Article mixes a lot of unrelated food safety issues. Which mostly serves to confuse readers, or cause them to mix up unrelated issues.

As for the arsenic in rice: rice tends to be a (natural) accumulator for arsenic. Which occurs in soils in varying amounts - some natural, sometimes increased by pollution.

Lead in turmeric otoh, is from a lead-based colorant intentionally added to make the (prized) yellowish color more intense.

Very different problems, with very different causes & solutions.

(but on a side note: personally I would not mind if people found to have adulterated food with lead compounds, were hung on the nearest tree. Lack of knowledge be damned. A few example culprits hanged, and everyone in the trade would educate themselves quickly).

> unrelated

There is a relation (slightly akin to "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me").

Add to the two the very recent event of the USA halting the sales of "apple and lead tainted cinnamon" after a few kids showed up in hospitals with lead poisoning symptoms.

There is a point that in current trade, and at the current state of civilizaton (cpr. your "«were hung»"), controls and internal measures (i.e. of the importers) must be heightened.

While this is bad, “healthy” is one of the most meaningless terms in modern language.

It makes sense in opposition to "unhealthy": poisoned food, damaging habits etc.

And properly forgetting """«modern[ities]»""", the term makes sense as it always did: "health, whole, holy" (are related patterns of its revealing root).

Your point is not clear.

> It makes sense in opposition to "unhealthy": poisoned food, damaging habits etc.

Generally you wouldn't call poisoned food "unhealthy", you'd call it "toxic" or "poisonous". "Damaging habits" is purely subjective, which is why "healthy" and "unhealthy" are legitimately useless terms. Eating an entire stick of butter can be deemed "healthy" in the right circumstances.

> Your point is not clear.

Not liking my point doesn't mean it's unclear, friend.

You wrote «meaningless», you meant along the lines of "open", i.e. "undecided (in its instances) outside complexity", like in "using butter can be both beneficial and/or damaging", "using water can be both beneficial and/or damaging" (Brooke Shields hydrated herself to seizures last week - she diluted her sodium concentrations to dangerous levels) etc.

But the meaning of "healthy" is well defined, as posted earlier: that which promotes wholeness (lack of damage) or avoids its opposite.

But in the context of the submission, if you had exceptions about the title - «Healthy food compromised», even there the term works: turmeric is one of the few substances that promote neural regeneration, adult neurogenesis, there where possible; similarly intake Omega-3 is as if required for good brain function, but if the fish in which it is normally found is lead contaminated then the healthy good is spoiled (lead burns neural axons like a fuse); rice has sustained human growth for millennia (fifteen, I think), so it is has titles for being considered a resource, etc.

> Not liking my point doesn't mean it's unclear, friend

No pal, it was really a stub, incomplete :) You went "A is B" without justifying your judgement. A statement like "Bob Shlecklemeier is a fool" has no content until it is clear why one would say so (the only content there is that somebody has an opinion). There is no «liking» or disliking, at least until the objected idea is defined: "A is B" is not unless what is behind it is clear; the substantial part is its justification, not the conclusion.

> You wrote «meaningless», you meant

I wrote what I meant.

> But the meaning of "healthy" is well defined,

Nope!