Franzia is a staple of every college woman’s life. It’s always in your fridge, in your tumbler, and served at every party. We all have our favorites: mine is Crisp White. It’s probably your favorite, too, because it’s the only one that doesn’t taste like cough syrup. I always drink Franzia because it’s cheap and it’s not beer. Those are literally my only two requirements for alcohol. There’s some bad news concerning our favorite beverage that comes in a plastic bag: it’s slowly poisoning us with poisonous levels of arsenic.
Arsenic is in cigarettes (which are very NS), what is it doing in our wine?! Kevin Hicks of a lab called BeverageGrade recently tested more than 1,300 bottles of wine and found that almost a quarter of them had higher levels of arsenic than the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) maximum allowable amount of arsenic in drinking water. Yeah, fun fact of the day, there’s arsenic in water. It’s only 10 parts per billion, but it’s still a little freaky considering how highly toxic arsenic is.
After looking at all the wines with high levels of arsenic, they also discovered a terrifying pattern. “The lower the price of wine on a per-liter basis, the higher the amount of arsenic,” Hicks said.
From CBS News:
They included Trader Joe’s famed Two-Buck Chuck White Zinfandel, which came in at three times the limit, a bottle of Ménage à Trois Moscato was four times the limit and a Franzia White Grenache had five times the EPA limit for drinking water.
NOOOO! Those are my favorite/the cheapest! One of the bottles they tested in the lab had five times the drinking water standard, which can be deadly over time. “It has as many effects inside the body as cigarette smoking does,” Hicks said.
A spokesperson for The Wine Group (maker of Franzia and now fallen angel) had something to say about the accusations, and told CBS News, “It would not be accurate or responsible to use the water standard as the baseline” because people generally drink more water than wine.
LOL. Apparently they don’t know anything about their most profitable target demographic.
This is bad. What are we supposed to do? I WILL NOT be subjected to drinking the piss-water they pass off as beer at fraternity events. Luckily that’s not happening, because the wine testers have a plan to save us. Hicks and his team plan to file a lawsuit in California accusing more than 24 California winemakers and sellers (including The Wine Group) of misrepresenting their wine as safe.
Until that fateful day in court, the best thing you can do to protect yourself is drop a few more bucks on the good stuff. It’s better for your health, and it tastes better too..
[via CBS News]
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Cristina Montemayor
Cristina is a Grandex Writer and Content Manager. She was an intern for over two years before she graduated a semester early to write about college full time, which makes absolutely no sense. She regretfully considers herself a Carrie, but is first and foremost a Rory. She tends to draw strong reactions from people. They are occasionally positive. You can find her in a bar as you're bending down to tie your shoes, drinking Dos XX and drunk crying to Elton John. Email her: cristina@grandex.co (not .com).
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