WanaBana Apple Cinnamon Fruit Puree and other products have been recalled due to discovery of high levels of lead. Though 22 illnesses are "possibly linked" to the lead, it could be a lot of products, especially if people are buying products based on marketing labels.

In modern times, activists - which means a giant chunk of government agency employees depending on which political party is in the White House - take "no known safe level of lead" to mean any detectable level is toxic, and scientifically that is not true. There were high levels of lead detected in one municipality, Flint, Michigan, a few years ago after the Democrats in charge engaged in cost-cutting measures - and one case of brain damage was absolutely caused, but that modern lead level was what 70% of America had when I was young, and there were not more cases of brain damage then. Like salt, lead is a population-level metric that people try to make individually relevant, and it just scares people.

It is fitting that the company will not be reviled for lead content from a scientific perspective because they tout "BPA free" on their packaging. BPA, a common lining for 70 years with no ill effects, was the target of activists who invoked slipshod epidemiology to "suggest" a "correlation" and pressure companies to stop using it. Which made products more expensive but helped no one. Because it had harmed no one.



The "nocebo" effect - a cousin of placebo but where the absence of something makes people feel healthier - is real and so is a placebo like "organic", when everyone knows there is no GMO pear but noting it is therefore organic by default leads to the virtue-signaling shopper with more wealth than scientific acumen. 

This stuff Wanabana is used in strange places, which is what I'd like to see investigated - a company selling progressive food marketing to dictatorships like Cuba and United Arab Emirates? I get why the Arsenal football team would endorse the Emirates airline -a gigantic check cleared the bank - but a small American company is involved enough with two of them is odd.