So they throw arsenic at weddings?

Rice paddy. (Kashfia Rahman, SXC.)

I wasn't thrilled last week when the news came out about arsenic in rice. (Here's a link to a story about which brands are the worst.)

The reason I was freaked out is that I live on long-grain brown rice -- the type they said is the worst. When you're a vegetarian, you eat rice. And since I'm not only a vegetarian but someone who is skittish about eating all sorts of things, I eat long-grained brown rice at least twice a day. Kinda creepy, now that I know it's laced with arsenic. (At least Uncle Ben's, the brand I use, wasn't on the worst-of-the-worst list.)

The authors of the arsenic/rice study said we should wash our rice before cooking it because this removes some of the arsenic. Luckily, I've been washing my rice for decades. One of my closest friends is from Iran and she once told me "It's disgusting that Americans don't wash their rice -- it's filthy." I figured she knew more than me about what goes on in those rice paddies, so I started washing my rice that very day.

I'm still eating it because I don't know what else to eat. It's creepy that our country doesn't check for arsenic in food. Arsenic isn't on the FDA's check list? Doesn't that seem incredibly strange? I don't know about you but I usually think of our food supply as relatively safe. This incident has shaken that belief. If they don't check for arsenic, what do they check for?