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(NaturalNews) Natural News
has confirmed, via three different laboratories, the presence of significant
levels of the heavy metals tungsten, lead and cadmium in Garden of Life
"beyond organic" raw protein products. This has been confirmed across
multiple lots of Garden of Life Original, Vanilla and Chocolate Cacao and
Vanilla Spiced Chai. Tungsten has also been found and confirmed in Garden of
Life "Raw Fit" products.
Of all the products we have
tested at the Consumer Wellness Center
laboratories, I have never seen any product with higher levels of
tungsten, lead and cadmium. Garden of Life products we tested showed the
highest levels of heavy metals that we've ever seen across all foods including
junk foods, dairy products and fast food.
In one lot we tested
(E2694A), we found concentrations so high that:
• Lead intake from a single
serving exceeds California Prop 65 limits for dietary supplements by 2,700%.
• Cadmium intake from a
single serving exceeds California Prop 65 limits for dietary supplements by
over 1,000%.
• Tungsten concentrations
were so high that they exceeded the lead concentration by nearly 2,000%.
Keep in mind that lab
results may differ slightly from lab to lab, and product composition may also
vary slightly from one container to the next. So just to be sure of these
findings, I had Garden of Life products tested at three different
laboratories including a university laboratory which confirmed my findings.
Here are some of the
products in which we have confirmed significant concentrations of tungsten,
lead and cadmium:
Health Ranger the only food
scientist researching tungsten in dietary supplements
Presently, I am the only
food scientist in the world who is routinely testing for tungsten in foods and
dietary supplements in the interests of public health and safety. FDA, USDA and
EPA do not (yet) conduct these tests on a routine basis. No university is
engaged in this testing, and no non-profit is currently conducting such tests
either.
Natural News is the exclusive source where these results can
be found, and you can see all the results at Labs.NaturalNews.com\
PR Newswire informed Natural
News today that they were banning Natural News for life for releasing these
scientific findings. The blatant censorship of this information, in other
words, has already begun, and intense efforts will be made by powerful
corporations to prevent you from learning these scientifically-validated facts
about the foods and dietary supplements you are eating.
Multiple lots and products
from Garden of Life confirmed to contain significant concentrations of
tungsten, lead and cadmium
Laboratory tests conducted
at the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center have now confirmed the presence of
significant levels of tungsten, lead and cadmium in: (click each link to see
the actual results from our lab testing)
Significant concentrations
of the heavy metal tungsten have also been confirmed in Garden of Life
"Raw Fit" products.
Brown rice protein used by
Garden of Life believed to come from SE Asia
According to my sources, the
brown rice protein used by Garden of Life for their protein products is grown
in several different countries in SE Asia. I was not able to confirm whether
this includes China, a nation which is now infamous for producing and exporting
contaminated foods.
The brown rice protein is
listed on Garden of Life products as, "organic sprouted brown rice
protein," and Garden of Life labels claim the material is "raw"
-- a term which is not defined by the FDA and which is loosely thrown around the
natural products industry. There are currently no regulations regarding what
materials can be labeled "raw" or "sprouted."
I contacted Garden of Life
to make the company aware of these issues on or about January 30, 2014. In the
time since then, Garden of Life has responded with serious concern and told me
they were: 1) Sending samples of their products to several different labs for
additional testing. 2) Contracting with a food science organization in an
attempt to determine whether tungsten posed a safety concern in the opinion of
these scientists.
In the week or so since
then, I have been in touch with Garden of Life and have asked for an
on-the-record statement from them regarding these findings. I also informed
them I had a moral obligation to go public with these findings in the public
interest, and that I would do so in the immediate future. I also urged them
to issue a voluntary recall of all their protein products in the interests
of public safety.
So far, Garden of Life has
not informed me of any on-the-record statement, decision or course of action
regarding these issues. Once we hear from Garden of Life, we will of course
share that information with Natural News readers.
Findings appear to be limited
to brown rice protein ingredients
Based on my food science
research, this issue of tungsten, lead and cadmium at significant
concentrations appears to be limited only to the brown rice protein used by
Garden of Life in their product formulations.
We have tested several other
Garden of Life products (results to be published soon) and have not found
tungsten in those products.
I am urging Natural News
readers not to leap to the inaccurate conclusion that all Garden of Life
products contain these heavy metals in such concentrations. However, all Garden
of Life RAW Protein products must now be treated with caution because every lot
of the protein we have tested has revealed significant concentrations of
tungsten, lead and cadmium.
By comparison, we recently
tested One World Whey protein
and found it to contain virtually zero lead, cadmium and tungsten.
Here's the chart of our
findings with Garden of Life RAW Protein: (article continues below...)
What are the effects of eating
significant amounts of tungsten?
Tungsten is an industrial
heavy metal with no known nutritive applications. According to a Public Health Statement at the
Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry:
• "Tungsten and its
alloys are used as light bulb filaments, as the part of x-ray tubes where
x-rays are formed, as a catalyst to speed up chemical reactions, as a component
of steel in high-speed tools, in turbine blades, in phonographic needles, as
welding electrodes, as gyroscope wheels, as counterbalance and fishing weights,
in darts, and in golf club components."
• "Tungsten compounds
have caused breathing problems and changed behavior in some animals given very
large amounts of tungsten compounds..."
Tungsten is also used to
make bullet weights as shown in the image on the right.
Tungsten linked to a doubling
of stroke risk
According to a study of
8,600 Americans published in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE
(Jessica Tyrrell, Tamara S. Galloway, Ghada Abo-Zaid, David Melzer, Michael H.
Depledge, Nicholas J. Osborne. High Urinary Tungsten Concentration Is
Associated with Stroke in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
1999-2010. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (11): e77546 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0077546),
increased tungsten exposure is linked to increased stroke risk.
As stated in the abstract of
the published science paper:
In recent years there has
been an exponential increase in tungsten demand, potentially increasing human
exposure to the metal. Currently, the toxicology of tungsten is poorly
understood, but mounting evidence suggests that both the elemental metal and
its alloys have cytotoxic effects. Here, we investigate the association between
tungsten and cardiovascular disease (CVD) or stroke using six waves of the
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).
The conclusions of the paper
were as follows:
Elevated tungsten
concentrations were strongly associated with an increase in the prevalence of
stroke, independent of typical risk factors (Odds Ratio (OR): 1.66, 95%
Confidence Interval (95% CI): 1.17, 2.34). The association between tungsten and
stroke in the young age category was still evident (OR: 2.17, 95% CI: 1.33,
3.53).
This study represents the
most comprehensive analysis of the human health effects of tungsten to date.
Individuals with higher urinary tungsten concentrations have double the odds of
reported stroke. We hypothesize that the pathological pathway resulting from
tungsten exposure may involve oxidative stress.
The following chart shows
the increased stroke risk found by the study authors to be associated with
tungsten intake:
Tungsten called "an
emerging chemical toxicant" capable of "disruption of biochemical
pathways"
The study goes on to
describe how tungsten may become an environmental contaminant affecting
waterways:
...tungsten should be
considered as an emerging chemical toxicant of concern, [2] as its chemical
stability in the environment has been questioned. When soil pH falls, tungsten
becomes increasingly soluble and can leach into underlying aquifers [3]. With
production of tungsten steadily rising (72,000 tons produced last year compared
to 40,000 tons in 2002 [4]), and use becoming more widespread, the potential
for tungsten to further contaminate the environment is increasing. Tungsten is
known to be capable of biological interaction and disruption of biochemical
pathways and therefore the human health impact must be considered.
The brown rice protein used
in Garden of Life products is derived from rice plants which consume an
enormous amount of water during growing. It is well established that heavy
metals found in water used to irrigate rice plants may be taken up by those
plants and incorporated into the plant material. Rice, for example, has been
studied by Consumer Reports and many rice products have been found to contain levels of arsenic
so high that Consumer Reports urged the FDA to set federal limits on
the contaminant.
Yet the arsenic found by
Consumer Reports is small compared to the tungsten we have found in Garden of
Life RAW Protein products. For example, Consumer Reports arsenic results show
concentrations of around 50 - 500 ppb. Yet the tungsten concentrations we have
found in Garden of Life RAW Protein products, on the other hand, range from
around 2,000 ppb - 10,000 ppb.
In other words, we are
finding tungsten concentrations at up to 2,000% higher than arsenic
found by Consumer Reports in rice products.
Government regulators have
virtually no limits on tungsten, lead, cadmium or other heavy metals
Neither the FDA nor the USDA
has any published limits concerning tungsten or any other heavy metal in
protein products. Protein products in the USA can be "USDA certified
organic" and yet contain virtually unlimited levels of lead, cadmium,
mercury, tungsten, arsenic or other toxic substances.
All the Garden of Life
products tested in this investigation were USDA certified organic and non-GMO
Project Verified, further demonstrating surprising gaps in the USDA organic
certification process -- a process which involves no testing whatsoever
of the end products which are "certified organic."
Technically, farmers could
irrigate their crops with industrial waste water that's heavily contaminated
with mercury, lead or other heavy metals... and still have those crops
certified organic by the USDA and sold with the USDA Organic seal.
Misleading claims by Garden of
Life?
Garden of Life describes
their products as "beyond organic," USDA certified organic and
Non-GMO Project Verified. These claims seem to imply that the product is
somehow not only cleaner than conventionally-raised protein products but even
cleaner than organic products.
Yet my investigation found
this to simply be untrue. For example, our tests of One World Whey Protein
products found the Vanilla and Strawberry products contained zero
lead, zero cadmium and zero tungsten.
Similarly, a Sproutein protein product
from Sprout Living was found to contain just 60 ppb of Cadmium and 59 ppb of
Lead.
Compared to this sprout
protein product, Garden of Life Raw Protein is almost 1,000% higher in lead and
over 3,000% higher in cadmium.
Garden of Life's claim that
their RAW Protein products are "beyond organic" seems to be based on
marketing hype rather than scientific fact. Although the term
"organic" is heavily regulated by the USDA, the phrase, "beyond
organic" appears to have been dreamed up by Garden of Life's marketing
team with no basis in regulatory compliance. Nowhere has Garden of Life defined
what "beyond organic" really means, and to see this phrase applied to
a line of products currently found to contain the highest levels of heavy
metals we've ever found in any foods we've tested is not just concerning...
it's "beyond concerning."
If you are eating Garden of
Life RAW Protein products, you may be eating significant quantities of lead,
cadmium and tungsten
The bottom line in this
investigation is that every Garden of Life RAW Protein product we have tested
so far has been found to contain significant levels of lead, cadmium and
tungsten -- all heavy metals with scientifically-validated toxic effects on
human biology when consumed in high enough concentrations.
"It is clear from many
decades of research on heavy metal toxicity that lead, cadmium, nickel,
aluminum, arsenic ...are being used more and more in industry in the production
of materials, batteries, electronics and more," Dr. Allen Green M.D. told
Natural News. Dr. Green is the President of the Board of Directors of the American
College for Advancement in Medicine, a network of integrative
medicine practitioners, physicians and doctors who specialize in removing heavy
metals from the body. He is also the founder of the Center for Optimum Health in Los Angeles, California.
"There's nothing good
about these metals in living systems," Dr. Green continues. "They are
toxic, whether you're a single-celled organism or a complex organism like
humans. Metals tend to accumulate in us through our lifetimes. As we get
exposed, they tend to stick in our body. Although some might leave [the body],
for many people the continued exposure outweighs the removal by the body. So therefore
we have an increasing burden by the body. Many of these metals tend to be fat
soluble, so they settle in fatty tissue, including brain and nerve tissue. That
might also explain why these metals so often cause neurologic damage, because
the content of brain and nerve tissue is very high in fat. We have pretty good
evidence that metals like cadmium, lead and mercury increase risk for various
types of cancers. They affect our cells' mitochondria, which is where energy
production takes place in the cell, so it's not unusual for many physiologic
processes to be affected by these metals."
What if raw, organic vegan
proteins actually contributed to your heavy metals burden?
What's especially concerning
about this is that people who buy organic vegetarian, vegan or "raw"
products are generally the very same people who go to great lengths to avoid
contaminants in food such as hormones in milk, pesticides in fresh product, BPA
in plastic packaging and so on. Health-conscious consumers have generally come
to trust the Garden of Life brand as being a "cleaner" brand of
dietary supplements and superfoods. Yet it now appears that Garden of Life has
failed to protect its own customers from some of the most concerning things
that people seek to avoid in foods: lead, cadmium and even the industrial heavy
metal tungsten.
At this point, an informed
consumer must begin to question the in-house quality control process of the
Garden of Life company and its many products. The question must be asked:
"Why did we hear about this first from Natural News and the Health Ranger
instead of from Garden of Life?"
In other words, why wasn't
Garden of Life testing their own products for all these metals before placing
them on retail shelves at health food retailers like Whole Foods? Or if Garden
of Life was testing their products, why did they think these levels of heavy
metals were okay for their customers to consume? And how exactly did the
company justify it's "beyond organic" claim if it knew about these
levels of heavy metals? I suspect the company probably was not aware of the
tungsten found in its products, but it almost certainly had to be aware of the
lead and cadmium levels, as those are commonly tested by all food science labs.
The Garden of Life website
promotes these RAW Protein products with marketing text such as:
"It's not only what RAW
Protein contains, it's also about what it doesn't contain -- there are no
fillers, no artificial flavors and no synthetic ingredients and it's
gluten-free and dairy-free." [Note that it does not say no lead, no
cadmium and no tungsten.]
"So for those looking
for highly nutritious, nutrient-dense, easily digestible, high quality protein
nutrition, look no further than RAW Protein from Garden of Life."
Surely, we all have many
questions for Jordan Rubin and Garden of Life right now. [Update: Jordan Rubin
has contacted Natural News and informed us that "[he] resigned from Garden
of Life in August of 2013. Since 2010, Jordan has had no involvement in the
process of procurement or testing of raw materials used in Garden of Life
products."]
We can only hope the company
takes responsibility for this and issues a voluntary recall as a
starting point for its action plan. Obviously, the company also needs to
enhance its in-house quality control measures. There's also the lingering
question of how, exactly, are consumers supposed to now remove all the tungsten
from their bodies?
ACAM physicians and
practitioners are experts at heavy metals removal from the body, so I
personally urge any Natural News reader who is concerned about heavy metals
detoxification to find an ACAM-certified practitioner in their local area by
calling 1-800-LEAD-OUT or visiting www.ACAM.org
Action items regarding Garden
of Life Raw Protein products
1) If you are currently
consuming any of the proteins mentioned here, and you wish to halt your
exposure to dietary tungsten, stop eating these products immediately.
2) You may wish to return
these products to the store where you purchased them. Bring a copy of this
article and explain that these products may contain tungsten, a heavy metal
linked to increased stroke risk, as well as significantly levels of cadmium and
lead.
3) Contact Garden of Life
directly and ask that they improve their in-house quality control measures to
ensure they never again sell products containing such levels of heavy metals to
their customers:
Garden of Life "contact
us" link:
4) Share this article
with everyone you know. The effort that went into this investigation and
this story was done entirely in the public interest. Because we are using
scientific methods to investigate the food supply and warn the public, we are
being heavily censored by PR Newswire and other media outlets which operate in
collusion with corporate interests. Please recognize how rare it is that
somebody does something these days solely because it is the right thing to
do. You can help support our ongoing consumer watchdog efforts by sharing
this story and related elements:
Share the lab results page
for Garden of Life protein products:
Share the chart showing the
lab test results:
Share the video explaining
all this at:
Or watch it here:
Sources for this article
include:
Heavy metal photos courtesy of PeriodicTable.com
High Urinary Tungsten Concentration Is Associated with Stroke in
the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2010. PLoS ONE, 2013
Public Health Statement regarding Tungsten at the Agency for Toxic
Substances & Disease Registry
Tungsten, lead and cadmium laboratory results
Consumer Reports - Arsenic In Your Rice
The American College for Advancement in Medicine
Click on link at top of page to view video:
2 comments:
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