From her website:
Consumer Reports recently made headlines with a new study showing high levels of lead in many protein powders and shakes. The average amount of lead detected had increased from a previous study done 15 years ago. It’s ironic that this particular wellness fad, like many others, may actually be compromising people’s health.
Ultimately, this cartoon is about more than just one scientific finding. If we look at what happened with COVID, or childhood vaccinations, or even climate change or January 6, we can see how easily conventional wisdom gets turned on its head by bad faith actors, especially in a media environment lacking responsible editors.
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This is so scary on point considering vaccines and the wierd tylenol thing.
Lead is one of the softest metals, its for pussies. Hard men consume tungsten carbide.
And diamonds, keeps me rock hard
It’s ironic that this particular wellness fad, like many others, may actually be compromising people’s health.
I mean, having participated in this, there’s a reason and motive behind it : you need increased protein to maintain muscle mass while losing weight. There are some manners of dieting which includes being careful with your macronutrients (proportion of carbs, fats and proteins), and if you’re decreasing your calories ingested, it becomes more and more challenging to feel full, get adequate protein and not go over your calorie limit.
Plus, the point in the comic is the lead is bad, not the ingestion of protein, which has nothing to do with the “fad”
That’s doubly true for people with vegan or even vegetarian diets. There are a lot of vegetable protein sources, but not many are convenient if you’re counting calories and want something low-cal and relatively cheap to replace a meal without much effort.
Also, it’s weird to call it a fad. I remember seeing infomercials for protein shakes and pyramid schemes involving them since I was a kid.
Also, it’s weird to call it a fad. I remember seeing infomercials for protein shakes and pyramid schemes involving them since I was a kid.
I think it’s because people are doing it randomly, or that it’s less a specialised product and being further adapted by mainstream brands and shops. I don’t think it’s a fad, but I’m trying to just communicate with that guy
You should know that the Consumer Reports article was a bit of a nothingburger and/or a classic State of California-style overreaction. Even one of the worst products on it (Huel Black) had 7 µg of lead per 100 g of product, which is equal to 0.07 mg/kg, which is less than half of what the EU considers a safe level for e.g. cereals and pulses (0.20 mg/kg).
The assertion that there is no safe level of lead may or may not be true, but our natural environment even without human pollution has lead in it, which makes its way up the food chain into our foods, and ingesting it is unavoidable unless you only eat produce grown in a hydroponics lab or something. As a result, humans have some natural resistance to the toxicity of lead.
The CR report is actually very measured in its takeaway from this:
There’s no reason to panic if you’ve been using any of the products we tested, or if you take protein supplements generally. Many of these powders are fine to have occasionally, and even those with the highest lead levels are far below the concentration needed to cause immediate harm. That said, because most people don’t actually need protein supplements—nutrition experts say the average American already gets plenty—it makes sense to ask whether these products are worth the added exposure.
It’s not that protein shakes will give you immediate lead poisoning; rather, the level of exposure is just high enough that chugging these things daily might be a problem, especially considering the negligible benefit. IMO this is a report that provides sane and relevant health advice for a very popular product.
My biggest issue with it is actually this part from a paragraph where they bemoan the fact that food safety authorities are doing nothing about this issue:
The maximum amount of lead permitted in food supplements according to the EFSA is 3,000 ppb (3 mg/kg), a level that CR’s food safety experts say is far too high to be health protective.
This is technically true and 3 mg/kg is indeed insanely high and obviously intended for like vitamin pills and such with serving sizes measured in single-digit grams. However, the EFSA has a ton of lead-related regulations, and not all shake powders fall under the food supplements category. I do not have any statistics at hand of how common it is for protein powders to label themselves as food supplements rather than as some kind of composite dish, but I do have one anecdote.
After I read that CR article I checked what the situation was for my shake powder of choice (Queal, a meal replacement product rather than a protein powder per se), and it is not considered a food supplement. Instead it’s some kind of composite food product (I quote: 2106.9098.49 (Generic Miscellaneous edible preparations Food preparations not elsewhere specified or included)), which under EFSA rules has to test both the raw ingredients as well as the final product, and the final product basically isn’t permitted to introduce extra lead that wasn’t there in the raw ingredients, though the actual regulation is quite complicated in this regard.
i wouldn’t necessarily say its a nothingburger but it is hard to judge these things when lead contamination is inevitable
still I think it’s more useful to look at average daily lead intake and compare to that baseline instead of arbitrary limits especially as you’ve noted there is no way to set a “safe” level of lead exposure
for adults this comes out to about 0.3μg of kg body weight - so at 70kg that’s 21μg of lead which means that adding an extra 7μg per day via that huel protein increases your lead intake by a third - so it’s up to you to decide if you think eating 30% more lead just for the gainz is worth it - i personally don’t (especially when you can find powders that don’t so this)
That protein shake will probably replace some other kind of food you would otherwise eaten and which will naturally contain some amount of lead, so it’s not just a straight up increase on top of your normal daily intake.
But yeah, you’re right, avoiding the ones with unusually high lead levels like the Huel powder obviously makes sense.
The way the CR report presents their data is super terrible – they present it as a per-serving percentage of their arbitrarily-defined concern level of 0.5 µg/day (which by the way is 2.5% of that 21 µg average you cite; unrealistically low) and the serving size they use is whatever the American label of the product reports (serving sizes on American back labels are notoriously arbitrary).
Anyway, the most sensible number I can find in their article is this:
The average concentration of lead in the chocolate- and vanilla-flavored products we tested was 17.3 parts per billion and 15.4 ppb, respectively.
17 ppb is 0.017 mg/kg, which is far below what the EU considers the maximum safe level for any food category, except for infant formula where it’s only just below the maximum of 0.020 mg/kg (and exceeds the liquid infant formula max of 0.010 mg/kg, but then these are mostly powders).
According to the report you linked section 3.1.2, 17 µg/kg seems to be pretty closely in line with the average for general foodstuffs. For example dairy has a median lower bound of 2.50 and upper bound of 9.77 µg/kg, while cereals and grains are 11.0 to 28.2.
One funny thing in that EFSA report is this line:
Products for non-standard diets, food imitates and food supplements 8691 55 272 298 874 874
which shows that food supplements (which presumably includes protein powders, but will also include a lot of other stuff like vitamin pills) had, in that study, a median lead content of LB 272 µg/kg and UB 298 µg/kg.
Yeah, a lot of fearmongering with this. From what I understand, that “safe” amount in the article was just decided arbitrarily.
This does make sense, but idk if I honestly want to be the person who wants to find out if it may or may not be true. From my understanding, lead doesn’t leave your body and is cumulative over life, and after it reaches higher levels, you will see side effects, which include cognitive decline. To me this kind of product isn’t something you just eat once in a while, you are probably consuming a lot of it every day for months if not more. So even if it comes in at lower levels, wouldn’t the frequency at which its taken account for it being more dangerous over time compared to foods that have traces but you only eat once every few weeks?
Metal contamination in food is a double edged sword as well: if you live in America it’s unlikely you’d ever need selenium supplementation, in Europe there’s basically none in the soil so it’s not impossible to be deficient.
With RFKjr in charge of health and human services, is this even satire? Or is it a spoiler?
Can’t write leader without lead. Coincidence? Think not.
Biden may have been lead, but the Mango Mussolini is leader.
