I am an old fart and grew up with lead soldered copper plumbing and leaded gas as well as a full mouth of amalgam fillings. My wife is a health food fan and 'toxin' vigilante who had us doing hair tests for metal exposure. My teen son and I tested higher on lead when we were handling .22 ammo and reloading pistol rounds. Once we switched to nitrile gloves for handling rounds and loading magazines, the hair lead level dropped. I was far less worried about the issue than my wife, and even so the lead levels were not high. There is far too much fear about low levels of exposure. I live in an area with a close to the limit Arsenic exposure in the drinking water - natural background. I am not worried, my wife is. We do a lot of water filtration.
This does not bode well for the very popular ready-made protein drinks. If the primary source of lead is from contaminated soil, it brings all plant-based food into question.
It would be kind of cool if consumers normalized doing their own testing.
Get a group together around a batch #, everyone contributes a share of whatever it costs to get tested, and one person is randomly selected to send their product to a lab.
Opens up to competitor sabotage but maybe there are ways around it.
As a person who takes in 2 scoops per day of vegan protein, your analysis is much appreciated! I believe that all food producers should be required to submit their products for testing. I have large doubts that the selenium levels claimed in brazil nuts are real, but that doesnt stop them from listing it on labels!
One possible reason for variance: sensitivity of the testing equipment. If a limit is say 1 part per billion, find a test that's at least sensitive to 10 parts per billion. And like you observed, ignore that the sample is within safe limits.
thoughts on the viability of using rosuvastatin to aid in prevention of Dementia/AD while mitigating any potential cognitive concerns from lipophilic statins? -- Cholesterol-lowering drug targets reduce risk of dementia: Mendelian randomization and meta-analyses of 1 million individuals (2025 Oct) 10.1002/alz.70638
>The fact that we don’t have rapid and effective ways to communicate correct facts about nutrition alone could explain 20% of premature deaths
Seems to overstate the findings in the link, which basically amount to just guessing.
To cite it:
>I think nutrition misinformation impacts average eating habits to some degree, but I don’t think it’s one of the main reasons most people eat a suboptimal diet. Obvious factors like cost, convenience, taste, habits, and culture are probably more important for most people. Therefore, I take 1% as my lower bound and 20% as my upper bound.
> California’s Proposition 65, which in lead’s case, involves taking exposure levels demonstrably associated with risk and arbitrarily dividing by 1,000 to give consumers a risk buffer.
Although the 1000× number is indeed arbitrary, might it make sense specifically in food contexts? Since if you take one serving at every meal, you’ll get to about 1000 servings in a year?
I actually wouldn't trust either the CR result or the NSF result. CR for the reasons you've pointed out, but NSF because they received their sample directly from the manufacturer. This is a common enough way for manufacturers to cheat that CR has a long-standing practice of buying reviewed products at retail so that no one is the wiser. (They also used to have a policy of always paying cash, but they started to change that policy when it turned out they were the only people showing up to car dealerships with briefcases full of cash.)
Though that of course suggests an alternative failure mode. If CR bought all of these protein powders on Amazon, they could have easily received contaminated counterfeits.
Blood lead levels not a great way to measure long term lead exposure as the body makes an effort to sequester heavy metals in other tissues. HTMA from TEI or ADL repeated a few times over a couple of years would be better. And even then it may not show unless you are taking adequate amounts of minerals. Normally extra zinc / silica / selenium / magnesium
I think their usage of old European values is bad, but their presentation of gold standard test results is good. I think their bashing of Prop 65 and their note that they are within standards in all tests is also good. I think it's bad that they don't cite modern U.S. exposure figures though, since consuming more than one serving of Huel still puts the typical American pretty close to the 90th percentile of exposure.
something something betteridge's law of headlines tells me everything lol
I am an old fart and grew up with lead soldered copper plumbing and leaded gas as well as a full mouth of amalgam fillings. My wife is a health food fan and 'toxin' vigilante who had us doing hair tests for metal exposure. My teen son and I tested higher on lead when we were handling .22 ammo and reloading pistol rounds. Once we switched to nitrile gloves for handling rounds and loading magazines, the hair lead level dropped. I was far less worried about the issue than my wife, and even so the lead levels were not high. There is far too much fear about low levels of exposure. I live in an area with a close to the limit Arsenic exposure in the drinking water - natural background. I am not worried, my wife is. We do a lot of water filtration.
Thanks for the informative article.
This does not bode well for the very popular ready-made protein drinks. If the primary source of lead is from contaminated soil, it brings all plant-based food into question.
It would be kind of cool if consumers normalized doing their own testing.
Get a group together around a batch #, everyone contributes a share of whatever it costs to get tested, and one person is randomly selected to send their product to a lab.
Opens up to competitor sabotage but maybe there are ways around it.
As a person who takes in 2 scoops per day of vegan protein, your analysis is much appreciated! I believe that all food producers should be required to submit their products for testing. I have large doubts that the selenium levels claimed in brazil nuts are real, but that doesnt stop them from listing it on labels!
One possible reason for variance: sensitivity of the testing equipment. If a limit is say 1 part per billion, find a test that's at least sensitive to 10 parts per billion. And like you observed, ignore that the sample is within safe limits.
thoughts on the viability of using rosuvastatin to aid in prevention of Dementia/AD while mitigating any potential cognitive concerns from lipophilic statins? -- Cholesterol-lowering drug targets reduce risk of dementia: Mendelian randomization and meta-analyses of 1 million individuals (2025 Oct) 10.1002/alz.70638
Regarding your most recent post, which limits comments to paid subscribers: https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/people-listen-to-public-health-authorities, the importance of accurate nutritional advice is self-evident, but the line:
>The fact that we don’t have rapid and effective ways to communicate correct facts about nutrition alone could explain 20% of premature deaths
Seems to overstate the findings in the link, which basically amount to just guessing.
To cite it:
>I think nutrition misinformation impacts average eating habits to some degree, but I don’t think it’s one of the main reasons most people eat a suboptimal diet. Obvious factors like cost, convenience, taste, habits, and culture are probably more important for most people. Therefore, I take 1% as my lower bound and 20% as my upper bound.
> California’s Proposition 65, which in lead’s case, involves taking exposure levels demonstrably associated with risk and arbitrarily dividing by 1,000 to give consumers a risk buffer.
Although the 1000× number is indeed arbitrary, might it make sense specifically in food contexts? Since if you take one serving at every meal, you’ll get to about 1000 servings in a year?
No, the guidelines are for daily consumption.
> given that lead exposure has declined so much, if it had big effects, the world should’ve changed in a lot of very obvious ways
** gestures broadly at everything **
I actually wouldn't trust either the CR result or the NSF result. CR for the reasons you've pointed out, but NSF because they received their sample directly from the manufacturer. This is a common enough way for manufacturers to cheat that CR has a long-standing practice of buying reviewed products at retail so that no one is the wiser. (They also used to have a policy of always paying cash, but they started to change that policy when it turned out they were the only people showing up to car dealerships with briefcases full of cash.)
Though that of course suggests an alternative failure mode. If CR bought all of these protein powders on Amazon, they could have easily received contaminated counterfeits.
Blood lead levels not a great way to measure long term lead exposure as the body makes an effort to sequester heavy metals in other tissues. HTMA from TEI or ADL repeated a few times over a couple of years would be better. And even then it may not show unless you are taking adequate amounts of minerals. Normally extra zinc / silica / selenium / magnesium
Huel’s response: https://uk.huel.com/pages/heavy-metals-in-protein-powders
Yeah, I cited their testing.
I think their usage of old European values is bad, but their presentation of gold standard test results is good. I think their bashing of Prop 65 and their note that they are within standards in all tests is also good. I think it's bad that they don't cite modern U.S. exposure figures though, since consuming more than one serving of Huel still puts the typical American pretty close to the 90th percentile of exposure.
Thanks for your reply!