Alloxan, A Poison that Makes Lab Rats Diabetic, May Be in:

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Alloxan, A Poison that Makes Lab Rats Diabetic, May Be in White Bread,

Cakes and Cookies; Should We Care?

 

8/11/06 Author: Luise Light, MS, Ed.D. Source: Crusador

 

Alloxan, A Poison that Makes Lab Rats Diabetic, May Be in White Bread,

Cakes and Cookies; Should We Care?

 

By Luise Light, MS, Ed.D.

 

Recently, alarming reports in the blog-sphere warned that traces of the

dangerous chemical alloxan, a toxic substance and a known carcinogen used by

researchers to make lab rats diabetic, is present in white bread and other

commercial baked goods (cookies, crackers, donuts, hamburger rolls) made with

bleached white flour. Puzzled and disturbed by these reports, I set out to

discover if it is true that alloxan really has been found in white bread, and if

so, how it gets there, and whether, in the amounts found, it is a threat to

people who eat foods made with bleached, wheat flour. What I've learned raises

questions that both the milling industry and food safety regulators (EPA & FDA)

must address, urgently.

 

First, let us agree that no ingredients that are known to cause cancer or

diabetes when ingested belong in our food. While the risks may be small for

some, for others the risks are just too great; especially, for pregnant women

and their fetuses, people with compromised immune systems, and those with family

histories of diabetes. If you belong in one of those high- risk categories, as

tens of millions of North Americans do, you need to know what foods contain

ingredients hazardous to you and to avoid them. However, in the case of alloxan,

there are no ways to know, either by reading the ingredient lists on food labels

or by any other means, that it might be in your food and that you need to avoid

it.

 

According to Keith Emke, director of the Cargill Bakery Technology

Development Center, freshly milled flour for commercial bread and cake baking is

bleached with the chemical Benzoyl Peroxide to remove the yellow-colored

carotenoids naturally present in flour. Wheat flours slated for making cakes and

cookies are treated with chlorine gas to whiten, brighten and denature the

proteins in the flour. Emke cited the example of Angel Food Cake that requires a

white, light and fluffy cake flour. Almost all cake flour is bleached. Bleach

toughens the protein molecules in the flour, enabling it to carry more than its

weight in sugar and fat. Almost all cake flour is bleached. Bleach

 

The milling industry uses two chemicals to bleach, whiten and improve

baking qualities, according to Emke, benzoyl peroxide to bleach the yellow

carotenoid pigments naturally in flour and chlorine gas to whiten, disinfect and

break down the protein structures in flour to improve baking qualities.

 

Although Jim Bair, vice president of the North American Millers

Association, assured me that the use of chlorine has little to do with making

flour white, the reason some flours are treated with chlorine, said Blair, is to

improve their baking performance.

 

" Today, the US milling industry produces about 140 million pounds of flour

each day, so there is no way to store the flour to allow it to age naturally.

Plus there is a shelf life issue, says Bair. So chlorine gas is used to oxidize

(or age) soft wheat flours and impart the same baking performance that natural

aging would accomplish. "

 

Bair and other milling industry leaders claim that bleaching and oxidizing

agents don't leave behind harmful residues in flour, although they can cite no

studies or published data to confirm this. Chlorine gas and various oxides of

chloride are believed to combine with the proteins in flour, producing alloxan

as an unintended byproduct.

 

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identifies chlorine gas as a

flour-bleaching, aging and oxidizing agent that is a powerful irritant,

dangerous to inhale, and lethal. At 30 parts per million it can cause coughing.

EPA describes the carcinogenic chemicals that can be formed when chlorine is

used in drinking water: carbon tetrachloride, and the compounds toluene, xylene

and styrene, all known or suspected carcinogens.

 

Bleaching Flour

 

It wasn't until the 20th century that chemical oxidizing agents and

bleaches were developed to produce quick aging of wheat flour (within 48 hours);

previously, it required several months for oxygen to condition flour naturally.

Bleaching agents, when first introduced, were vehemently opposed. In fact,

Harvey Wiley, Chief of the Food and Drug Administration, in the early 1900s

(1908-1912), won a Supreme Court decision outlawing bleaches in flour.

Unfortunately, Wylie was forced out of the FDA, and the Supreme Court order was

circumvented by the agency. Although permitted in Canada and the USA, many

European countries ban the use of chemical bleaching and oxidation chemicals and

other additives in bread completely.

 

Concerns about the chemical bleaching and whitening of wheat flours center

around two claims of the wheat industry: The first claim is that the chemicals

used for bleaching and oxidation are unstable and, after doing their jobs, do

not remain in the flour. There is no available, independent data to show what,

if anything, is detectable in flour, and to judge from experience with

chlorination of water, highly toxic and carcinogenic substances can be formed

and could be present, if only in trace amounts. Our ability to detect trace

amounts of chemical byproducts of chlorine gas is much greater now than in

previous eras, and tests could and should be done now to test this claim.

 

The second claim, exemplified by Professor Joe Schwarcz, director of the

McGill University Office of Science and Society, states that a lot of alloxan is

needed to produce cancer in lab rats. The amount of alloxan used to produce

cancer in lab rats is about 40 mg per kg of body weight, given in a single dose.

There is no available research to show that smaller doses over a longer term can

have the same effect. Nobody has studied whether alloxan builds up in bleached

flour nor in foods made with it. If it is present, Schwarcz conjectures, it

would be in relatively small amounts comparable to the level of protein in

unbleached flour.

 

But the amount of protein in cake flour, although much less than that in

unbleached, naturally aged flour, is significant; cake flour contains between 5

to 8 % protein, unbleached flour (used in home bread-making) has between 12 and

13 % protein, and high-gluten flour (used in pizza crust, bagels) between 14-15%

protein.. This suggests that , theoretically, alloxan could form in chlorine

gas-treated flour because alloxan directly interacts with the protein in wheat

flours, and the level of protein in cake flour is not in microgram but in gram

amounts, 5 to 8 grams of protein per 100 grams of flour. There is no doubt that

alloxan is a diabetogenic (causes diabetes). While dose is an important issue in

toxicology, other factors are important, too: timing of the dose, and the

vulnerability of individuals exposed.

 

Exposure of a fetus in utero, for example, can produce long-lasting

effects at levels of toxin that produce no observable affects in adults. This is

true for lead, mercury and PCBs, where exposure in parts per billion in the womb

or during infancy has been shown to lower IQs. Many environmental chemicals have

been studied and found to cause adverse health effects at extremely low doses.

Alloxan, a toxic byproduct of wheat flour bleaching and oxidation, hasn't been

studied in terms of human exposure. Proving that alloxan does or doesn't form in

chemically bleached and aged wheat flour must be determined by independent

scientists with no ties to the wheat industry. Our federal government is

recommending more daily servings of breads and cereals than ever before (6 to 11

servings daily). Shouldn't we know that it's safe to eat these amounts?

Given our raging epidemic of diabetes in North America, we can't afford to

be complacent about alloxan. But until bleached soft wheat flours are studied

and found free of alloxan,, my advice is to follow the cautionary principal and

stick to unbleached, whole grain breads and cereals, organic whenever possible.

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