Why am I seeing a Prop 65 warning on my superfoods?
California’s Proposition 65 is a well-intentioned, but poorly-written law that has been abused by exploitative lawyers who rake in millions upon millions of dollars in lawsuits and settlements (including against Sunfood), with little to no benefit for California residents. Many of the natural foods companies that find themselves under attack are forced to include this scary warning on all offending products:
“WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer, or birth defects or other reproductive harm.”
You'll find this warning on food products, airplanes, coffee shops, and if you look hard enough, just about everywhere.
The law requires that producers, manufacturers and retailers of certain products provide customers with special warnings for products which contain chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm, if the consumer is exposed to those chemicals in concentrations above certain thresholds. That list now contains over 800 chemicals, and the threshold is whenever exposure could cause more than “one excess case of cancer in 100,000 individuals exposed to the chemical over a 70-year lifetime.”
That's a little extreme, but not too bad, right? Except that there is absolutely no proof that products that carry this warning in fact cause cancer or birth defects. California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment clearly states that a “Proposition 65 warning does not necessarily mean a product is in violation of any product-safety standards or requirements.” In fact, all of Sunfood's products exceed standards set by the FDA, EPA, WHO and the EU.
Even more inexplicable, and the most important factor concerning superfoods, is that there is no distinction drawn between "chemicals" naturally found in soil and crops, and the chemicals found in something like airplane exhaust fumes.
This result in foods which naturally, and beneficially contain a "chemical" (or mineral) being treated exactly the same as a mined, concentrated, industrialized product like batteries or paint. Of course it is dangerous and unhealthy to consume the toxic chemicals found in batteries and paint, but there is a HUGE difference when it comes to chemicals that are organically bound to plants.
According to Prop 65, consuming Goji Berries has the same health risks as leaky batteries.
Bound Vs. Unbound Chemicals / Natural Vs. Man-made
“Chemicals” like lead and cadmium are as natural as the iron, calcium, selenium, and other minerals you get from superfoods, and because they are integrated into the tissues of these plant foods (aka “bound”), your body absorbs and disposes of them very differently from “unbound” man-made chemicals.
In plant-based foods that contain naturally-occurring or “bound” lead, only 20% of this lead is actually absorbed because the rest is chelated in the fibers and tissue of the plant, and pass out of the body undigested. Similarly, for any naturally-occurring “bound” cadmium in plant-based foods, only about 4% is actually absorbed.
