Popular Veggie Burgers Contain Poisonous Chemicals

In addition to what was already mentioned, soy is linked to thyroid problems (it is thought to down regulate it).

suck on that felix.

notice how felix doesnt comment in this post in fear of being ripped apart.

Strange how I am always on your mid.

easy on the ego trip there, 'flaco.'

LOL Hexanne Delgado!

Lol, The closes I will ever get to eating a Veggie Burger is a Chicken Burger !

Try Veggie Burgers for two weeks, beef will taste flat and nasty when you eat it again. That is why people squirt gobs of ketchup on it

BTW I still oeat porkburgers

I don't eat beef, Well during the holiday's but even then just a little . I'm a turkey burger girl . Chicken burgers are good . I guess I can try a veggie burger once. It'll be a great story to tell the grand kids when I'm old ! Lol

this is silly, but completely predictable--people love finding rationalizations for continuing the standard american diet when all reliable data indicate it's dangerous and unsustainable. funny that the author mentioned "humans harmed in awful factory conditions" when folks in the know about animal processing/slaughter knows it's truly abysmal for the workers--Human Rights Watch abhors it. if you really care about workers, you'll boycott meat, dairy, and eggs.

meanwhile, there's a MUCH higher risk of health problems from animal products than from soy--major studies directly connect them with several types of cancer, diabetes, strokes, heart attacks, obesity, and, in the case of dairy, a harvard study linking it to osteoporosis (i know--THAT's ironic).

if folks believe the hype, hey, it's easy to avoid soy protein isolates. but i'm not into scaring people into thinking veg food is evil, or making yet another rationalization for ignoring the enormous evidence of environmental, health, ethical, worker's rights, and other issues tied to eating animal products.

What is your source of Vitamin B-12?

10 THINGS YOU CAN DO TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM CANCER

1. If you are a smoker, make the effort to quit. If you are not a smoker, don't start.

2. Avoid exposure to other people's smoke.

3. Know the seven warning signs of cancer and see your physician if you observe one of them.

4. Don't overeat, drink too much alcohol or eat too many fatty foods. Instead, eat more whole grains, cereal, bread, pasta, fresh fruit and fresh or steamed vegetables – especially broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and Brussels sprouts. Keep your intake of lean meat, skinless poultry or fish to no more than 6 ounces per day.

5. Exercise. A 30-minute walk each day is one of the simplest ways to incorporate exercise into your daily routine.

6. Know your family's medical history and pay attention to a possibly inherited disposition toward certain cancers.

7. Avoid getting a tan. If your skin will be exposed to the sun for more than 15 minutes, use a sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of 15 or higher.

8. If you are a woman over 20, examine your breasts for lumps or changes at least once a month. If you are a woman over 40, follow your physician's advice for mammograms.

9. If you are a man or woman over 40, follow your physician's recommendations for digital rectal exams.

10. Follow your employer's policies for limiting exposure to harmful chemicals in the workplace. Always wear protective equipment when indicated, know what to do if there is a spill or accidental exposure, and report any hazardous conditions to your supervisor or safety committee representative.

This report has reliable information on the actual not imagined cancer risks

Harvard Report on Cancer Prevention

http://www.yourdiseaserisk.wustl.edu/pdf_files/HCCP_report_on_cancer_prev_vol4.pdf

Yes - note that meat and animal fats are probable risk factors for colon and prostate cancer.

They say limit meat and saturated fat in the diet. They do not say exclude meat and saturated fat entirely.

Also note well there is no mention of additives in our food like Hexanne being a cause of cancer.

Nice try. Hexane is used in so many industries. It's toxicity is extremely low. It takes exposure at massive DIRECT levels to even begin to harm anyone. Levels that don't come close to being found in any food or other products.

Detection technology has gotten to the point where we can see ppb and even ppt for some items. At these levels, it is very easy to "detect" a material. What is more difficult to say is whether it will actually have any effect.

Given that this processing is nothing new, I'd have to guess no.

Well, that sucks. But, it's actually a lot cheaper (and tastier) to make your own veggie or bean burgers at home. Plenty of good recipes online.

Ugg. I'd still rather eat a veggie burger than expose myself to the dangers of meat eating but I really wish picking healthy food wasn't so difficult.

Thanks for the heads up.

This is just a scare tactic from the cornucopia institute (an animal agriculture advocacy group). This is the conclusion of the main study they cite on hexane:

"Fortunately, the use of hexane as an extraction solvent does not seem to lead to any noteworthy residues in vegetable oils, so repeating this investigation does not seem to be necessary."

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/18105079/Vegetable-oils-fatty-acid-composition-hexane-residues/

This article discusses how hexane is refined out of the oil, not how it is removed from the bean, so not relevant.

Thanks for the post, I suspected that this is a POV push

make your own veggie burgers. It's not that hard, and they taste SO much better!

Ban hexane and everything that is more deadly than it! Say goodbye to Starbucks and your favorite soft drink.

LD50 - Lethal Doseage of 50% of a population. Simply put, the amount of a substance required to kill half of the test subjects. These numbers are typically generated using rats or rabbits since killing humans for the sake of LD50 determination is frowned upon. The reported numbers are approximate since humans and rats are not the same organisms but are still good indicators as to the relative toxicity of a molecule.

LD50 - Hexane (a major component in gasoline)

Acute: 25000 mg/kg rat

LD50 - Caffeine (a typical cup of coffee has ~100 mg of caffeine)

Acute: 192 mg/kg rat

LD50 - Ethanol (a 40% by volume liter of whiskey - 80 proof - contains 400 mL of ethanol)

Acute: 9000 mg/kg rat

Perhaps we should ban dihydrogen monoxide while we're at it.

If trace amounts of ethanol found its way into your soy burger would you have responded the same way?

Here is real threat to our health

If you are a non-smoker living in NYC you have a 20% higher chance of dying from lung cancer than if you had lived in a rural area. In fact breathing the air here is the equivalent to smoking one cigarette per day. I hoped I have scared all the hypochondriacs and nitpickers out of town.

Bear in mind however that 95% of all lung cancer deaths are directly related to cigaretts.(Smokers and their second hand smoke)

I like Quorn as a good alternative to eating too much soy, for all the reasons SP gives above. I just wish Quorn sold a broader variety of products in the US. When I was in the UK (where Quorn is from) they had really tasty spicy sausages, burgers and pies. God, I'm hungry now.

I'm shocked that corporations would put profits before people.

Shocked, I tell you.

After all, Republicans and conservatives keep telling me that corporate capitalism will produce rainbows and unicorns for all... and I believed them.

Well I for one, am shocked that the organization we fund to protect us from stuff like this (the FDA), allowed these to be sold.

Which is worse, the fact that now these companies will alter the composition of their product, or that the FDA will not change at all and this could have gone totally unnoticed except for private sector reporting and testing?

I plan to continue eating Soya products, we are talking about trace amounts of a chemical does not have an adverse effect on your health. These people are hypochondriacs and nitpickers.

Ughh, do we know if this is just related to the burgers or how we can get a complete product list by company/manufacturer to know if ALL their veggie products have this in it?

Read the report in the link, I downloaded it since I just had Veggie Burgers for dinner.

i do vegetarian once in awhile, like i do french and indian sometimes--to me, it's got its own cultural genre.

Hexane...it's what's for dinner!

I like gourmet Tri-Chlor Hexane.

Fucking hell, of course they would find some way to make eating healthy kill you.

Goes great with your arsenic water. Enjoy!

In Bangladesh

Here's the solution: make your own goddam food and stop buying processed pre-packaged shit. And stay away from all soy products. The idea that processed soy foods such as soy milk are good for you is one of the most preposterous lies forced on the American people by American soy growers.

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "sour grapes."

Yeah, if you aren't a hunter gatherer than you ain't shit! Wait that is a terrible idea.

Soybean oil contains Omega-6, which is not good for you. Less processed soy products (like tofu) do not contain elevated levels of soybean oil, but many of the highly processed soy products contain higher levels of soybean oil.

Soy is high in phytosterols that fuck with your hormonal system. They also, like many other legumes, contain enzyme inhibitors that reduce your ability to properly digest and assimilate proteins, which can also lead to cancer. They also contain haemagglutinin which promotes blood clots and strokes. Enzyme inhibitors and haemagglutinin are also growth inhibitors. Soy is also high in compounds that interfere with the proper function of the thyroid gland. Also high in phytic acids which block the uptake of essential minerals like copper, magnesium, calcium etc.

Soy products are only healthful if they've been fermented. When soy is made into tofu, the purée is separated into a curd, much like when making cheese, using calcium sulfate or magnesium sulfate, and this helps to extract much of the bad stuff in the soy from the curd.

Soy protein is incomplete, lacking essential amino acids, and has among the lowest Protein Efficiency Ratios of all proteins.

Americans don't eat soy the way Asians traditionally do. They eat it in too large quantities, as a substitute for meat, when in fact it should be eaten ALONG with meat or fish. And it should be eaten in small amounts. Always either in fermented form (shoyu, miso, tempeh) or in a form which allows for the extraction of all the toxins (tofu, the firmer the curd the better.)

what are the reasons soy is bad again? i remember you going off about it a while back - but i want to shut up some annoying co-workers and i'm too lazy to research.

In addition to what was already mentioned, soy is linked to thyroid problems (it is thought to down regulate it).

the irony is the most delicious part.

Over 30 million tons of soybean meal is consumed by livestock yearly, who are then eaten by humans. If there's hexane in veggie burgers, there's probably much more in hamburgers.

Nope. Junk science on your part. Hexane is metabolized by organisms and broken down into simpler toxic compounds. Neither hexane nor the end-products build up in the body. They do their damage and get excreted quickly. This isn't mercury we're talking about.

They don't add hexane to food for sh*ts and giggles, its a standard extraction solvent for the food oils.

The hexane is removed afterwards by steam distillation.

So they're not legally allowed to use it in labelled organic foods; that's okay. Neither are pesticides, but it doesn't mean your food is poisoned otherwise.

Uhm, it wasn't "junk science," it wasn't science at all—it was just my wild guess (which, I'll take your word for, was wrong).

ftw!