Collagen and Heavy Metals – What Levels Should Concern You?
Heavy Metal testing for collagen products is being discussed and requested from our consumers as the popularity of the collagen industry expands for its use in health, beauty, and anti-aging claims. Concerns about high amounts of heavy metals being consumed through your food choices are valid and we encourage you to ask these questions!
Arsenic, cadmium, mercury and lead are the most common heavy metals found in many foods due to atmospheric emissions, continental or volcanic dust, and the uptake of these by plants and animals during their growth process (1). With rapid population growth and industrialisation, the various ways for heavy metals to enter the foods on your plate are increasing from vehicle pollution, coal mining, sewage pollution and modern agriculture technologies. (1) Heavy metals are unavoidable and in small amounts are completely normal for your body to tolerate and detoxify. However, it is the constant exposure to large amounts that you need to be mindful of as a build-up can cause many health issues such as cardiovascular disorders, renal issues, neuronal damage, and increase the risk of diabetes and cancer. (2) This is when the quality and conditions in which your food has been grown in becomes key. The raising conditions of the cattle that your collagen peptides have been derived from is important and the best thing you can do when choosing a collagen source is to ensure that the company you are buying from has performed third-party testing to determine the levels of heavy metals in their product.
So, we have gone the extra mile to provide the results of the “Noway Protein” third-party test reports in a table breakdown to give you some peace of mind about how rigorous we are with our testing. As we have already mentioned, many commonly consumed foods contain heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, and lead. We have included the common levels found in food deemed to be “safe” by the Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ). You can review the below table to compare the levels found in our BodybalanceⓇ Collagen and another popular product Gutright. As Gutright contains various herbs and plant sources it is not surprising that the levels are slightly higher than those found in collagen, but it is still well below maximums for commonly consumed foods. To summarise the below table simply, the Noway BodybalanceⓇ Collagen Protein contains less than 1/10th the amount of lead found in a brassica vegetable such as broccoli.
Heavy Metal Amounts in ATP Science BodybalanceⓇ Noway Collagen and Gutright Compared to Commonly Consumed Food Sources
|
ATP Science Noway (Vanilla) (test results 23/04/2021) |
ATP Science Gutright (Original) (test results 25/09/2021) |
Maximum Limit allowed in food sources* |
|
|
Arsenic |
<0.1 mg/kg |
0.1 mg/kg |
Cereal grains 1 mg/kg |
|
Cadmium |
<0.01 mg/kg |
0.2 mg/kg |
Chocolate 0.5mg/kg |
|
Mercury |
<0.01 mg/kg |
<0.01 mg/kg |
salt 0.1 mg/kg |
|
Lead |
<0.02 mg/kg |
<0.16 mg/kg |
Brassica Vegetable 0.3mg/kg |
*Food Standards Australia and New Zealand S19-4 standard
As you can see in this table, we fall well under the maximum acceptable amounts of common heavy metals found in common foods within Australia. We hope this provides more confidence in the quality and safety of the Noway BodybalanceⓇ Collagen Protein.
References
- Rai PK, Lee SS, Zhang M, Tsang YF, Kim KH. Heavy metals in food crops: Health risks, fate, mechanisms, and management. Environ Int. 2019 Apr;125:365-385. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2019.01.067. Epub 2019 Feb 8. PMID: 30743144.
- Rehman K, Fatima F, Waheed I, Akash MSH. Prevalence of exposure of heavy metals and their impact on health consequences. J Cell Biochem. 2018 Jan;119(1):157-184. doi: 10.1002/jcb.26234. Epub 2017 Aug 2. PMID: 28643849.
