How come the ‘safe level’ of Roundup varies from food to food? How come more roundup is allowed in wheat and canola than in rice and figs? (see chart here)

Is roundup any less toxic when it is in wheat than in rice?

Or could it be that the levels of roundup allowed in food are actually based on the amount of roundup that a farmer want’s to use, rather than on how toxic it is to humans…

Where they spray roundup on a crop just before they harvest it (e.g. canola and, in the usa, wheat) more roundup is ‘safe’. Where roundup is only used pre-emergent herbicide, less is allowed. Coincidence?

Allowable levels of Roundup in water (if there was a glyphosate spillage) are 1 mg/L, that’s 1 part per million.

(“If present in drinking water as a result of a spillage or through misuse, glyphosate would not be a health concern unless the concentration exceeded 1 mg/L.”)

source

How come we are allowed 20 times that level in our canola, sunflower seed and wheat bran?

Call me naive, but changing the amount of Roundup allowed in a food based on how much Roundup a farmer puts on his crop seems a little back the front to me…

“Here, we propose that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide, Roundup®, is the most important causal factor in this epidemic.”

Barley, Corn, Sorgum, Wheat, Molasses, Wheat Bran, Canola, Cotton Seed and Sunflower oil contain the highest levels of Roundup. Stay off them and you will reduce your glyphosate levels 100 fold.  But why should you be worried about Roundup?  It’s been used for years.  This article explains why.

1. Why avoid Roundup?

http://nhrighttoknowgmo.org/BreakingNews/Glyphosate_II_Samsel-Seneff.pdf

This article explains a number of things and makes surprising observations:

• Why coeliac disease leads to chemical sensitivity.
• Why going off wheat long term can make coeliac symptoms worse.
• Why other foods can cause coeliac symptoms.
• The link between coeliac disease thyroid problems.
• Why organic food can help with coeliac disease

Some quotes:

“Fish exposed to glyphosate develop digestive problems that are reminiscent of celiac disease… Celiac disease is associated with imbalances in gut bacteria that can be fully explained by the known effects of glyphosate on gut bacteria.” (p159)

“Characteristics of celiac disease point to impairment in many cytochrome P450 enzymes, which are involved with detoxifying environmental toxins, activating vitamin D3, catabolizing vitamin A, and maintaining bile acid production and sulfate supplies to the gut. Glyphosate is known to inhibit cytochrome P450 enzymes.” (p159)

“Evidence of disruption of gut bacteria by glyphosate is available for poultry (Shehata et al., 2013), cattle (Krüger et al., 2013), and swine (Carman et al., 2013).  ” (p161)

“Further support for an association between glyphosate and thyroid disease comes from plots over time of the usage of glyphosate in the U.S. on corn and soy time-aligned with plots of the incidence rate of thyroid cancer in the U.S., as shown in Figure 3. ” (p167)

2. How to avoid Roundup

The article above has the allowable residual Glyphosate (Roundup) levels in foods for the USA. If you live in Australia this site  (also here) have the allowable glyphosate levels in Australian food. For anything not on this list  the allowable level is zero.

So to avoid Roundup silly stay off the foods that have high levels allowed.

The high levels are in  : Barley, Corn, Sorgum, Wheat, Molasses, Wheat Bran,  Canola, Cotton Seed and Sunflower.