMHO we actually have far more dangerous stuff to worry about and the priority of arsenic might not be our top priority at this point.

Yes, the world has many troubles. But there are only so many things we can deal with at each of our own personal levels. If I can find a food source that is less toxic than others, then I'd like to know about it.

ulialen wrote:It is incredible how the richest countries have contaminated also the most used food in the world. And that now we have to buy it from other countries.

It does seem rather ridiculous, doesn't it?

"Richest" in terms of GDP (Grossly Distorted Picture) while in reality those lives are getting so poor that all the quantities gained by those countries cannot compensate the qualities that were already lost.

In addition, all the riches in our world are actually established by creating debts deliberately. Try to watch at least the first half of this nice documentary:

http://www.themoneyfix.org/content/video-money-fix

We do have other ways to define "true" riches and here is one of them:

http://www.csrwire.com/blog/posts/46-qu ... ing-ground

http://www.calvert-henderson.com

IMHO we are just borrowing from Peter to pay Paul if we were contaminating and depleting the environment just for the sake of increasing rather meaningless figures / numbers based on fiat money. Eventually the "richest" countries will have to pay the price even though nobody wanna do that.

That also reminded me this interview with McDougall and the relevant part started around that 7:00 mark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvf5rf19GhY

Now you've got the commodity which is sick, fat people, which everybody is getting fat off them so to speak economically.

Their doctors are getting rich, drug companies are getting rich, the hospitals are getting rich, the insurance companies are getting rich.

Out of all this sickness after all, the bigger the business the more money these insurance companies make.