Magnesium, Cinnamon, and a Request for your Support

---

 

---

Published on Patreon on September 7, 2025
Edited on September 16, 2025

Hi all!

We just published an updated comparative chart showing test results for all of the Magnesium products we have tested to date. You can find that chart at the link below (alongside links to all of the articles with Magnesium lab reports that we have published to date). The chart also includes lab results for three products that we have yet to publish reports on —  so this offers a bit of a “sneak peek!”

https://tamararubin.com/2025/09/magnesium-chart/

If you are not yet a paid Lead Safe Mama Patreon Member, please do consider bumping your membership up with a monthly gift of just $2.50 (or more, if you can afford it) in support of this work. Thank you. Here’s the link to our Patreon homepage: http://www.patreon.com/LeadSafeMama

“Tiring Fundraising Pitch,” with context:
—> Here’s our “Fundraising Pitch Format Guide”

• Share valuable content (like the Magnesium chart linked above, in this case) and ask for support in exchange for said valuable content.
• Integrate as much additional valuable content into the fundraising pitch as possible (such as the cinnamon conversation, in this case).
• Hey — I KNOW this gets old, but I truly appreciate it when you take the time to read our requests for support, as the valuable content we share would not be possible without financial fundraising!

And so…

I was reading an article last night about how much various Substack publishers earn, and it was fairly depressing in the context of our  work!

Some of the journalists on Substack are making millions of dollars each year with funds raised through their subscriber base. In so many ways, the information we share here at Lead Safe Mama, LLC — with the intention of helping you keep your families safe from unnecessary exposure to toxicants — is so much more critical than what some writers are sharing. It really seems like the information we share should get more attention (AND more funding — not to diss journalism in general; journalism is critical to a functional society — but so is unbiased science)!

Lead Safe Mama, LLC is currently receiving $942 (nine-hundred and forty-two dollars) in monthly pledged support from 374 very generous paid members here on Patreon. We have a total of 4,298 Patreon members as of this moment (including free and paid members). Our short-term goal is to raise $3,000 a month in support on Patreon by December 31, 2025, with a stretch goal of $5,000 a month to help cover the work of our team. (Here’s our lab testing budget, if you have not yet seen it).

Our goals are not lofty, nor excessive — $3,000/month would be possible with just 1,200 people contributing $2.50 a month (that’s just about 28% of our current membership).

Our goal is (and always has been) to simply cover the cost of this work, so we can keep doing it, because no one else is doing what we do, the way we are doing it.

Nearly every other agency, organization, or business sharing scientific test results for products does so by consistently applying a distorted veil of “context” — repackaging or subjectively interpreting the data to tell you whether or not the results are “good” or “bad,” presenting it in a way that favors continued consumerism (for example, so-called “safer swaps”), often not even sharing the data directly with their audience for people to make science-based, informed decisions.

Two notable types of products that have been examined (by other agencies) using this approach are cinnamon and cocoa powder. We are constantly getting inquiries from Lead Safe Mama community members asking, “why?” Why did this or that agency rate this product as a “safer choice” when Lead Safe Mama is saying it is not a “safer choice” because of heavy metal contamination? 

The “Halfway Compromise Fallacy”

My son (Avi) and I were exploring this conundrum, and he noted two perspectives that help explain why other agencies do this. One psychological construct is the “halfway compromise fallacy.” This is the idea that, for instance, if something is intrinsically, objectively dangerous or harmful — say a highly-toxic pesticide or a food additive that has been demonstrated to cause cancer — the “reasonable compromise” is to reduce the amount of the highly-carcinogenic substance by half. For example, while on the one hand there may be proposed legislation to ban said toxic additive in the interest of eliminating the harm posed, on the other hand, industry lobbyists may push back on the legislation and argue that a ban “would constitute an unreasonable regulatory burden and unnecessarily increase the cost of doing business” — so their proposal to do absolutely nothing about it could lead a politician to conclude in the halfway compromise fallacy.

Another example that Avi brought up: One politician is arguing for a program to be funded, and another politician is arguing for the elimination of the program. The “halfway compromise” would be to half-fund the program, which (in most cases) would leave the program (whatever it is) unable to function toward its mission at the needed capacity.

The halfway compromise fallacy is a common form of faulty logic that frequently ensnares well-meaning  journalists writing product “round-ups” (overview comparisons of different products within a category of similar products) while attempting to respond to consumers who are hoping for quick and easy product recommendations. The problem is that in some cases, among the available products at a given point in time, there are simply no products worthy of recommendation. An illustration of this dilemma: “ABC brand” cigarettes have half the carcinogens of “XYZ brand” cigarettes, so they are suggested as a “better choice” than other cigarettes. This is faulty logic, as science has demonstrated that smoking cigarettes — of any brand — is extremely harmful/ potentially carcinogenic. 

“Safety Theater”/”Security Theater”

Frankly, Avi offered brilliant perspectives throughout our discussion on this (he is almost 21 now and has grown up evaluating these considerations in response to my work). The other point he brought up is that many of these organizations are engaging in “Safety Theater,” which (when translated to apply to this situation), which means they are responding to the public demand by engaging in these “safer swap” narratives because that is what the public is requesting to make them “feel” safer, whether or not they actually are safer in response to these recommendations. In fact, the opposite can be true. A primary example Avi shared with me of Safety Theater being used (and specifically Security Theater) is some of the TSA Safety Measures at airport security.

• All of the cinnamon and cocoa  products we and other entities have lab-tested to date have tested positive for unsafe levels of one or more toxic heavy metal contaminants.  
• None of the brands, formulations, or supply sources for these two particular ingredients — which have undergone testing by independent labs across the country at this point — have tested at or below the levels for toxic heavy metal contaminants that scientists propose as being protective of children’s health.

Despite this obviously outrageous current problem, multiple agencies have made the error of trying to simply “rank” these heavily-contaminated products, stating that this or that brand/ product is a “safer” choice either because they are only evaluating based on one significant risk factor (Lead, but not Cadmium, for example), or because they are stating that a “smaller amount of a known potent  carcinogen” is somehow “less toxic” than a relatively slightly greater amount of the same potent carcinogen. This is a variant of the  “halfway compromise” fallacy. Simply ranking these products without advising that none of the current product examples can be considered “safe” for children’s consumption is inappropriate, when science has incontrovertibly determined there is no “safe” amount of human consumption for the specific carcinogens in question.

When someone suggests that a product like Whole Foods Organic Ground Cinnamon is a “safer swap” (without considering its Cadmium content), it is an example of “Safety Theater” (the agency making such a claim out of a perceived need to do so, as expected by their readership). Moreover, this “ranking” is actually (likely, probably) resulting in families choosing and using the toxic product, possibly even using MORE of it than they might otherwise, thinking it is “safer.” This includes feeling confident to use the product with children, which could (in turn) expose that family and their children to a significant amount of Cadmium because they think it is a “safer choice.” With the cinnamon concern, this is especially problematic, given many “health gurus” are currently recommending that people take one or more teaspoons of cinnamon daily for “health benefits,” making the potential negative health impacts for those people ironically amplified if their “safer” choice — from a Lead perspective —  contains a concerning amount of Cadmium and/or other toxicants.

Here’s our cinnamon chart, if you have not seen it yet.

Here’s a link with all of our published lab reports on cocoa powders.

There are simply not always “safer swaps” for everything out there. Some products should be avoided unless and until there are truly safe alternatives. Our energy as consumers would be better focused on getting the industry to clean up these toxic products and urging the FDA to better regulate them — especially since, in the case of cinnamon, just a little can go a long way to contaminate a product (please continue reading below the graphic).

We will never follow today’s popular trend by offering “safer swaps” of products for which there are no “safer swaps.” Unfortunately, this perhaps makes Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s ethical standards in this area “too high” to comply with the self-sustaining business models expected within today’s capitalistic society.  

Separately, in addition to not monetizing an “alternative” for each type of product we find to test positive with concerning levels of toxicants, we feel very strongly that the information we share should NEVER be behind a paywall of any kind.

Thanks to these standards that don’t emphasize earnings over ethics, we’re leaving the fate of our continued work up to generous “good samaritans” (like so many of you) who choose to contribute in support of the work, not because they have to, but because they are in a position to and understand the societal benefit of this work.

Of course, then there’s the argument that we’ve created a small business engaged in issues surrounding “public health.” Public health is not a profitable endeavor. People expect information and resources from public health systems to be provided free of charge. Doing what we do is not inherently a good business model, but the public health agencies in our country (and around the world) are also missing the mark, so we are filling a necessary information gap (despite it being at high risk).

I guess that’s all I have to say at the moment. Thank you for listening (for reading). Please contribute if you can. Thank you.

Thank You to all of you for simply being here (being a part of the conversation, even if you cannot afford to contribute, is so very important)! And a big, extra thank you to those of you who have chosen to contribute in support of this work, simply because you can, ensuring that those who cannot are able to access this important information when making safer choices for their families!

Tamara

---