This is a little story about how and why I just don’t eat certain foods.
Not everyone on this planet is allergic to or even sensitive to the same things. My son is allergic to penicillin. One of the most used treatments for pain is Tylenol, but it does not reduce pain for me. Tylenol makes me just stupid enough to make it unwise even to walk, let alone drive a vehicle. Some people are sensitive to scents and perfume. My wife is celiac and tries to avoid gluten commonly found in anything made with wheat flour. Some are lactose intolerant but can use lactose pills and continue to enjoy dairy products, while others just avoid dairy products altogether. I happen to be very sensitive to even very small amounts of residual glyphosate.
I always enjoyed attending farm shows, information days on ANY farm subject. Some of those events were several hundred miles away and lasted several days. This meant eating away from home. About 25 years ago, I began to notice that after a breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, margarine, home fries fried in vegetable oil, peanut butter and jam, I would have an upset tummy until mid-afternoon. If I ordered toast with real butter, my tummy would be happier. My friends said, “ya, ya, the dairyman can’t eat margarine, haha”.
It was just about the time that GMO corn, canola, and soyabeans were introduced because it was easier to use glyphosate to kill grass and broadleaf weeds if the crop was Roundup-Ready (RR). Roundup was the most common spray with glyphosate as the active ingredient. The GMO seed was more expensive, but the spray program was much less expensive. Soon, RR rice, RR sugar beets, and even RR alfalfa and RR cotton came on the market. Glyphosate was also used to desiccate (kill and dry) standing grain like wheat so swathing was not required before combining.
Glyphosate was invented by the Stauffer chemical company in 1960 as a descaling agent that was used to tightly bind minerals that form scale in boilers and hot water pipes. By flushing the heating system with a glyphosate-water mixture, the system could be de-scaled without dismantling it, saving many dollars. When this flush was dumped out after descaling, it was noticed that all grass and weeds were killed wherever it was dumped. The Monsanto company quickly bought all rights to the chemical and was also granted exclusive rights to all research that implicated glyphosate.
Within a few years, Monsanto released Roundup as the newest, safest herbicide on the market, and very soon after came out with the addition of a surfactant to allow faster cell wall infiltration and many new RR varieties of seeds. When the US and Canada gave patent rights to Monsanto, they didn’t realize the residual lasting effects of glyphosate as a bactericide. This can have detrimental effects on gut biome in both animals and humans. The need to use any antacid for heartburn, acid reflux, or other stomach discomfort could be the first sign of a decrease in your necessary gut bacteria. Those gut bacteria not only help with food digestion, but also help repair early damage to the walls of the digestive system.
Government agencies have been lobbied to increase the legal residual levels of glyphosate in foods and grains. This was to offset the many weeds that were becoming resistant to glyphosate and allow larger total sales. Up to 30 parts per million (ppm) of residual glyphosate are allowed in breakfast cereals and more in animal feeds. The earliest discovery of glyphosate in a human was found in the umbilical cord of a newborn baby in a Quebec hospital several years ago. The mother was not from a farm, and any residual glyphosate likely came in the food that the mother ate. Studies have also found that, in some cases, levels of glyphosate found in a new mother’s breast milk were higher than the maximum allowed in drinking water in some European countries.
So, what do I not eat? Anything made from a grain that could have been sprayed with glyphosate – corn, soybean, canola, rice, sugar beet, cotton, grain that could be desiccated before harvesting. I will eat some white bread but not brown bread. Wheat is a “naked grain” with no chaff on the grain, and glyphosate can be sprayed directly on the wheat grain as well as on the leaves and stock of the plant. Glyphosate will infiltrate the plant and translocate with the plant chlorophyll throughout the plant and also get into the grain that way. Brown bread includes the bran outside of the wheat grain which gets the highest dose of glyphosate. Most foods are not marked. In most restaurants, the waiters don’t know what kind of oil the French fries are fried in. Some frozen fries are dipped in wheat flour before packaging. Most soft drinks are sweetened with liquid corn sugar. Most alcoholic beverages manufactured in North America are made from GMO grains. Ask the salesperson what is in it.
It would take a full page to list all the products that I avoid. There are many foods available that I will eat, but the list of foods and drinks that could have residual glyphosate seems to be a secret. In 2015, there were more than two billion pounds of glyphosate used each year. At that time, over 60 countries were concerned enough either to ban sales of glyphosate or require some degree of labeling. In Canada, some foods are labeled GMO-free, but the Canadian organic testing is the most stringent testing to assure GMO and glyphosate-free food. I very seldom buy organic food but have a very long mental list of glyphosate-free foods.
The entire article above was neither scientifically produced nor peer-reviewed, but for my own use after over 40 years of personal experience.
