Barbara Wilson-Clay said:
>Also rice is one of the few US grown crops on which dioxin containing
>herbicides (weed killers) can still be sprayed...

Has anyone noticed the massive infiltration of our foodstream by cottonseed
oil?  I was taught by my public health professor that cottonseed oil was
the most contaminated foodstuff and should be avoided.  And yet, almost
every cookie now available in the supermarkets in my city has "[other
vegetable oil] OR cottonseed oil" listed in the ingredients.  And that's
just the surface--I'm finding cottonseed oil, suddenly, in almost every
food category.

"Your favorite jeans may be 100% cotton, but that doesn't make them 100%
pure.  While cotton amounts to only 3% of the world's crops, its
cultivation consumes 26% of the world's total tonnage of pesticides."  Paul
Hawken, "The Utne Reader," September/October 1993, p. 59

Years ago I read that one must wash cotton clothes before allowing children
to wear them, as the residual pesticides are so high that skin absorption
of pesticides from new cotton fabric posed an unreasonable health risk.
And now we're eating the stuff?  Any fat-soluble contaminants would seem to
me likely to be concentrated in the seed oil.

There are many ingredients (& a few companies) I avoid, but until now
prudent shopping has never limited my options so dramatically.  Is anyone
hearing any public discussion about this?

Check out the food labels for cottonseed oil and tell me if you're seeing
as much of it as I am.  Cookies, crackers, salad dressings, baking mixes,
sauce mixes, dinner mixes, baked goods...Is cottonseed oil making its way
into baby foods?  I may have to go back to making absolutely everything
from scratch, which is hugely time consuming...and I'd rather be hiking,
reading to my kids, doing homework and playing games with my kids, training
my dogs, cross-country skiing, studying about lactation and
physiology...and catching up on the housework (good infection control! :-)

Arly

[log in to unmask] (Arly Helm, MS, CLE, IBCLC)