Glyphosate residue in food. Really? Really.

More studies showing glyphosate residue in food we all eat.  Moral of the story...the only way to avoid glyphosate in your food is to eat certified organic.  Honey, on the other hand, is a little bit harder. 

Sustainable Pulse reported on a recently released study.

"Researchers from Abraxis LLC and Boston University have further confirmed that the world’s most used herbicide – glyphosate – is widespread in food products around the globe. The researchers tested honey, pancake and corn syrup, soy sauce, soy milk and tofu purchased in the Philadelphia, US metropolitan area.

Samples of honey (sixty nine), pancake and corn syrup (twenty six), soy sauce (twenty eight), soy milk (eleven), and tofu (twenty) purchased in the Philadelphia, US metropolitan area in 2014 were analyzed for glyphosate residue using ELISA testing.
The minimum limit of quantification (LOQ) of the method were determined for honey, pancake syrup, and corn syrup to be 15 ppb; soy sauce, soy milk, and tofu 75 ppb. This means that even if the results were negative for some products they could have also contained glyphosate at levels under the minimum limit

Of the sixty-nine honey samples analyzed, forty-one samples, or fifty-nine percent (59%), had glyphosate concentrations above the method LOQ (15 ppb), with a concentration range between 17 and 163 ppb and a mean of 64 ppb.
Even more surprisingly five of the eleven organic honey samples, or forty-five percent (45%), contained glyphosate concentrations above the method LOQ, with a range of 26 to 93 ppb and a mean of 50 ppb.
Of the fifty-eight non-organic honey samples, thirty-six samples, or sixty-two percent (62%), contained glyphosate concentrations above the method LOQ, with a range of 17 to 163 ppb and a mean of 66 ppb."

To see the complete research report: http://omicsonline.org/open-access/survey-of-glyphosate-residues-in-honey-corn-and-soy-products-2161-0525.1000249.php?aid=36354

Gut Microbiome.....what a mouthful.

Maybe you've heard the buzz about the "gut microbiome".  It seems that many researchers are now finding that the health and balance of the good bacteria in your digestive system is critical to maintaining health. 

Ironically, this is what many in the natural foods areas have been saying for quite some time.  More recently, the group Moms Across America has been highlighting (to put it lightly) the connections between an unhealthy gut microbiome, and glyphosate residue in our food supply.

Here's a quote from one article reporting on the Nature study (Italicized text is my emphasis.). 

• “What we’ve been attempting to understand for the past several years is the increase in metabolic syndrome and inflammatory bowel diseases” that affect digestion, explains Andrew Gewirtz, Georgia State University professor of biology and lead study author. Metabolic syndrome includes obesity, increased risk for Type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases like heart attacks and strokes. All these conditions, Gewirtz explains, “are associated with changes in gut bacteria.” The recent, dramatic increase in metabolic-related diseases cannot be attributed solely to genetics, says Gewirtz. Human genetics haven’t changed in recent decades. So he and his colleagues set out to investigate environmental factors that might be responsible, including “modern additions to the food supply.” - See more at: http://civileats.com/2015/02/25/how-emulsifiers-are-messing-with-our-guts-and-making-us-fat/#sthash.4xaQW26v.dpuf 

More studies highlighting the importance of gut microbiota on health.

• "The intestinal tract is inhabited by a large and diverse community of microbes collectively referred to as the gut microbiota. While the gut microbiota provides important benefits to its host, especially in metabolism and immune development, disturbance of the microbiota–host relationship is associated with numerous chronic inflammatory diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease and the group of obesity-associated diseases collectively referred to as metabolic syndrome. A primary means by which the intestine is protected from its microbiota is via multi-layered mucus structures that cover the intestinal surface, thereby allowing the vast majority of gut bacteria to be kept at a safe distance from epithelial cells that line the intestine¹. Thus, agents that disrupt mucus–bacterial interactions might have the potential to promote diseases associated with gut inflammation."  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7541/full/nature14232.html

Dr. Mercola weighs in on the topic.

• "Feeding health-promoting gut bacteria with a healthy diet, avoiding hospitals (which are hotbeds for drug-resistant bacteria), and boycotting processed foods and animal foods raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—both of which tend to have an adverse effect on your microbiome—may be keystone strategies for longevity."
• "While antibiotics are certainly overprescribed in medicine, the primary driver of deadly “superbugs” is actually factory farming. Animals raised in CAFOs are routinely given low doses of antibiotics to promote growth and prevent diseases resulting from the crowded and unsanitary conditions of these facilities. Eighty percent of all antibiotics sold in the US are fed to livestock, so eating CAFO-raised foods is likely to be the greatest source of antibiotics for many people. Not only may this low-dose ingestion of antibiotics have an adverse effect on the composition of your microbiome, thereby affecting your health, about half of all meats sold in American grocery stores have also been found to harbor drug-resistant bacteria that can cause severe food-borne illness."

Perhaps this whole mess shouldn't be blamed on the "overuse of antibiotics by the farmers" (while that may be the case in some instances).  They're missing the bigger picture.  In every instance of a confined animal operation, GMO's and grain/feed containing glyphosate residue are fed.  Studies have shown that glyphosate residue in the feed will effectively do the same thing to beneficial gut bacteria as an antibiotic.  The good bacteria in the manure is dead, while harmful bacteria like e.coli and salmonella thrive (because it is doing the same thing inside the animal....).  This continues on to the consumer because the glyphosate residue is also in the grains/food crops we eat, and the effect of it lingers in meat (see news stories about all the salmonella in meat, etc).  Glyphosate is registered as an antibiotic, so this should surprise no one.  In fact, the first part of creating these GMO's is to insert an antibiotic resistant gene.  That sounds like a complete recipe for disaster of a food system to me.  No surprise no one has a healthy gut biome.  Not only are the fields being sprayed, but the effects of that linger in the environment through the water, air, soil and crops, in addition to the GMO seed used.  Definitely not sustainable for anyone, not even the major agribusinesses in the long run.

 

Just my 2 cents.

Autism and Thyroid Function

Just read an article on autism prevalence and thyroid function.  In it, they referenced a study completed in Denmark, that found:

"Children born to mothers diagnosed and treated for the first time for thyroid dysfunction after their birth may have been exposed to abnormal levels of maternal thyroid hormone already present during the pregnancy, and this untreated condition could increase the risk of specific neurodevelopmental disorders in the child."(doi: 10.1111/1471-0528.12681)

 Why is this important, and how does it tie into the other articles previously reviewed? 

Mothers with hypothyroid are 4 times more likely to have a child with autism.  This is a significant piece of information, given that...

• Gluten is tied to thyroid antibody production that leads to hypothyroid (Here is a good discussion on the connection between the two with references to scientific studies).
• One's sensitivity to gluten can be affected by glyphosate exposure (Dr. Seneff's article)
• Glyphosate residue is found in the environment and in foods, especially grains/dried food crops, and GMO foods.

Anyone see a problem?  I recently heard an investigator talking about his work.  He said that as an investigator you look for patterns.  When patterns appear they are clues.  We are seeing more and more patterns here.

Vitamin D and TB

Ran across this today and found it very interesting.  This website talked about more benefits to using Vitamin D to treat and prevent illnesses. 

  "This, of course, is exactly what natural health and integrative medical practitioners have been advocating from the start. Moreover, two studies have now linked vitamin D to the successful prevention and treatment of TB. In the first study, white blood cells converted vitamin D to an active form of the vitamin which helps make a protein that kills the TB bacterium. In the second study, Indonesian scientists compared vitamin D to a placebo, testing them on seventy patients for nine months. The patients who received 10,000 IU of vitamin D (rather than the 400 IU recommended by conventional medicine) led to an astounding 100% cure rate.

  Even more exciting, a study published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that high doses of vitamin D, administered together with antibiotic treatment, appear to help patients with TB recover more quickly. The vitamin D dampens the body’s inflammatory response to infection, which leads to faster recovery and less damage to lungs."

 
Referenced journal articles are linked within the quote above.  This one below, the second study above) I found particularly fascinating.

Acta Med Indones. 2006 Jan-Mar;38(1):3-5.  The effect of vitamin D as supplementary treatment in patients with moderately advanced pulmonary tuberculous lesion.

 

Listen to the bees...

 

If more evidence was needed....bees tell a lot.  Check out this Yahoo.com article.  Think about this in relation to the health of your own body and the food you eat.  If bees are able to be healthier in the midst of toxins when they eat natural foods, might we consider that our bodies respond the same way.  Choose organic!  The evidence is mounting. The soy-based diet fed these bees, was most likely GMO soy (designed to be Glyphosate resistant and containing the Bt toxin). 

"In a study published Oct. 31 in The Journal of Insect Physiology, Grozinger and her colleagues gave test bees a soy-based diet, a no-protein diet, or a natural, varied diet of pollen. At the same time, the bees were given a lethal dose of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, an insecticide frequently used on agricultural crops. After 16 days, they counted which bees survived the longest.
What did they find? Nature does it best.
Bees who ate the natural diet of varied pollen sources survived longer—an average of four days longer—than the bees on artificial diets. While that may not sound like much, Grozinger said it’s actually significant.
“When you think of a whole colony of 50,000 bees, during those four extra days they can contribute to the good of the colony,” she said."

Here's the direct link to the published research article. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022191014001978

When "the truth"....isn't

Went to Ag Progress Days this week and picked up a brochure by the Soybean Farmers Checkoff group titled "Everything you want to know about GMO's...including the truth". Like other brochures I have seen promoting GMO's, I found an error I ...would like to point out. With issues involving GMO's and GMO food, you absolutely have to be current in your research as a consumer. When you see a statement that says there are "no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of biotech foods" look for the source. They cited World Health Organization, and simply that, no specific source. This is 2014! The point of this is that just today there is a report from China that Chinese students fed GMO rice (with the Bt toxin...which is in our sweet corn and soy!), had a rate of leukemia 3x that of the average population. This is consistent with findings of a 2013 study evaluating the Bt toxin as a genetic modification, showed a detrimental effect on blood. This is certainly evidence consumers should keep in mind when listening to people say how safe GMO's are. They aren't! This is unacceptable and unethical reporting!

Keep this in mind when purchasing foods at the grocery store. When buying sweet corn, buy organic, or if shopping at a farmer's market ask the farmer specific questions about their seed. Any farmer worth his beans will know off the top of their head the name of the seed he used and whether it has insect or herbicide resistant traits. Ask the questions. Be an educated consumer. Educated consumers drive the market.

A long time coming...

...the post sharing the writing project I completed last fall. And, why my findings convinced me that we should completely avoid consuming non-organic corn and soybean products, and will never be spraying Round-up on our lawn (ever!).

After originally turning to a gluten free diet over six years ago to resolve digestive issues in my nursing infant son, it seemed that there was more going on than a simple isolated food sensitivity. It also seemed that many, many other mothers I talked with shared stories of their children having similar intestinal issues, or “reflux”. With my Agriculture/Soils education and research background in agriculture, it made sense to start looking from the ground up (no pun intended) for clues. Was there something going on at the soil/agronomic level that was influencing the foods we were eating (or having to avoid at this point)? For over five years, I conducted literature searches looking for current research, information or clues to an environmental trigger.

This past December was finally the right time to write up all the research I had gathered. New research was coming out every month it seemed, and none of it contradicted what I had been finding. I knew in my gut that there was something going on and the pieces hadn't yet been put together. Celiac rates have been increasing at an alarming rate, and just last month (March 2013) in a Fox News story Dr. Fassano, director of the Center for Celiac Research at MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston, noted again that "something in the environment seems to be triggering the various genetic and biological factors that drive celiac disease." The environmental factors behind the increase in celiac have remained elusive thus far.  

Developments in agricultural within the past 25 years have resulted in a majority of crops utilizing new biotechnology; including glyphosate, genetically modified corn containing Baccilus Thuringensis (Bt) and Roundup Ready (RR) genes, and Roundup Ready (RR) Soybeans. Residues from these biotechnologies in the crops have been detected in humans and may provide a clue to the environmental factor.  The potential role of this residue on the increase in celiac and gluten intolerance is what I investigated. A recent study (2011) showed that the retinoic acid cycle could be disrupted in mice, causing celiac.  Interestingly, Glyphosate (commonly known as Round-Up, a weed killer), has been shown to disrupt this very retinoic acid cycle. The result of the literature searches conducted, led me to the thesis that glyphosate and genetic modifications may be a contributing environmental factor in the development of celiac. More details and cited research of what I found are included in the paper.  It is my hope that the information gathered contains clues to the future direction of celiac research, diagnosis, treatment, and potentially prevention.

The paper is titled, Glyphosate and Bt genetic modifications may be a contributing environmental factor in the development of celiac. The clickable link will take you to a .pdf file of the paper that includes all references and citations.