I care about your health and never want another cancer diagnosis. We try really hard to eat healthy, exercise, reduce stress, remove toxic cleaning products from our homes, and yet cancer. Today I want to tell you about a whole food I thought was healthy, but had added carcinogens that weren’t disclosed on the label.
Even though I have a super low grocery budget, I pay more for certain things. For example, I buy butter instead of margarine or shortening and I buy honey instead of corn syrup. If it’s for a recipe that stays raw, I even splurge for raw wild honey. The health benefits of these foods, outweigh the costs. By limiting our purchase of junk foods and eating out, they still fit into our small budget.
Almonds are a food that I’ve upgraded in our budget. It’s illegal to sell a truly raw almond in the United States, unless they are selling direct to the customer at a farmer’s market. (I’ll be looking for that next, but it may be hard to find in my area.) Almonds must be treated with steam pasteurization or a chemical called propylene oxide (PPO), a known carcinogen. In fact, my previous favorite “raw almond” source was Costco because of the fabulous price and “high quality” until I found out their almonds are treated with PPO. Too many of my friends have cancer right now, for me to say “it’s the dose that matters” and continue to feed my family known carcinogens.
Recently I started driving 20 miles to Trader Joes for almonds because their almonds (even the inorganic ones) are PPO free. While I don’t buy all my foods organic, the one sure way to tell if your almonds are PPO free is if they are certified organic.
The unnerving thing about PPO treatment (also called PPO pasteurizing) is that the tainted almonds are everywhere. They might be in almond flour, in almond milk, in a cracker, in a granola bar, or in a breakfast cereal, and just because it’s a health food brand, doesn’t meant it’s PPO free. If it’s not labeled organic, we have to contact each manufacturer directly to find out which type of treated almonds they use. They aren’t required to disclose it on the label. Did you catch that?! They can treat their almonds with a known carcinogen and aren’t required to disclose it on the label. In fact, the label can still say “raw.”
For more reading on the subject:
I’m open to learning more. If you have information from the other side of the issue, send it to me and I’ll be happy to read it.
I flipped out years ago when I was told at a roadside fruit stand that raw almonds aren’t really raw (even at that rustic stand) and TBH haven’t bought almonds since! I had not thought about things like almond flour, though! Uggh, eating healthy food takes so much work because of all the false labels! Thanks for bringing attention to this!
This is the first I’ve heard this side of the story. Raw almonds are something my family and I do pay extra for – thank you for this information. I will be doing some research!
According to Wikipedia, “propylene oxide is hydrolyzed into propylene glycol”. Propylene glycol is in countless items.
So what to do? Well obviously we try to avoid it, as you have done with almonds. Again I so appreciate what you share.
What to do if you end up eating it because you didn’t know or can’t afford to avoid it……antioxidants, just look up the sources. One thing many people could benefit from is after brushing their teeth in the morning….. Is detoxing…..I drink green tea and eat a green apple. That’s just what I do for my liver. I hope this helps somebody. There are many other detoxing methods along with getting antioxidants, can be of great benefit.
Thanks again, Angela, for sharing!!!!
Yes Gayle! Anti-oxidants are a blessing from God to help our bodies when we encounter things like this that create free-radicals in the body. Of course it’s best to avoid as many known carcinogens as we can. Most anti-oxidants are found in fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables so we need to make sure we get good amounts of clean produce at every meal.
Im highly allergic to almonds but on a vegan diet. I was considering trying small amounts if almond milk..but i will avoid them now. Thank you!
Thank you for the great article. I did stop buying almonds from Costco months ago. I buy organic almonds only.
Seriously?!?? I’m so fed up with this industry! (Food). Too bad we HAVE to eat to stay alive…! We eat “raw” almonds all the time. We give them to the kids as an “healthy snack”. We pay for those “raw” almonds that are probably sprayed with chemicals… So disgusting!
Whew! So glad I buy my nuts at Trader Joe’s. I had no idea!
I hate what they have done to almonds, and even worse how they can lie about it and claim falsely they are still raw. I know there was a lawsuit that failed. I try to find the imported raw almonds but they have disappeared from the health foods stores for the most part. They really need a to have a new law passed that regulates the use of the word raw on any food. And it should be strictly enforced. And make it easier for people to buy truly raw almonds if they want them.