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What is a "lab produced" ingredient anyway? How can you tell real from fake?

written by

Marie Reedell

posted on

February 11, 2022

Evolution takes time. It’s said that any lasting evolutionary change takes one million years. But, it seems that humans don’t have patience for that. We are making changes at warp speed, without truly knowing the long term consequences.

How does the radio frequency radiation needed for wireless technology affect humans, animals, and the environment? How does vaccination affect our health? How does lab produced foods affect our bodies? Etc etc etc.

Well… we really don’t know. We’re lucky if safety studies are 5 years long. And, in that timeline, so many other variables can change. Because of this, it’s super hard to actually identify a cause and effect of one particular change. 

But, what we do know is that Americans are perhaps the unhealthiest they’ve ever been. I mean over 50% of us regularly take prescription medications. Over 40% of Americans are obese. And, 1 in 44 children are on the spectrum of autism. 

This is why, at Miller’s Bio Farm, we choose to NOT reinvent the wheel. 

We know that humans have been growing food and preparing it in their home kitchens for thousands of years. We are natural beings and generally do well with naturally produced, nourishing foods. 

Miller’s does everything it can to avoid lab-produced ingredients. But, gee, that is tremendously difficult in today’s world.

You might be wondering, what is a “lab produced” ingredient anyway? To me, “lab produced” means something that I would NOT be able to grow and make in my home kitchen. 

I wouldn’t have the home technology to select and insert genes into a plant to produce a desired trait. That’s what labs do to create GMO seeds. I’ll stick with the heirloom seed varieties.

I wouldn’t have the equipment to pump milk through teeny tiny holes at high pressure to break down fat globules into smaller particles, creating a stable fat emulsion. High tech machines do that to homogenize milk. I’ll stick with my non-homogenized cream top milk.

And, I certainly don’t have a laboratory to successively run a solvent like hexane or ethanol over soybean flakes and make defatted soybean concentrate. This is how plant-based meat substitutes are made. Nope, I’ll stick with real meat from a real animal that eats a natural diet.

A “Lab produced” ingredient is different from a “factory produced” ingredient. A factory produced ingredient is something that I technically could make at home, but it would require lots of land, equipment, time, or precision. I’m better off outsourcing that food to a small producer or factory.

Flour falls into this category. Sure, I could de-hull and grind the grains myself. But, it just makes more sense for that to happen at a mill that stone grinds slowly.

Essential oils are another good example. I steam distill plants at home to extract their oils. I’ve done it once, and it took all day to produce a fraction of an ounce. It just makes more sense for this to be done on a larger scale.

Most of the ingredients in my kitchen fall into this category - milk, meat, honey, oils, vinegar, sugar, nut butters, and on and on. I just need to be vigilant in researching my sources, making sure the ingredients are coming from producers that align with my values.

Now you might be wondering, how can I tell “real” food from “fake” food? Boy, this is a tough one. Given the current labeling requirements, it’s nearly impossible to tell.

There are certain things to look out for. Ingredients like “spice extractives” or “natural flavors” or any word you cannot pronounce is likely lab-produced. Most ingredients like this are proprietary. You don’t have the right to know.

But, then there are the little details - the ingredients in the ingredients. I’ll give you an example from our store - cheese! 

At face value, the cheese ingredients look great - milk, culture, rennet, Celtic sea salt. But… what are the ingredients in the culture, and what are the ingredients in the rennet? 

After doing some research, I recently found out that there’s maltodextrin in some cultures and there’s lab-produced salt in the rennet. Ugh! I mean, it’s such a very small amount, less than 0.1%, of the cheese. But still ugh!

I informed the cheesemakers, and now we are on the lookout for the most natural products available. As of now, it doesn’t look like what we’re looking for exists (the FDA and USDA can be tricky when it comes to “natural”), but I sure hope we make some headway soon.

At Miller’s Bio Farm, our food is 99.9% real. 

That tiny 0.01% seems unavoidable right now. But, of course, we’re always working towards a better food future. Who knows. Maybe 5 years from now, we can be 99.99% real.

What do you look for when purchasing food? Are you ok with lab-produced or factory-produced ingredients? Do you notice a difference in your body when you eat natural foods?

Opinion

Health and Nutrition

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Our bone broth tested negative-ish for heavy metals 🥳 NATURAL AND CLEAN

Over the past few months a bunch of people asked us if we tested our bone broth for toxic heavy metals. When we get the same question a lot, we of course look into it. My first question was --- Is there an issue with toxic metals in bone broth? As it turns out, yes, there "can" be an issue! Heavy metals are naturally present in our environment. We need the "good" heavy metals to thrive: iron, zinc, magnesium, copper, etc. But, we can 100% do without the toxic heavy metals: arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, etc. Too many toxic heavy metals can lead to a host of pretty awful issues: nervous system damage, cardiovascular issues, cancer, endocrine disruption, kidney damage, and so on. Our body is designed to excrete heavy metals through urine (and a little bit through sweat, hair, and breastmilk too)... but only so much. There's a limit. If you're overloaded, your body will store those heavy metals in your bones, blood, tissues, and organs. Similarly, if an animal is exposed to heavy metals via food, water, air, dust, or soil, those heavy metals accumulate in the bones. Maybe the farm's soil or air is contaminated from a nearby factory. Maybe the pipes for the water has lead solder connecting them. Maybe the feed a farm is buying was grown on contaminated soil or processed on contaminated equipment.  And, of course, a main purpose of bone broth is drawing out as much as possible from the bones. If there are heavy metals in bones, they will make their way into the broth. This is especially true when you pre-soak with apple cider vinegar and simmer for 48 hours to make it thick and gelatinous (like our broth). And that led me to my second question --- Should I be concerned about every bone broth? Where is the fear coming from? Well... it seems it might be a little political. There was a study done in the UK in 2013 that scared a lot of people. It's titled "The Risk of Lead Contamination in Bone Broth Diets". This study found high levels of lead in organic chicken bone broth, which is quite concerning. And, in fact, this one study is still cited in articles written today! Let's dig a little deeper. Let's go farther than the short abstract. Here are the broths tested in the study and their test results for lead:  (9.5 parts per billion): Broth made from tap water plus skin and cartilage(7.01 parts per billion): Broth made from tap water plus bones(2.3 parts per billion): Broth made from tap water plus meat(0.89 parts per billion): Tap water alone cooked for the same amount of time as a control. But, they only used organic chicken from one farm. And, there's zero information about that farm, their practices, the feed, and the broth recipe. Did they use vinegar or wine in the broth? Was the chicken's water contaminated with lead? What was the quality of the feed and the soil? Were the chickens raised indoors or outdoors? So many unanswered questions! All we get is that it was one "organic chicken" that created a lead issue with broth. Another curious thing is that the broth with skin and cartilage contained more lead than the broth made with just bones. Bones are where lead is stored, so why wouldn't the broth made with bones only contain more lead? It's an odd result. Moreover, the abstract of the study specifically called out "bone broth diets" like GAPS and paleo. They even go so far as to write, "In view of the dangers of lead consumption to the human body, we recommend that doctors and nutritionists take the risk of lead contamination into consideration when advising patients about bone broth diets." That's quite curious. Why are they worried about these diets? Are the researchers anti healing through food? Who funded the research? Is it political? My opinion? This study is not comprehensive. It does not speak to all bone broths. But it does cover a potential issue if the water or animals are overloaded with heavy metals. What I glean from this study is that we need more research. We don't need fear to spread and people to stop drinking broth from this one study. Regardless of whether the fear was fabricated or legit, we tested our bone broth anyway. After all, it's always nice to validate that your food choices are as clean as you think. For Miller's, here were my concerns before testing: What if there's mercury in the fishmeal in our chicken feed?What if the soil that our animals live on is contaminated?What is the well water that the broth is made with is contaminated?What if the Celtic sea salt has lots of heavy metals? We got the test results back. I was super excited. But, I was also confused. At face value, it appeared that our bone broth tested NEGATIVE for arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. You can find the test results right here! You'll notice that, for every sample, the results are "<0.01 mg/kg" and "<0.02 mg/kg".  I asked the lab what the "<" means. They said that it indicates their limit of quantitation (LOQ), the lowest concentration that can be accurately tested using the test procedure in that sample type. So the results simply report that none of the metals tested were found in the sample above the specific reporting LOQs. Whether or not they were present below this LOQ is information that is not provided by the test. When talking to the lab, I told them what we needed and assumed that this test would go below a 1 ppb. So, when the results came in, I assumed that a "mg/kg" was the same as a part per billion (ppb). Ummm... that math wasn't write! A "mg/kg" is actually a part per million (ppm). That means that the test we ran had results saying that the broth had less than 0.02 ppm (or 20 ppb) of arsenic and lead. And, it had less than 0.01 ppm (or 10 ppb) of cadmium and mercury. For some reference, the EPA says that less than 15 ppb of lead is safe in drinking water. Not saying that I agree, but it's a good reference point.  These results are good. It means the broth definitely isn't overloaded with toxic heavy metals. But, it's not good enough!!! We need to test again! We really need to a lower LOQ. We need to know the results with an accuracy of as low as 1 ppb. It looks like the lab we sent the original samples to doesn't have an LOQ that low. So here I am on the hunt for a lab to do it again. As soon as I can, I'll send samples in again and paying for more expensive testing to get the info you deserve. Stay tuned! I hope to have the new results in by the end of April 2025. Do you worry about toxic metals (or other junk) in your food? Where have your fears stemmed from? I'd love to hear from you. You can comment below (no account required) or contact us 😊 ----- Sources The risk of lead contamination in bone broth dietsBone Broth and Lead Toxicity: Should You Be Concerned?Bone Broth and Lead Contamination: A Very Flawed Study in Medical HypothesesBone Broth, Collagen, and Toxic Metals: A Research Review