Pesticides in Cereal

[DeniceC]

Hi guys, I have read the latest articles this week regarding levels of “Roundup” in popular breakfast cereals and oatmeal. I don’t want to be an alarmist, but would appreciate your thoughts on this news release.

[Hidden]

Hi DeniceC, I think this is an important issue which is why many of us buy organic when we can because at the end of the day we are what we eat.

Here's an article about it:

independent.co.uk/news/busi...

Jerry 😊

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

I`ve often wondered about the organic side of foods and what is truly organic.

A food in the supermarket can be labelled as organic but who knows what is blowing around in the wind. You pay a lot more for organic produce too.

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

Hi basil57, I think that this is a very valid question as all plants are organic its how they are grown using chemicals that add the toxins.

Here's what organic certification means in the UK:

soilassociation.org/certifi...

The USDA:

ams.usda.gov/grades-standar...

[TheAwfulToad]

Realistically, all 'conventional' food is tainted with pesticide residue, of different kinds and in varying amounts. Supposedly there are standards for maximum remaining residue, but who knows what the safe levels are?

Personally I eat very few cereals, and we try to eat stuff that we grow ourselves as much as possible.

[grace111]

vaccineliberationarmy.com/2... this is even worse if its true

[benwl in reply to grace111]

I think its probably untrue - to be frank i wouldn't trust much written on a vaccine denial website like that.

[Edited]

I found what seems to be a reliable response:

snopes.com/fact-check/senom...

[grace111 in reply to benwl]

i can show you some evidence if you dont believe it as there as codes for things and i checked the code and it was the same code on the produts that are named in that link i posted. I threw my food out as i had halls cough drops and checked it with the article i read. most people dont want to belive those things,

[grace111 in reply to benwl]

thanks for that link benwl i will have a good look at it. aslo thanks for looking at my link.

[grace111 in reply to benwl]

foodbabe.com/do-you-trust-s...

[benwl in reply to grace111]

Let me clarify that my objection is to the specific claim that these companies are adding fetal cells to food. I don't think there is any evidence to support that. Even mercola (who's often sympathetic to all sorts of weirdness) doesn't believe it, he writes "It's worth noting that no kidney cells, or part thereof, are actually IN the finished product." (from articles.mercola.com/sites/...

What is not in dispute, and what in my mind is the real problem, is that these companies are legally allowed to add undisclosed chemicals to foods by calling them "flavour enhancers" and we may have no idea of what they are or what if any safety studies have been done on them.

But people making these unsupported claims about fetal cells are just muddying the waters. Imagine I've managed to arrange a meeting with my MP to discuss this. If I push for legal changes to the labelling requirements I can make a sensible case.

The moment I start talking about fetal cells my credibility is lost.

Thanks for the foodbabe reference on snopes.com. She makes some interesting points, however I don't think any of them are reasons to just dismiss what snopes say. Any source has potential bias we should be aware of when reading it, and we should not accept anything uncritically. On re-reading snopes on the fetal cell claim, it does seem to me a fair summary, and says pretty much the same as mercola

in that senomyx are using a fetal cell line as part of their chemical discovery process (essentially to replace human tasters), but these are not in the chemicals being tested that make it into our food.

[grace111 in reply to benwl]

yes they can get away with murder because we will sound like crack pots if we mention fetal cells. i believe it benwl. you dont and thats fine. thanks dear. love grace xoxo

[andyswarbs]

People all too easily put weedkiller on their garden. Their garden looks lovely and they are happy. What they don't see is how roundup etc collects in the soil, into drains and rivers and the sea and finally comes back via rainfall or in fish.

This cereal issue is not good. I hope all food will be tested and my guess is we'll see roundup appearing in more and more foods.

[Hidden]

Unless this cancer-causing weedkiller is banned for good, it will continue to end up in all foods. I can't believe that the stuff is still sold in garden centres/supermarkets after the ruling.

ehn.org/food/

sierraclub.org/sierra/day-r...

[TheAwfulToad in reply to Hidden]

Biocides certainly should not be sold to the general public; most people have no clue what they do or how they work.

Most farmers don't either, come to think of it.

I was pondering the other day on my mum's epidemic of larvae which have destroyed her entire plum crop. This sort of thing cannot have happened back in the day; the markets (and the market gardens) of Victorian London were always loaded with produce, yet pesticides/herbicides were primitive and rarely used. I'm pretty certain that pest epidemics are caused by pesticides and other poor stewardship practices, thus creating a need for ever-stronger pesticides. A win-win situation for the manufacturers, of course.

[Hidden in reply to TheAwfulToad]

"Victorian London were always loaded with produce, and pesticides/herbicides were primitive and rarely used. I'm pretty certain that pest epidemics are caused by pesticides and other poor stewardship practices, thus creating a need for ever-stronger pesticides."

You are RIGHT. It's a simple fact. Nature does not do well when it is being tampered, fiddled with. "Nature" includes us, people.

Similar story: cosmosmagazine.com/biology/...

It's been known that the weedkillers are killing keen gardeners (anybody involved in the use of pesticides) over several decades. But nobody knew they could sue when people were told they got cancer and are dying from advanced prostate or ovarian cancers, prematurely. I feel that the man, who went to the court (and won!), he highlighted the problem to people around the world. I hope he will enjoy whatever plans he has in his last days/years. Thank goodness, advocacy groups are working to protect our health. Germany seems to be quick to act. It looks like childhood cancer and autoimmune diseases/adult cancers are involved as well. Why on earth had the states failed to act on these much sooner? They already knew the link between pesticides and autoimmune diseases around 2009.

Pesticide Use Linked to Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis

By Jan Ehrman

nihrecord.nih.gov/newslette...

reuters.com/article/us-mons...

edition.cnn.com/2018/08/15/...

(Above) Unsafe levels of a weed killer chemical in oat products, report says

By Susan Scutti, CNN

Updated 0846 GMT (1646 HKT) August 15, 2018

"Some types of oat cereals, oatmeal, granola and snack bars contain higher levels of a chemical found in the weed killer Roundup than what the Environmental Working Group considers safe, according to a report released Wednesday by the advocacy group."

webmd.com/children/news/201...

beyondpesticides.org/resour...

Enjoy your Sunday.

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

"Some types of oat cereals, oatmeal, granola and snack bars contain higher levels of a chemical found in the weed killer Roundup than what the Environmental Working Group considers safe..." As someone said years ago, just exactly what level of contamination is "safe"???

[DeniceC]

I need to send oatmeal due to GERD. I am throwing out all Quaker products. Bought organic last night.

[grace111 in reply to DeniceC]

me too.

[Hidden]

Labels can be misleading. We live in a polluted, chemically abundant world. If you are so trusting the labels.....

foodnavigator.com/Article/2...

[Hidden]

We are grain farmers in the middle of the US, and have seen Roundup sprayed as a matter of course all over everything for decades. Now weeds have gone resistant to the stuff, so Monsanto changed tactics to keep their business- now it's Dicamba resistant crops, and Dicamba is now, as of this year, getting sprayed all over everything. It just gets worse and worse. And that stuff drifts horribly, much worse than Roundup. Our non-Dicamba resistant beans have damage in every field from surrounding farmers that are already using them. We are just now finding out how bad Roundup is. Just wait for the next installment in a few years if Monsanto survives this lawsuit onslaught. We raise soybeans which are ground up into animal feed, so it eventually ends up in the meat case at the grocery store.

But more to the point, grains are being proven to be very, very unhealthy anyway, and it's looking more and more like they are at the root of our chronic disease problems- obesity, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer's. Check out Grain Brain (David Perlmutter), Wheat Belly and Undoctored (Wm Davis), Alzheimer's Antidote (Amy Berger), and loads of others. They're all on Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc, etc. We'd all do well to break from tradition and quit eating anything made from grains in general, but wheat in particular. The stuff is crazy addictive and horribly damaging to your body, to say nothing of the poison they are all soaked with.

[Agoodenough]

You should see the protective clothing that people who spray pesticides have to wear as it’s so toxic. You have to have a licence and have special training. It’s criminal what goes into our food. I buy organic wherever possible and if it’s not organic I don’t buy it. I’ve just bought a house backing on to fields and they spray the crops right at the end of my garden, this cannot be good. Two years ago I was walking a dog through the same field and the farmer said if he had just sprayed the field it could have killed the dog!

[Hidden in reply to Agoodenough]

That's the thing. How can you tell if it's REALLY safe and organic if the Soil Association was found to be fraudulent (commented in one of the above links/sub-links)?

Non-organic or organic may not be so black and white. How would I know if my organic beans are contaminated if there was no analysis on that batch at all? These chemicals can drift into other fields (how far I do not know).

Organic can easily be a marketing ploy, like Gluten-free, vegan, lactose-free etc especially after we read that those official bodies giving out the approved certification for organic products were found corrupt. But only those, who bother looking into the subject will know.

I used to hear many moons ago that "don't live/go nearby the wheat fields as they spray the really bad stuff". Reading what I did, it suddenly made sense. It causes DNA damage and that's not good at all. People who worked in the industry knew but couldn't get the message across until this hero took this mega co-corporation to the court and won. There's a clinical trial going on in the US, it's a matter of time.

Anything that they spray on food, knowing it is toxic/carcinogenic, and the act of applying directly to the crop is just insanity. Allowing this to go on this long is also beyond me whilst they must have known the "side effects" of serious health risks, including premature death/terminal cancer/autoimmune diseases and childhood cancer. This highly intelligent, brave man raised awareness.

[Penel in reply to Hidden]

The Soil Association hasn’t been found to be fraudulent. It’s been around a long time and one of its stated aims is the elimination of the use of harmful pesticides in farming. The label organic has been around a long time, and was regarded as a niche market. It’s only recently become trendy.

If food is labelled as gluten free: it’s a legal requirement and if it wasn’t genuine and you were Coeliac, it would make you ill. Foods are recalled if found to be contaminated.

[Zest]

This is quite interesting regarding 'To buy or not to buy organic?' - might be worth a look:

webmd.com/food-recipes/ss/s...

Zest