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Organic & Free Range More Toxic (in Belgium)?

Brussels Times Article

You may have heard about the study that was all over the news here in Belgium where a medical doctor has compared toxin levels in teenagers eating mainly free-range and organic dairy, meat, eggs and produce and teenagers who didn’t consume these products. 


The study found that the teenagers who consumed free-range and organic products had much higher toxin levels of lead, arsenic, PCB118 and PCB153, the PFAS substance PFNA, various other chlorine compounds and glyphosate. The problem seems to be greatest in eggs, dairy and seeds and nuts – much more than in potatoes, vegetables or fruit.


Now this is actually not surprising if you look at the culprit here: CONTAMINATED SOILS!!!

Free-range chicken and other animals are outside and graze and eat from the soil whereas cage held animals are not exposed to that at all. 


And then yes, it’s also logical that the toxins are more prevalent in products that contain fat because that’s how toxins bind also in your own body: in your fat cells. - That’s why it can be really hard to lose weight when you have high toxin levels, because your body doesn’t want to let go of the fat in order to protect you from setting free those toxins. 


Now is it healthier to eat eggs from caged hens or meat or dairy from industrially held and fed animals?

I still don’t think so because these animals are not healthy and bring other toxins into your body like hormones, antibiotics, inflammatory fat and poor nutrient density. Another problem I see with this is that you’re actually supporting the wrong industry here and turning your back to farmers who are trying to raise animals respectfully and support our environment. 


Sadly it seems that you have to choose your poison…

One solution of course could be to not buy Belgian products, but the question is if soils are really in a better state elsewhere? Questionable if you ask me…


So the only thing that we can actually do to protect ourselves from these toxins in this toxic world is to DETOX ON A REGULAR BASIS…


Note that the study was based on teenagers filling in questionnaires about dietary habits so we could not be sure what they actually consumed. Also, the products or foods themselves have not been examined for contamination. Belgium's Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain (FASFC) is assuring that all foods are examined the same and that the risks to public health are limited. 


The base line:

Nick Van Larebeke was certainly right in wanting to further investigate elevated toxin levels he had seen before the study and while we don't know now if the results he saw are mainly speaking for the region these young adults are living in or if they were consuming exclusively products from Belgium. It would certainly be interesting to examine foods themselves and measure their toxin levels, because also breastfeeding could be a high contributor to this picture.

Still it's not the first time we hear these kind of news: just recently they talked about not eating eggs from free range hens that are living on apartment roofs in Paris and are highly contaminated due to the air pollution in Paris.


Polluted air and soils are definitely the baseline problem here and there we are yet postponing again the banning of glyphosate for another couple of years.


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