Denmark is launching a campaign to advise parents against giving their children rice products. The starch would contain dangerous doses of arsenic.
Rice dangerous for children. In any case, this is the conclusion of the Danish health authorities, who are warning this week on the concentration of arsenic in the famous starch. Denmark has just launched a communication campaign to advise parents against giving their children rice products, such as puffed rice cereals, rice cakes or rice milk.
Rice naturally contains inorganic arsenic, and “people who consume foods that contain it on a daily basis are at increased risk of cancer,” Danish authorities said on their website. Asked by why actor, the nutritionist doctor Patrick Serog adds, “in high doses, arsenic is a well-known human carcinogen. The risks involved are those of lung, skin or bladder cancer.
And Dr. Serog clarified that these risks are further increased in children. “Babies are obviously the most sensitive to these arsenic levels, simply because they have a less dense skin surface than adults. The arsenic concentrations are therefore immediately higher in relation to the level of body weight ”.
In addition, Dr. Patrick Serog also specifies that “the detoxification capacities of babies are less important than that of adults. A baby is not mature, so he does not have enzymatic and hepatic possibilities as important as that of an adult ”.
For the Danish authorities, these are preventive measures; investigations are underway to demonstrate the proven dangerousness of rice. Other rice-based products will be studied to determine their inorganic arsenic concentration, such as, for example, rice-based noodles. The results of the analyzes are expected to be published in July. For its part, the American food safety authorities (FDA) announced last September that tests would soon be carried out to assess the dangerousness of rice.
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