Colorado Consumer Alert: Trader Joe’s Wines, Though Cheap, Could Be Harmful If Swallowed?

A Denver company gauged how much arsenic is in Trader Joe’s, and other wine makers, wines. Turns out those readings say that there’s at least SOME arsenic in ‘Two-Buck Chuck’ wines. Does that mean that you’re going to get cancer?

With the new Trader Joe’s opening recently in Fort Collins, this story caught my eye. The headline “Trader Joe’s Wine Contains High Levels of Arsenic.” Wow! I, myself, have had the Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw line of wines. Many have. It runs pretty cheap; about $3 a bottle. They’re known as ‘Two-Buck Chuck’ wines because initially they were priced at $2. To hear that they contain high levels of poison? Well, I needed to find out what the deal is!

Here’s the deal. A Denver lab tested the wines and found that they had “four to five times” the amount of arsenic than what’s allowed in drinking water! Thing is, the ‘allowable amount of arsenic’ (that sounds wrong) for drinking water is based on a person consuming two liters of water every day. That’s the only gauge the FDA currently has for wine! So, you can’t really go by that. If you were to reduce the water amount to two glasses (like a daily intake of wine), the amount of arsenic allowed would be much higher, wouldn’t it? I was told that there would be no math.

Add to that, that the man who conducted the ‘testing’ of the wines, is now not only behind a class-action lawsuit against a bunch of California wine makers over bad practices, but he’s also trying to sell his testing equipment to wine makers so that they can see if their own arsenic levels are ‘safe.’ Like red wine on your white carpet, that’s just messed up.

I’d say, relax. Have a glass of wine. Or two. Until the FDA gets around to knowing what amount of arsenic is acceptable for wine, you’re not likely to drink so much ‘Two-Buck Chuck’ that the arsenic is going to give you cancer. Don’t overdo it on the wine, though. It IS alcohol. They can gauge that, at least!

[Source: Forbes]