Whey Protein Powder Contaminated?

The FDA announced it had started testing some imports of Chinese dairy products coming into U.S. ports after the news hit about the way that milk products in China had been contaminated with melamine.

But we all know that the FDA has been gutted by the Bush administration and does not begin to have the resources needed to test the avalanche of foods coming in from China. Not only that, but even when the FDA samples foods coming into our ports, the paperwork is so sloppy that if a food is tested and rejected, the shipper need only take it to a second port. There is often no paper trail showing it has failed inspection elsewhere.

And that doesn't even get into the issue of how the FDA only tests a tiny sample of shipments.

Why should this scare you? Because we don't know the extent to which Chinese dairy products filled with melamine, a toxic plastic, have permeated out own food supply.

All we know is this: large food manufacturers who are buying millions of pounds of powdered milk, casein and whey to put into everything from bread, to cookies, to candy, to sauces on frozen vegetables are very likely to have been buying these products from the Chinese factories because the Chinese are able to offer much lower prices than competitors.

Now that we are learning WHY they are able to lower their prices--by replacing milk protein with plastic, for example--shopping the Dollar Store for our food supply is not looking like such a good idea. But until two weeks ago, what large manufacturer was thinking like that?

This latest scandal has special relevance to people with diabetes. Many of us are already walking around with kidneys that have been damaged by years of exposure to high blood sugars. We have been assured that the tiny amounts of melamine that may have found their way into our packaged food products are only toxic to babies, not adults, but the truth is that melamine may very well be toxic for anyone with microalbumuria whose kidneys are already damaged.

The other issue relevant to people with diabetes who eat low carb diets is that a lot of us use whey protein powders as a base for baked goods since we try to avoid baking with grains. Given that whey powder is one of the products that the FDA has said it has been inspecting, and given that we have no idea where the makers of these whey protein powders have gotten that whey powder, it is not outside of the range of probability that some of this whey protein powder might be contaminated.

With that in mind, it might be a good idea to eliminate whey protein powder from our diets for a while, until the melamine that may very well have slipped into this country before the scandal erupted has finished making its way through the system.

Yes, this might seem overcautious, but with every day's news reports adding additional products and countries to the list of those found to contain Chinese milk products contaminated with melamine, it might just be prudent.

If you are a fan of so called "nutrition" bars, you might want to give them a miss if they list whey or casein on their labels for the same reason.

Manufacturers are clamoring to reassure the public that their products don't contain these suspect substances, but that is to be expected. They may not contain them now. What they may have contained three months ago when the product on your shelf was manufactured may be another story.

And sadly, there is no requirment to list the country of origin for the ingredients of any food sold in the U.S., only where they were packaged. Since the Chinese sell raw materials to other companies that package them in the U.S. and slap their own labels on them, you cannot trust any label information to keep you safe.