Now, I am really scared that even stuff sold in California is probably lead paint tainted turmeric.
(Relatedly, Lundberg publishes the arsenic levels of their brown rice, so that’s basically the only brand of rice I buy any more.)
There’s basically no reason to ever use powdered or dried.
The difference could be due to sun-drying (I assume?) on your family's farm vs. industrial scale freeze/spray drying, for example. Or some (non-lead, non-colouring) additive that prevents it oxidising and dulling over time perhaps. I think argon is often used (rather than air) in packaging for that purpose.
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb... ("[Consumer Reports] tested 126 products from McCormick, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and other popular brands. Almost a third had heavy metal levels high enough to raise health concerns")
You may (or not) be surprised that there's actually no general testing for heavy metals in US foods, even in categories seriously affected by them—neither by the FDA, nor the private sector.
> "Currently, about two dozen spice companies from 11 countries are subject to import alerts for lead contamination, which signal to regulators that they can detain those products. But that represents a fraction of the herbs and spices shipped to the U.S. In addition, the limited testing the FDA has done on spices has been focused on harmful bacteria, such as salmonella, not heavy metals, Ronholm says."
> "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."
CR does a disservice by not sharing their test levels, but I'm willing to bet my own health that "some concern" is multiple orders of magnitude less lead than what this npr article is about.
There are plenty of very mainstream industrial brands with all sorts of contamination.
> I don't think you need to worry buying it from a store that's imported it properly
This statement is not true.
Statements I didn't make like 'it has never ever been detected at any level in ...' may well not be true, but on the scale of risks to worry about I do not think this ranks.
No that's not true
"Well it's true that I think that."
You got me!
For other readers: OJFord doesn't know what s/he's talking about and you should look up tests for the specific brands for the specific spices you're looking to buy, especially if you have children and/or you use spices liberally in your food. The US does not systematically test spices for contamination like this and it does show up in high levels in the American spice supply. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like there are brands that are across-the-board good on contamination.
> Test 14 : Detection of lead chromate in turmeric whole > Testing Method: > * Add small quantity of turmeric whole in a transparent glass of water. > * Pure turmeric will not leave any colour. > * Adulterated turmeric appears to be bright in colour and leaves colour immediately in water.
In the same way that a lot of apples and the like will be buffed and then a soft wax coat applied so lots of apples are very shiny at the store.
if the turmeric is ground before sale i doubt there's any reason to use lead chromate.
If the turmeric is ground before sale, it's even easier to apply lead chromate and make the whole version "appear" healthier to the next processor who grinds it down and then sells the powder. If you buy it whole, then you can more easily see the color of the original root.
sorry, that's my mistake.
If the roots are wholesaled to the grinder, and the grinder doesn't know that bright means poisoned, they might prefer brighter looking roots. The ground tumeric will be poisoned.
Similarly, if the roots are poisoned and discriminating buyers aren't buying then because they're too bright, you can still grind it and sell it, and the color will blend.