How does lead even get into applesauce?
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/turmeric-lead-risk-detect/
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/dec/24/d...
>She found lead in all of them.
>The cause, she found, was food colouring contaminated with compounds of lead. Lead chromate was added to the turmeric to brighten its golden colour and lead oxide gave the chilli powders a rich red hue.
It might be an excuse, though. Their heavy metal content is likely why people started using spices in the first place. They can't taste good without them. Nothing can. We evolved to detect their presence, and like their taste.
This should be a world wide issue that's tackled with the same urgency as a emerging disease. But it is not.
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb...
Most manufacturers don't (as per the above link). The FDA doesn't.
They generally do not!
- "The lack of regulation leaves much of the monitoring of heavy metal levels to companies. [Consumer Reports] contacted all the ones with products in our tests to see how they limited heavy metals."
- "Of the companies that replied to our questions—Al Wadi Al Akhdar, Costco, Bolner’s Fiesta, Gebhardt, Litehouse, McCormick, Roland Foods, Spice Islands, Target, and Whole Foods—a few said they require their suppliers to have a program for controlling or testing for heavy metals. But only three—Al Wadi Al Akhdar, Bolner’s Fiesta, and McCormick—specifically said they test products in their manufacturing plants for heavy metals."
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb...
Some high end products I buy will sometimes carry a link to a lab report quantifying the concentration of some critical component in that batch - curcumin in tumeric, for example, or polyphenols in olive oil - or highlighting the lack of such testing. Likewise, some supplements will bend over backwards to prove the purity of the product to consumers. But I guess only the super health nerdy market demands that. I don't imagine a typical consumer even reads the nutrition label.
The libertarian in me thinks Consumer Reports is enough for people who care. The liberal in me says if I wasn't health nerdy enough to navigate that hazard, it's a bit much to file under caveat emptor for random toddler mothers. I don't normally support regulation, but this seems like a worthy case.
Test for things like gluten or lead…
The panel of things you can test for is large, but not super cheap.
As an interesting aside regarding testing, in addition to food you can also test control points along the manufacturing process. For example, ultra-sensititve tests on sewer output that detect contaminants is a presumptive bad resultfor the material created since your last all-clear and you then identify what broke and what food isn't good. It some cases, for some contaminants at well-chosen control points, this is a much cheaper and just as reliable way of ensuring safe food.
Food safety is a huge industry. The teeth are generally only as sharp as the legal framework mandates but the capabilities are there on the testing side.
I have no memory of what he was testing for, I did softwarw dev and wasn't running labs tests. I'm assuming if anything was weird, then we'd remember that. In the general case, it is routine and unremarakable to test safe food. You tend to only remember the anomalies.
The spice adulteration I (and probably other HN readers) am familiar with is turmeric, but there’s an obvious motive - make the spice more yellow. Was the cinnamon adulterated deliberately? If so, why? Color, like turmeric? Some trick to make harvesting easier (I know that cinnamon is one of those tricky spices, since you need to shave off curls of bark)? To make worse grade cinnamon seem like higher grade?
And if you wanted to weigh down the container, lead costs more then iron per kg: just make the existing iron-based can thicker.
snort
Still makes me chuckle after all this time.