News from the Square

STUPID CUPID: Lead and Cadmium Found in Dark Chocolate, but Folks Are More Interested in Valentine's Day than Health

Garden City Park, NY: Happy Valentine's Day?! Not if you're a fan of dark chocolate. According to a recent report in Consumer Reports, troublesome levels of the heavy metal toxins lead and cadmium have been found in various US-manufactured dark chocolate products.

And that's not all. The US Congress, along with various other food safety advocacy groups, have also found metal contaminants in a variety of spices, fruit juices, rice—and even baby food, which is especially worrisome given the more than 33% increase in autism, ADHD, and various other childhood behavioral problems in recent years.

Still, much of the American media seems either to ignore this proven scientific data or—especially with Valentine's Day on the way—have fallen into a kind of denial about it. This is at our country's peril, according to former FDA food safety investigator turned whistleblower Dr. Renee Dufault.

In her book Unsafe at Any Meal: What the FDA Does Not Want You to Know About the Foods You Eat ($16.95, ISBN:  9780757004360), Dufault lays out the report that she had submitted to her superiors at the FDA over a decade ago—only to then find that they refused to make her report public. According to Dr. Dufault, “We here in America need to try to reduce those underlying conditions that arise over time as we consume the Standard American Diet, which of course stands for 'SAD.' We need to avoid these heavily processed and therefore 'unsafe' meals."

Dufault, who will appear this Wednesday (Feb. 15) from 10pm - Midnight Pacific (1am - 3am Eastern early Feb. 16) on the popular late-night program "Coast to Coast AM," points out in her book that children with autism and/or ADHD-related complications all over the world have been shown to have elevated inorganic mercury and lead levels in their blood. As she notes in chapter six of her book (“Spotlight on Autism and ADHD”), many baby formulas “contain corn sweetener in the form of corn syrup or corn syrup solids. Some formulas contain more corn sweetener than any other ingredient. I found one baby formula product in my local grocery store with a food ingredient label that claimed 54 percent of the product was made up of corn syrup solids and 26 percent of the product consisted of assorted vegetable oils.”

The presence of heavy metal toxins in many of our processed foods is at least something that everyone can agree is bad for adults and children alike. So now is the time for everyone in America to make healthier choices at each mealtime. With a copy of Unsafe at Any Meal in everybody’s home, we all stand a far greater chance at better health.