Get the Lead Out!

[Briar Lee]

When I was a kid the school sold tasty nickel lead pencils with durable lead based paint, and we chewed em’ up!

There was lead in all the gasoline and all the paint.

But there wasn’t a bit of lead in my father’s gleaming, surgical room sanitary Grade A milk barn. To the maximum possible extent that milk went from a sanitized udder through sanitized twice daily lines to a stainless steel weldless canister and then to a huge refrigerated weldless stainless steel tank, and from there through the hatch by the door into a gleaming stainless steel milk hauler tank. And if any cow was sick or the milk tasted or smelled off it got dumped. Little kids drank homogenized and pasteurized milk at school and even sixty years ago every dairy farmer knew that.

Look what’s happened.

NPR

The Food and Drug Administration urged parents and caregivers late last month not to feed WanaBana apple cinnamon fruit puree pouches to children because they may contain high levels of lead, which can be particularly harmful to kids.


Now the agency is expanding its warning, saying the recall has grown to include products from two other brands: certain Schnucks cinnamon-flavored applesauce pouches and variety packs and certain Weis cinnamon applesauce pouches.

https://www.npr.org/2023/10/31/1209685022/wanabana-fruit-pouches-lead-fda

Xxxxx

What has happened to the morals of this country?

When hillbillies in daily laundered bib overalls changed each milking knew years ago not to endanger children how can we have degenerated to where the people who manage corporations making mostly laboratory derived counterfeit juice packets for little bitty kids don’t care about the safety of the product?

Or maybe I’m just getting old.

But ain’t nothing sacred?

 

[trouttimes]

Simple…money.

 

[yanoJL]

Simple…money.

Yep, always.

 

[verporchting]

Simple…money.

Nailed it. Greed over morals.

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

Lucky me - I've never chewed a pencil or drank out of a fruit pouch but love my milk from a cow! A 2% chance of 100% satisfaction!

 

[OzPiper]

Not too long ago a case of adulteration of baby milk formula - additives used to "stretch" the milk
Unconscionable greedy behaviour.

 

[chilllucky]

Getting the lead out of gasoline was the project of my father's entire career as a chemical engineer. He developed the patented processes to eliminate it at the refineries and reproduce through other means whatever lead had given to gas.

Once his company had it figured out, Dad went from country to country, refinery to refinery as nations around the world outlawed leaded gas. He started at that engineering firm in 1970, retired in 2015. The last country to make the switch was Algeria in 2021.

 

[Briar Lee]

As Paul Harvey used to say, here’s the rest of the story:

Xxxxx

Ten years ago we decided to invest in a land with great production characteristics located at the Ecuadorian Coast, in the Province of Esmeraldas.

In this beautiful land we plant SOURSOP also known as GUANABANA under all the requirements to become the Ecuadorian plantation of greater production and efficiency.

In the area where the plantation is located, women did not have decent job opportunities, this is how we decided, right from the beginning, to offer legal employment to single women and mothers.

After 10 years of work, we have evidenced a change in their lifes as they are now important contributors in their home.

About the same time, we started researching about the correct processing of guanabana and other exotic fruits with a clear objective in mind of maintaining all their organoleptic characteristics.
After years of research we produdly obtained a high quality product from its harvest to its end, delivering in an exceptional result:

Our products not only maintain the fruit’s organoleptic and nutritional characteristics, but also carry a production line with the highest standards in the market, evidenced in the certifications obtained year after year.

About Us | WanaBana

wanabana.com

Xxxxxx

In other words, some investment banker somewhere in a glass tower formed an offshore corporation to work women in Ecuador like rented mules on plantations for wages so low men would not accept them.

Then huge American grocery store sellers and Amazon peddle the product.

Greed.

 

[bullet08]

Any clear source of those drinks? Some drinks import fruits and other ingredients from overseas. It's possible the lead was in imported ingredients. But not checking the ingredients is fault of the final product. Money is a necessary evil.

 

[Briar Lee]

Any clear source of those drinks? Some drinks import fruits and other ingredients from overseas. It's possible the lead was in imported ingredients. But not checking the ingredients is fault of the final product. Money is a necessary evil.

I like money probably better than most folks.

The source of the fruits used was a plantation in Ecuador and maybe they were trying to help the local people by hiring “single women and mothers” to work the fields.

As the little boy said this is a complexicated problem. Before the plantation they had no work for anybody there, and afterwards the business model paid women low wages they surely were glad to get.

The lead likely came from the water source in the packing house, or from lead soldering in the tanks.

If some poor kids in the South hadn’t tested high for lead they’d still be selling their exotic fruit packets to little kids at Sam’s, Schucks, and Amazon.

 

[Gimlet]

Trivia fact of the day: the composer Handel is thought to have died and lost his sight because of lead poisoning. He loved his wine and fine foods, and as a German who emigrated to England, a lot of his favourite delicacies were imported from Europe. Lead was commonly used during the 18th century in food and drink production and food packaging. It was even added to imported wine before resale because it was believed it revitilised the flavour. Handel drank a lot of wine. And a lot of lead...

In fact, several prominent composers who were thought to have drank themselves to death (Beethoven and Liszt among them) may have succumbed to the lead in their drink rather than the alcohol:

:: Medical Discovery News :: - https://www.medicaldiscoverynews.com/shows/281-handel.html#:~:text=The%20latest%20study%20contends%20that,his%20binge%20eating%20and%20drinking.

It beggers belief that lead is still finding it's way into food today.

 

[Briar Lee]

Trivia fact of the day: the composer Handel is thought to have died and lost his sight because of lead poisoning. He loved his wine and fine foods, and as a German who emigrated to England, a lot of his favourite delicacies were imported from Europe. Lead was commonly used during the 18th century in food and drink production and food packaging. It was even added to imported wine before resale because it was believed it revitilised the flavour. Handel drank a lot of wine. And a lot of lead...

In fact, several prominent composers who were thought to have drank themselves to death (Beethoven and Liszt among them) may have succumbed to the lead in their drink rather than the alcohol:

:: Medical Discovery News :: - https://www.medicaldiscoverynews.com/shows/281-handel.html#:~:text=The%20latest%20study%20contends%20that,his%20binge%20eating%20and%20drinking.

It beggers belief that lead is still finding it's way into food today.

People forget the lessons our grandfathers learned the hard way.

Fluoride costs money, so cities quit fluoridating water. The wealthy children who daily brush with fluoride toothpaste aren’t hurt, but the poor children are.

A pampered housewife buys sea salt and bakery whole grain bread for her family. The kids don’t get iodine from the salt or a complex variety of nutrients from enriched bread.

The Amish sell raw milk to the public. Every child of a dairy farmer knows their father would not only have lost his dairy but have gone to jail for selling a drop of milk from the bulk tank to the public, and for good reason. Pasteurization was necessary to have a modern fluid milk industry. It should be unthinkable to drink raw milk.

But the worst is the normalization of importing processed foods, fruits, and vegetables from third world countries where workers are paid a tiny fraction of Americans and if there are any health inspectors they are corrupt and easily bribed.

One third of draftees in World War Two were rejected for malnutrition related health problems.

My father contracted histoplasmosis from working in chicken barns that left his lungs scarred for life.


I hate to be a grouchy old man missing the good old days where everyone believed in food safety and basic nutrition and cilantro was unheard of.

Salmonella outbreak more than doubles; CDC identifies potential source

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 279 people in 29 states have been sickened with salmonella; 26 are hospitalized.

www.usatoday.com

 

[Dave760]

A pampered housewife buys sea salt and bakery whole grain bread for her family. The kids don’t get iodine from the salt or a complex variety of nutrients from enriched bread.

One of my favorite stories about the history of food enrichment: Iodine was added to salt because over 30% of draftees from the upper-Midwest during WW1 were disqualified because they had goiters due to iodine deficiencies, so the draftees' necks were too large to fit into uniforms. Salt was ionized and no significant goiter problems were found in WW2 draftees.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Raise kids to eat real fruit, not this over processed bullshit!

 

[bullet08]

Raise kids to eat real fruit, not this over processed bullshit!

But I love a can of peaches in heavy syrup. Those were treats growing up.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

But I love a can of peaches in heavy syrup. Those were treats growing up.

Peaches and apples have always grown in our yards. But, nothing wrong with a can of something. I was thinking of these pop tart like things they tell consumers that it as good as fresh fruit, which they aren't. Fruit roll ups are closer to a jar of jelly than a fresh fruit.

 

[lraisch]

People forget the lessons our grandfathers learned the hard way.

Fluoride costs money, so cities quit fluoridating water. The wealthy children who daily brush with fluoride toothpaste aren’t hurt, but the poor children are.

A pampered housewife buys sea salt and bakery whole grain bread for her family. The kids don’t get iodine from the salt or a complex variety of nutrients from enriched bread.

The Amish sell raw milk to the public. Every child of a dairy farmer knows their father would not only have lost his dairy but have gone to jail for selling a drop of milk from the bulk tank to the public, and for good reason. Pasteurization was necessary to have a modern fluid milk industry. It should be unthinkable to drink raw milk.

But the worst is the normalization of importing processed foods, fruits, and vegetables from third world countries where workers are paid a tiny fraction of Americans and if there are any health inspectors they are corrupt and easily bribed.

One third of draftees in World War Two were rejected for malnutrition related health problems.

My father contracted histoplasmosis from working in chicken barns that left his lungs scarred for life.


I hate to be a grouchy old man missing the good old days where everyone believed in food safety and basic nutrition and cilantro was unheard of.

Salmonella outbreak more than doubles; CDC identifies potential source

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 279 people in 29 states have been sickened with salmonella; 26 are hospitalized.

www.usatoday.com

As the article states, American Greed;

The American Greed Report: Food safety measures face cuts in Trump budget

Measures to protect food safety may be on the chopping block under President Trump’s proposed federal budget, which would cut appropriations for the FDA.

www.cnbc.com

 

[Briar Lee]

Raise kids to eat real fruit, not this over processed bullshit!

What makes these things so evil is the appeal is to feed your little kid some strange exotic fruit harvested by women in Ecuador.

It’s like that damned romaine lettuce and cilantro and poppy seeds on whole wheat buns.

If they gave the kid Florida orange juice they’d not have a problem.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

What makes these things so evil is the appeal is to feed your little kid some strange exotic fruit harvested by women in Ecuador.

It’s like that damned romaine lettuce and cilantro and poppy seeds on whole wheat buns.

If they gave the kid Florida orange juice they’d not have a problem.

In the long term, kids grow up thinking that fruit is not to be eaten raw. Heck, I remember my first folding knife was given to me at age 6 so that i could eat apples like my granddad. I bet these mothers today would shit a brick if someone gave their kid a knife.

 

[anotherbob]

or it could be that lead is a naturally occurring thing and any amount is not considered safe for developing people (commonly called babies). Soil can easily contain some amount of lead. And that's the tip of the iceberg.
Leads fun your body thinks it's calcium and tries to use it for the things calcium does. And the body like reusing calcium and not getting rid of it.