Carcinogen in bread? Florida Attorney General investigates American flour ingredient

[00:00:00]Uh, but at the end of the day, uh, we will never forget about public safety.

[00:00:05]We want public safety. We want food security. We want good health for our children.

[00:00:12]Uh, here today I'm honored to be joined, uh, by representative Meg Weinberger, uh, by Dr. Deborah German, who's the founding dean of the UCF College of Medicine and Vice President for Health Affairs. Uh, we have Dr. Ben Rawl, who's the owner of Achieve Wellness Clinic.

[00:00:29]Karen Kelly, who is a mom, uh, a nurse practitioner and founder of Mercy Medical. And we have Rebecca Ricks, who's also a mom and a founder of Coalition of Mothers.

[00:00:39]Uh, we've got moms here because at the end of the day, in Florida, we prioritize our children number one. We want to make sure that, uh, people are on notice if they're consuming something that's dangerous or harmful to the body, uh, that Uh, number one, they need to be put on notice, but number two, we we'd like to get this stuff out of our food. Uh, there's a reason why most of the world uh, has prohibited use of potassium bromate in products and and foods that are being sold. Uh, so potassium bromate, why is it used? Uh, it creates elasticity in flour. It makes it fluffy and white and and last longer on shelves. Uh, I can tell you, my my wife here is a big sourdough maker and actually baked some bread for you ladies today. It's still fluffy and and tasty and and rich. Uh, does not include potassium bromate. So, it can be done.

[00:01:33]That said, that loaf of bread is probably not going to be as fresh in 3 4 days. And that is normal. Uh, when something is left on a shelf for weeks and weeks and it's still white and fluffy, uh, probably should send up a little warning flag that there's something in there that's not going to be healthy, uh, for the human body.

[00:01:54]Uh, worldwide potassium bromate has been banned for many decades around the world. Uh it's been prohibited in the European Union since 1990, Canada since '94, uh China even since 2005, India, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, Peru, uh the list goes on and on. The United States of America is one of the few remaining uh regions of the world still allowing this to be inserted in food products.

[00:02:23]Uh many companies in the US though have been voluntarily moving uh to find alternatives. There are healthy alternatives to potassium bromate, uh and that's a great thing. We hope more will continue.

[00:02:36]Uh potassium bromate has been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer uh as group 2B, possibly carcinogenic to humans. Um there's been sufficient evidence of ties to kidney, thyroid, and abdominal cancer.

[00:02:52]It is a genotoxic, causing oxidative stress. Uh it's been linked to DNA damage and other cellular harms.

[00:03:01]Again, it's not something that we want to risk when it comes to our kids.

[00:03:07]Uh it's been proven that acute high-dose exposure could possibly lead to kidney damage as well as hearing loss.

[00:03:14]Uh so today, this is again just the initial aspect of an investigation. Uh nobody is getting sued today yet. Uh we want to learn more information. Uh we will be issuing subpoenas uh to companies that uh do buy and sell products with potassium bromate in them.

[00:03:32]Uh we will be starting with General Mills and their subsidiary Pillsbury, uh and the list will likely go on from there. Uh our subpoenas uh will seek documentation on bromated products, including top Florida purchasers, disclosures provided to buyers, safety research, and what executives at these companies have known, as well as perhaps most importantly, sales to Florida schools.

[00:03:59]At the end of the day, we want to protect our families number one. Public health and safety will always be the priority of our office of Attorney General as we're seeking for transparency, notice, and holding businesses accountable that choose profit over safety.

[00:04:17]I'm excited to work with the legislature on ways to continue protecting our consumers. Representative Weinberg, I know has pursued legislation in the past that would put restrictions on potassium bromate among other potentially harmful ingredients, and I commend her for that.

[00:04:35]She will have my support, and I look forward to helping her champion this effort in the year ahead. So, with that, I will turn it over to Representative Weinberg.

[00:04:49]>> Good afternoon, and thank you Attorney General James for your leadership. We're definitely grateful the way that you protect our families, but I would be remiss if I didn't if I wasn't honest, and I don't want to brag.

[00:05:01]I did win a few awards for zucchini bread growing up. I just wanted you to know that.

[00:05:06]In 4-H, and I I guarantee you there was no potassium bromate in it, and it definitely only lasted a few days.

[00:05:13]I would would look forward to filing another bill to and hopefully get it across the finish line. We should be protecting our kids and our families and everything that they're we're we're eating and feeding them. If you can't pronounce it, it's very likely we probably don't need it in our ingredients. So, I I look forward to working together with your office and the legislator and getting some more common sense legislation across the finish line. So, thanks for having me here today.

[00:05:42]>> All right, next we have Dr. Deborah German from here at UCF.

[00:05:46]>> Thanks.

[00:05:49]Well, good afternoon, everyone.

[00:05:52]I have the happy job of welcoming you here today to the UCF Lake Nona Academic Health Science Center, and we're sitting here today in the Cancer Center. And I get to tell you a little bit about us.

[00:06:08]Uh this campus was established through a simple but very powerful idea that when education, research, health care, and innovation come together, we create new opportunities to improve the lives of everyone, strengthen our communities, and provide economic impact for us all.

[00:06:34]Every day here in our Lake Nona Academic Health Sciences Center, our students, faculty, staff, researchers, health care professionals work towards a common goal of advancing knowledge and improving health and the well-being of all of the people we serve.

[00:06:54]As physicians and educators, we know that health is not only about treating illness, which we do, but also about preventing illness and keeping people healthy. And we are very involved in all aspects of that.

[00:07:12]Progress in medicine has always been dependent upon curiosity and discovery, and then a commitment to the evidence that we have.

[00:07:24]And these come from advances in prevention, early detection, and breakthroughs in treatment and cures.

[00:07:32]And this begins to give us a better and deeper understanding of all the factors that affect health, which is why I'm delighted to have any group, statewide group here to talk about health of all of us.

[00:07:49]And that pursuit of knowledge and its implementation is at the heart of everything we do here in Lake Nona.

[00:07:59]One of our many strengths at UCF is partnerships. And if you've been around for a while, you've heard that UCF is the partnership university. That's actually been I think patented or uh copyrighted? What is the right word for that?

[00:08:16]We are the partnership university. And all of the challenges that affect public health are complex. And addressing them requires collaboration among the researchers, the health care providers, the educators, community leaders, and public servants. And that's who we are today.

[00:08:38]As an academic medical institution, we are proud to serve as the place where important conversations about health and science and well-being take place. And we remain committed to advancing the discovery that will make us all healthy.

[00:08:56]So, let me say welcome and thank you for being with us today.

[00:09:04]>> Thank you, Dr. German, for for hosting us. We've got the number one university system in the country. Uh and we certainly appreciate the partnerships.

[00:09:14]Uh our office has numerous partnerships, including one we announced just a couple weeks ago with UCF uh on a new uh crime lab that's hosted just a few feet from here.

[00:09:24]All right. So, next we will have uh Dr. Ben Rowell uh from Achieve Wellness Clinic.

[00:09:30]>> Thank you.

[00:09:34]>> Uh thank you to the Attorney General.

[00:09:35]And I have to say as a type of doctor I am is I'm a chiropractor. So, it's a little bit interesting. I've been a practicing chiropractor for 22 years.

[00:09:43]And to be invited to be at a press conference on and get answers and solutions. As a doctor for 22 years, I'm also a dad. I have a 19-year-old and a 16-year-old.

[00:10:02]So, I care about these things. And we talk about things like wellness and prevention and the health of our country, it's sadly not doing very well. Just a couple of statistics so we understand where we're at. Our healthcare system is currently ranked 69th. There's countries, even though we've been watching the the World Cup probably, there's countries above us that you've probably never even heard of that are getting better health outcomes than we're getting in this country. And of course, everybody knows that we spend the most.

[00:10:27]Another startling statistic would be that we're ranked 53rd in longevity.

[00:10:31]That means there's 52 countries that live longer than us. And it continues to decline. Now, give you perspective on that. Five with with 50 years ago, we were ranked in the top five. So, this is a new development. We're getting sicker, and we need to be asking the questions, which is why. This won't surprise you as well. We see chronic disease rates now in our children of over 60%. In adults, over 76% of all adults have at least one chronic disease. That's not good news.

[00:10:56]That's not the right direction. So, I think we need to be looking under every rock that we can. And this is one of them. I'm so thankful as a doctor to practice in a state that that that does these things. One of the other things that you've probably seen talk not to, which is all of these new cancers at younger ages, and they're calling them turbo cancers. I know I see a lot of people doing this for 22 years.

[00:11:16]So, I I remember what it I I get to say this now. My son asked me, "Dad, what's it like to practice so long?" I thought, "What do you mean so long? I feel like I'm just getting started." But practice longer than he's been alive. But I said, "What's What's sad is I'm actually watching people get sicker. I'm watching families having difficulties having babies, I'm watching kids get cancer, I'm watching cancer that was never seen before at ages be seen. And so, what we need to be doing is exactly what Florida is doing, which is saying we need to be able to ask questions, but we also need to get answers. I think probably those of us in this room and most people watching, we know exactly what's going on. We've seen corporate capture, we've seen this happen in healthcare, we've seen this happen in pharmaceutical, we've seen this happen in big food.

[00:11:56]We've seen how difficult it has been, you might have seen recently with the Supreme Court case about Monsanto and see what was happening there and how they are effectively giving them immunity towards their products. This is a concern. And it's really at the end of the day it's a grassroots movement, it's moms, it's dads, it's doctors, it's people that are willing to stand up. And I'm thankful that in this state of Florida, the great state of Florida, we have the courage to do that. Thank you for having me today.

[00:12:23]>> All right, thank you, Dr. Roll. Next we have Karen Kelly, founder of Mercy Medical.

[00:12:30]>> Hello, good afternoon, everyone.

[00:12:33]Uh my name's Karen Kelly, uh founder and owner of Mercy Medical and Wellness. I'm a nurse practitioner, um but for today's conversation, I'm a mom. I've got three boys and I have spent a lot of time trying to protect them their whole lives, you know, wear a helmet, wear a seatbelt, don't do this, don't do that. And boy moms are probably saying things like don't jump off the roof, don't catch that on fire, and so on and so forth. The point is as parents we um we do everything to keep our kids safe from all the things that we can see. But what about the things that we cannot see? Like these additives in food, uh in particular uh potassium bromate, which is known in animal studies to cause cancer, uh particularly uh kidney, thyroid, abdominal, and things of that nature.

[00:13:21]Um it seems a little backwards that we have to not only protect our children from the things that we can see and know to be dangerous, um but things that are, you know, hidden in their lunchbox or in their snack food. Um I think that's really important to um kind of echo what Dr. Wall said. Um cancer is really at an all-time high, uh especially in our younger population.

[00:13:45]So, as a a mother, I want to protect the children, my children, and other people's children, but also as a healthcare provider, it's important for us to stand up for certain things that are actually killing our killing our uh our people.

[00:14:01]Um we all know that potassium bromate wasn't created to provide any nutritional um uh benefit. It's not going to help our kids grow stronger. It's not going to provide any nutritional benefit. For that matter, it was made to um you know, help with productivity.

[00:14:19]So, I know we um in in in America, productivity and manufacturing, you know, we kind of let things like health and additives that could be be potentially cancer-causing get in the way of what's actually good for our community.

[00:14:38]Um there's very limited studies uh linking potassium bromate to humans, but I don't think it's the lack of research um that can lack of research in human studies, excuse me.

[00:14:52]Um it's just simply unethical to conduct such research because of the harmful uh nature of potassium bromate.

[00:15:00]Public health has always required us to make thoughtful decisions based on the totality of scientific evidence. Um not after harm is proven beyond doubt, but before unnecessary harm uh occurs.

[00:15:14]And uh what I find especially interesting is, you know, most countries have outlawed potassium bromate. Um in fact, California has already banned this from their food. So, if California can do it, Floridians, we need to be having this conversation, right?

[00:15:32]So, as a functional medicine provider, you know, I spend every day talking to patients about food and how it communicates to cells in the body.

[00:15:40]Food influences inflammation. It influences metabolism, hormone production, and mitochondrial function.

[00:15:49]Oxidative stress is one of the driving forces behind cellular damage and leads to chronic diseases, illnesses, cancer, and things of that nature.

[00:15:58]Potassium bromate is an oxidizing agent.

[00:16:01]It is something that we tell our patients to avoid at all costs, anything in their food or even in a supplement that we would prescribe for them.

[00:16:10]You know, most Americans these days are trying to make healthier choices.

[00:16:14]We're reading labels, eating whole foods, trying to make healthy decisions.

[00:16:18]Yet, uh you know, many people or or consumers today are buying products and they have no idea that ingredients like potassium bromate may still be present.

[00:16:29]As healthcare providers, we're empowering our patients to make healthier decisions. As policymakers, we have the same opportunity or obligation to empower consumers through education, transparency, and thoughtful public policy.

[00:16:43]As a mother, a healthcare worker, and a member of this community, I highly recommend that we begin educating the public about these harmful chemicals in an effort to potentially hold larger corporations accountable for the poisons they choose for us.

[00:16:59]You know, in the Bible, it says in Ezekiel 47:12, "Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing."

[00:17:07]You know, I really love that verse because it reminds us that food was created to nourish us, to sustain us, and to support healing. Our goal should be for our food supply to reflect that very same principle.

[00:17:20]This conversation's not just about potassium bromate.

[00:17:23]It's about stewardship. It's about accountability. It's about leaving something better for the next generation.

[00:17:29]Because one day our children and our grandchildren won't remember how many regulations we passed.

[00:17:35]But they will remember that we had the courage to protect them when we had the opportunity to do so. I believe that food should nourish our families and not expose them to unnecessary risk. Because at the end of the day we have the responsibility to leave the next generation with a food supply that's safer than the one that we inherited.

[00:17:54]Thank you for your time.

[00:17:59]>> Thank you, Karen. And last but not least, we have Rebecca Ricks, uh founder of Coalition of Mothers.

[00:18:07]>> All right. My name is Rebecca Ricks, and I'm not a doctor or a lawyer or a scientist, but I am a mom of two hot mess little boys. They're five and eight, and they truly give Dennis the Menace a run for his money. They are uh crazy. And every night before I they go to bed, I really do take time to think, "Did I keep them safe today?" And not just today, but for the future as well.

[00:18:28]And I do want to share this. In case you're wondering, I'm not a crunchy mom.

[00:18:31]My kids eat McDonald's probably once a week, which we all know is not the healthiest thing they can do. But sometimes we hear about products or things that are in our food, and you can't turn away from it. Cuz sometimes once you know, you can't stop thinking about it. Potassium bromate is one of those. Um in fact, it uh you've heard from other people talk about how it gives cancer. And animal studies, lots of studies have showed that. The World Health Organization has listed it on one of their top ingredients that are uh cause cancers and carcinogens. So, and just so you know, this truly is not a fringe thing. Over 24 um countries across the across the world have banned it.

[00:19:13]Um in 1990 it was banned all over Europe, which means for 35 years companies in Europe have produced their flour without without using it. Somebody said that California just passed a law banning it.

[00:19:26]Um New York just passed a law banning it. In fact, there are 30 states that have legislation out trying to ban um potassium bromate across the United States. So of course, if they can do it there, we should be doing it in the greatest state here in Florida.

[00:19:40]Um but I do want to make a point that sometimes people will say but this is legal. And you know, legality should be the the baseline, the basement, not the gold standard. If a company knowingly puts something into their products that causes harm, we should be able to prosecute those companies.

[00:19:58]If a company sold a seatbelt and knew that it was faulty, we wouldn't say that that's legal. We would say that they're causing harm and want to hold them accountable. And this isn't something new. Uh tobacco companies did this for 20 years. They knew the things that they were putting into their products were harmful. And it took years, I would say moms and mostly truly, if you look back at the study of it, attorney generals who stood up and said, "Let's start making these companies show what they're putting into it. Let's prove that they know what they're putting into it." is important. So if if we hold other companies at fault, our food deserves that same standard every single [snorts] day. So that's why I do want to thank um the attorney general and um Senator Martin put a bill in and May Weinberg, Representative May Weinberg here today, co-sponsored that to make sure that not just these, but other things in our foods um will be taken care of and done it. So I just want to wrap up and say, "You know what? Our children are fearfully and wonderfully made. They're not manufactured. They're not sold to.

[00:21:01]They're made." And every day I have to make a million choices to make sure that they're healthy and they grow up and to be healthy and strong. This shouldn't be something I should even have to think about or read the label. It should be something that should be taken care of care of. So, because I take my job seriously, I know everyone in this room does too about keeping your children healthy and safe. Um I'm asking to make that much easier for all of us. And let's take potassium bromate out of our foods here in Florida. Make sure our companies do it. We need to remove it.

[00:21:29]We need to label it and we need to put our children first. Thank you.

[00:21:36]>> Thank you. I've been saying a lot lately. I think it's going to be moms that that save the world. Uh here in Florida, we've certainly seen that. The emergence of of moms for liberty, the the fights on education, public safety, uh and certainly food safety. The end of the day, I think moms, you know, moms are going to fight for their little ones more more than anybody else. So, we're happy to embrace them and and bring them into our policy and and legal battles here in the state. Uh I'm excited to work with the legislature going forward on, you know, better ways to, you know, protect our foods and our children. Uh Erin Huntley's here running for for office, running for state representative locally. I've endorsed her. I appreciate her fight. Look forward to working with her in Tallahassee and uh Representative Weinberger, thank you for for being here with us today.

[00:22:25]Uh I think it, you know, it was pointed out that, you know, just because there might be a a permission, a permit, uh some, you know, legally valid use somewhere, it it doesn't necessarily make everything right. Uh potassium bromate has been approved by the FDA for use in in select, you know, limited uses.

[00:22:43]Uh but, that's not a free hall pass or a get out of jail free card. Uh our states have broad consumer protection authorities. Uh here in Florida, these subpoenas will be issued uh pursuant to our authorities under the um you know, unfair and deceptive trade practices act. We're going to look at how these products are marketed and sold to families. What what they know are ingredients or what they should know. Um so we we look forward to this investigation. I I hope that uh parties that are on the receiving ends of our inquiries will will work with us cooperatively uh because ultimately at the end of the day I believe we all share the same goal of protecting Florida families and our children. Uh so thank you for being here again. I'll I'll hold up uh you know I've I've My wife uh my wife said by the way best gift ever is my wife because bacon fresh sourdough here uh there's nothing better than that and I promise you it's better than anything you're probably going to get on the shelf and no potassium bromate included. All right, with that we will uh conclude. I guess we got a few minutes for questions if anybody has any.

[00:23:50]Easy start to the week. I love it. All right, God bless everybody. Let's go eat some bread.