Study: Glyphosate in human urine increases 500% over 10 years

A study published in JAMA tracked people over the age of 50 in Southern California from 1993-1996 to 2014-2016. Urine samples were collected over the time period to measure levels of glyphosate and its metabolite aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA). They found that the percentage of people who tested positive for glyphosate increased over 500% in that time period. Glyphosate usage also increased by 1208% during this time period, making it very unlikely that this was just a coincidence. (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2658306)

Crops sprayed with glyphosate may surprise you: almonds, avocados, cherries, corn, grapes, grapefruit, peanuts, pecans, rice, soy beans, spinach, sugar beets, walnuts, wheat. (https://www.cornucopia.org/2016/05/widespread-use-glyphosate-food-supply/)

There are no known safe levels of glyphosate a person can eat.

This link also shows what percent of crops are sprayed with glyphosate: https://livelovefruit.com/what-crops-are-sprayed-with-glyphosate/. There are 70 crops here sprayed with glyphosate. Organic crops can also be tainted by overspray from a neighboring field, or from water used by the organic farm that is downstream from a non-organic farm that uses glyphosate.

Here are the results of studies listing which percent of people tested positive for glyphosate in their bodies. (https://www.moyoway.com/europes-top-5-glyphosate-herbicide-toxic-countries.html) Malta (90%), Germany (70%), Great Britain (70%) and Poland (70%) had the most percent of people with glyphosate in their bodies. They don't have to grow crops that are sprayed with glyphosate, crops that are tainted can be imported from other countries.

Animal tests show that up to 30% of glyphosate is absorbed into the body. A week later, there is still about 1% remaining.

Food additive might be linked to stomach and several other problems.

Researchers at Binghamton University in New York found that chronic exposure to titanium dioxide — an additive present in chewing gum, candy and bread — changed digestive cells’ structure and function. Ultimately, the study suggests that frequent consumption of foods with the additive may lead to less nutrient absorption, impaired digestive function and a slower metabolism. Chronic exposure also led to more inflammation, an effect that is tied to chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease.

Source
Fox News.
The news from Phys.org.

GMOFreeUSA testing foods for glyphosate

GMOFreeUSA is testing foods in the US for GMO content along with glyphosate. This program is called Operation Label GMO. In the future they also want to test 2,4-D, dicamba, atrazine, and neonicotinoid insecticides. A combination of these toxic chemicals is likely responsible for lots of bee deaths around the US. The chemicals overwhelm their immune system, and they can get fungal or mite infections, and die. These infections then spread to the rest of the hive and can wipe out most of the hive. Commercial bee keepers, who help pollinate many of the US crops, are very concerned.

Sunchips and Gerber Lil Crunchies have already been found to contain pesticides by GMO Free USA. So have Cheerios, Doritos, Goldfish crackers, Oreos, and Ritz crackers (source).

Related articles
Pollinators being killed by pesticides
Wikipedia Colony Collapse Disorder. 
85% of tested foods contain pesticides.
How to test your food and water for pesticides.
60% of bread tested in the UK contains pesticides. 

India: spinach from Hyderabad contains pesticides

Spinach can be good for you, if it doesn't contain pesticides.

A survey by some research scholars of Jayashankar Agricultural University revealed this startling reality after testing the samples secured from Rythu bazaars in Mehdipatnam, Gudimalkapur and Shamshabad. The survey found that the leaf vegetable contains 11 types of pesticides, including five commonly used, like chlorpyrifos, triazophos, cypermethrin, deltamethrin and profenofos, Dr Narasimha Reddy, a scientist of Pesticide Action Networks India told The Hans India. He said the pesticides were found to have been sprinkled on the leaves of the vegetable to prolong its longevity post-harvest, after cutting.

Pesticides are in more foods than you think, which is why it's time to have a portable pesticide detector for consumers to check all food. Not all organic food is pesticide- or gmo-free.

Source
Freshplaza.

Foods help you destress

People can get stress from a variety of sources, including work, relationships, neighbors, family, and more. Read this article to find out why these foods help the body deal with stress. Dark leafy greens and Chia seeds have magnesium which is important.


Source
Foodrevolution.org.

High levels of glyphosate found in many American foods

American foods, including Cheerios, Doritos, Oreos, Goldfish and Ritz crackers and Stacy’s Pita Chips were found to have high levels of glyphosate. Levels found in these product are well above the levels found by independent peer-reviewed studies which show that ultra-low levels of glyphosate can cause organ damage starting at 0.1 parts per billion (ppb). This is 1,750 times lower than what the EPA currently claims is safe. The highest levels detected were found in General Mills' Original Cheerios, which were simply off the charts, at 1,125.3 ppb!

Other foods from this test which contained glyphosate: Kellogg corn flakes, Frosted Flakes, Raisin Bran. Some of these are exported to the UK.

Other brands that contained glyphosate: Kellogg's, Pepsico, Stacy's, General Mills, Lucy's, Back To Nature, Nabisco, Little Debbie, Campbell's soup. 

Tests were done in an FDA-registered lab using the gold standard for testing.

Protect your family, educate yourself.

Sources
Article: Food Democracy Now.
Actual test results from Detox Project. 

Crops sprayed with Roundup just before harvest, more food found with glyphosate

Roundup/glyphosate is not just used on GMO crops, it is widely used on non-GMO crops. But for a product to be labeled organic it cannot have Roundup sprayed on it. When Roundup is sprayed on food crops it gets into the food system and glyphosate and its metabolites are found in urine. These are just a few examples of what crops are sprayed with Roundup and which foods have been found to have glyphosate in them.

Crop dessication: "Pre-harvest crop desiccation (also siccation^[1] ) refers to the application of a herbicide to a crop shortly before harvest.^[2] Herbicides used include glyphosate, diquat and glufosinate."

Glyphosate sometimes sprayed on wheat before harvest.

Oats, wheat, and flax are sprayed with Roundup. (I don't have evidence that Roundup causes cancer but this article shows what is being sprayed with Roundup. Rules will vary by country so different crops will be sprayed with Roundup.)

Anecdotal evidence: People who are intolerant to gluten in the US can go to Europe and eat bread with no problems, the rules regarding pesticides are more strict in Europe.

1. Glyphosate residues regularly found in bread. HCGA 2008 report. PDF.
2. FDA finds baby food contains glyphosate. (After years of pressure the FDA finally decided to start testing foods for glyphosate and they found it.)
3. Glyphosate found in 11 of 24 breakfast foods.
4. Norwegian study finds more glyphosate in foods.
5. Glyphosate found in 51 streams. If it's in the streams, it can easily get into food plants. Some farms get their water from streams.
6. Glyphosate found in wines that weren't even sprayed!
7. 60% of bread in the UK found to contain pesticides. (2014, PDF from PAN.)

If pesticides are so safe why are biotech companies so against labeling foods? And why do biotech hide studies about glyphosate? Actions speak louder than words.

Human urine contains glyphosate

Glyphosate found in urine of ALL people studied. German study.

93% of people tested have glyphosate in their urine. "93% of the urine tested by the University of California San Francisco lab tested positive for glyphosate residues. No glyphosate was found in the tap water samples."

Pro-GMO Soylent bar making people sick

There are many ingredients in this food bar that could make people sick, and no one knows if it's the GMOs or not. The food bar is a favorite among Silicon Valley techies but it's not rated high on tasted.

Source
Newyorker.

Norwegian study shows more Roundup in food

Abstract:

This article describes the nutrient and elemental composition, including residues of herbicides and pesticides, of 31 soybean batches from Iowa, USA. The soy samples were grouped into three different categories: (i) genetically modified, glyphosate-tolerant soy (GM-soy); (ii) unmodified soy cultivated using a conventional “chemical” cultivation regime; and (iii) unmodified soy cultivated using an organic cultivation regime. Organic soybeans showed the healthiest nutritional profile with more sugars, such as glucose, fructose, sucrose and maltose, significantly more total protein, zinc and less fibre than both conventional and GM-soy. Organic soybeans also contained less total saturated fat and total omega-6 fatty acids than both conventional and GM-soy. GM-soy contained high residues of glyphosate and AMPA (mean 3.3 and 5.7 mg/kg, respectively). Conventional and organic soybean batches contained none of these agrochemicals. Using 35 different nutritional and elemental variables to characterise each soy sample, we were able to discriminate GM, conventional and organic soybeans without exception, demonstrating “substantial non-equivalence” in compositional characteristics for ‘ready-to-market’ soybeans.

The study goes on to break down and show the nutrients for the different classes of soybeans (Roundup Ready, conventional pesticides, organic). Differences between organic and other soybean crops:

1. The organic soybeans had significantly more barium but no other statistically significant variations were found in the other nutrients measured.
2. The organic soybeans had significantly more glucose, fructose, sucrose, and maltose (all types of sugars). 

Other notes:

1. Glyphosate has been found in all parts of the plant. It cannot be washed off. Thus, people are ingesting glyphosate wherever glyphosate is sprayed.

Source

1. Rodale's Organic Life. April 25, 2014.
2. The study: "Compositional Differences in Soybeans on the Market: Glyphosate accumulates in Roundup Ready GM Soybeans." Food Chemistry. June 2014.

38 countries now ban GMO crops

Although some still grow them, GMO crops are banned from importation in some countries.

More here.
More info on GMO bans by country and the type of ban (growing, importing, etc).
GMO ban map by country.
World map: countries with GMO labelling laws.
World map: 64 countries require GMO labelling.

Glyphosate found in 11 out of 24 breakfast foods in America

ANH released a study that showed 11 out of 24 breakfast foods contained glyphosate. Highlights:

• They found Roundup in oatmeal, bagels, eggs- including the organic variety, potatoes and even non-GMO soy coffee creamer.
• The presence of glyphosate in eggs and dairy supports the fear that the chemical is accumulating in the tissue of these animals, and therefore presumably also in human tissue, in a process called bioaccumulation.
• The study PDF is here. 

Source
ANH. Apr 19, 2016.
93% of people tested positive for glyphosate.

Human DNA found in veggie burger, rat DNA in others

Quote:

Food analytics platform Clear Labs identified problems with ingredient substitutions, hygiene, and contamination in 13.6% of the 258 burger products the company analyzed on a molecular level, in a report released on Tuesday. The company analyzed ground meat, frozen patties, fast-food burger products, and veggie burger products.

Some of the most jarring numbers: 4.3% of samples contained traces of pathogenic DNA, rat DNA was found in three products, and human DNA was discovered in one frozen vegetarian burger. 

Source
Business Insider. May 10, 2016.

Daiya pizza sorta, kinda, not really organic

We're made a Daiya Fire Roasted Vegetable Gluten Free vegetarian pizza, remembering how so many vegans say how good it is. This product is not USDA Organic certified, it is not Non-GMO Project Certified. The box does say "Committed to Non-GMO Ingredients". Changing to all non-GMO ingredients can take years. But I did notice only 2 out of 41 ingredients are non-GMO; that's 4.8% are non-GMO.

Just beware and check the package for Non-GMO Project certified. The USDA Organic program has huge loopholes large enough to drive a truck through. The biggest problem with these loopholes: "Any non-GMO product can be used if a GMO product is not available." All the producer has to do is say "We couldn't find any non-GMO xxx" and they're still certified USDA Organic.

Source
My pizza.
Non-GMO certified project is much more strict than the USDA organic program.

How to test your food and water for pesticides

Go to this site: http://www.abraxiskits.com/products/pesticides/

They have a kit for many different pesticides. You can test for the CRY proteins (the BT protein that is produced by the plant to kill insects), 2,4-D, DDT, glyphosate, and more. Some kits have test strips.

Links to how to test for pesticides.
http://www.abraxiskits.com/publications/#pesticides

Pesticides in organic and non-organic food

Remember: The USDA Organic program allows non-approved chemicals and GMO products if no other organic product is available. USDA Organic does not mean organic! More info here on the USDA Organic Program. Look for Non-GMO Project verified instead.

Below: Just a few points about how often pesticides occur in certain foods.

Below: Foods most likely to have pesticides:

Below: Highest and lowest ranked in pesticides:

The corn is hard to believe since 92% of corn grown in the US is Roundup Ready.

Below: Pesticides found in 15% of organic foods in 2014. Source: Foodsafety News.

Below:  And what's the effect of pesticides?

Below: And what about conventional, vs "natural", vs "organic"?

Below: What level of pesticides does one person have?

Source: Off-Grid. Urine levels of pesticides were 6.7x higher before he ate organic foods. After eating organic, pesticide levels dropped by a factor of 6.7x.

USDA study finds Americans eating less fruit and veg

The USDA ERS report contains estimates of food availability for 200 food and drink commodities. A "food" would be apple pie, packaged sliced apples, apple juice, or whole raw apples. But a "commodity" would be the raw applies that go into those foods.

This report takes data from 6 food intake surveys between 1994 and 2008 and compares the pounds consumed per person per year. The report also breaks things down by demographics.

• Drop in fruit consumption: from 42.4 to 31.9 pounds per person per year, mostly due to eating less oranges.
• Drop in veg consumption: 172.8 to 161.8 pounds per person overall for children and adults. 
• Drop in dairy: from 220.5 to 211.4 pounds per person per year.  
• Chicken consumption rose slightly, while beef and pork dropped a little across all demographics.

The slight increase in chicken consumption might be regarded as positive, however how you cook the food matters quite a bit. It would be more helpful if the report broke down chicken consumption between "healthy" ways to prepare (like baking) vs calorie-dense, nutrient-sparse "unhealthy" ways: like deep frying. Also, going out to eat will account for a significant portion of "unhealthy" consumption of almost all foods.

Data used
Data sources used were the Food Availability (FA) data and the Loss-Adjusted Food Availability (LAFA) within the Food Availability Data System (FADS) compiled by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).


Source

1. USDA ERS survey, March 2016. Compares two time periods: 1994-1998 and 2007-2008. PDF of full report available, HTML of summary also available for free. 
2. USDA Food Availability Data System. All kinds of charts, spreadsheets, graphs here. 

Overfishing statistics

Some statistics on over fishing across the world.

1. 200 million people depend on fishing for jobs and food. About 20% of people in the world rely on ocean products as their primary protein source. [3]
2. Nitin Desai, Secretary General of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development,  warns that over fishing poses a major threat to the food supply. [3] Overfishing is not sustainable. 
3. In the north Atlantic region, in the last decade, commercial fish populations of cod, hake, haddock and flounder have fallen by as much as 95%. [3]
4. By using catch reconstructions, the numbers from FAO look misleading, and the real situation is much worse. The edible fish catches peaked in the late 1990s and have been declining ever since. [5]
5. By looking at Figure 3, the catches have declined much more steeply in some Atlantic fishing areas. [5]
6. As fishing technology increases in efficiency, fishing boats catch more fish, and it gets more difficult for the fish population to replenish itself.
7. Fishing fleets from Europe, China, and Japan regularly break the law and fish the waters of more poor nations, adding to the problem. [6]
8. Atlantic cod stocks have already collapsed in 1992. [6]
9. West Africa doesn't report 60% of the actual fish caught. China doesn't report 92% of it's caught fish! [6]
10. Jack Mackerel in the south Pacific have declined from 30 tonnes per year to less than 3 tonnes in 20 years. [7]
11. Shrimp trawl nets are like clear cutting the ocean floor. They disrupt coral, and catch animals that are not wanted. This "bycatch" is thrown back into the ocean, dead. Bycatch from shrimp nets runs from 40% to 98%. [8]
12. From 2012 to 2013: Pacific sardine landings down 38%, blue crab landings down 36%, Atlantic menhaden landings down 25%. [11] 
13. In 2010, 91% of fish stocks are Fully Exploited, Overexploited, or Collapsed. [13]
14. 99.5% of Atlantic salmon have disappeared from the Wild. They have disappeared from Europe, Scandinavia, around the Baltic Sea, the Russian rivers Neva and Narva, the Luleälven and Umeälven of Sweden, from the Odra and Wisla in Poland, and the Vilia of Belarus. EcoWatch, Mar 14, 2016. Anna Tonteri has a thesis about salmon here as a PDF.

Sources

1. Bite Sized Vegan video. March 2016. Youtube. 
2. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2012. UN FAO. 148 pages. PDF here. 
3. Overfishing: a Threat to Marine Biodiversity. UN. Last accessed Mar 31, 2016. Link to page. 
4. General Situation of World Fish Stocks. UN FAO. Last accessed Mar 31, 2016. PDF here.
5. Pauly, Daniel & Dirk Zeller. Catch reconstructions reveal that global marine fisheries catches are higher than reported and declining. Nature Communications 7, Article number: 10244. Jan 2016.    doi:10.1038/ncomms10244. Last accessed Mar 31, 2016. Link to full study here. 
6. Andrei, Mihai. Oceans are running out of fish – much faster than we thought. ZME Science, Jan 20, 2016. Last accessed Mar 31, 2016. Article here. 
7. George, Russ. Who killed the jack mackerel? Dec 20, 2015. Last accessed Mar 31, 2016. Link here. 
8. A Study of the Options for Utilization of Bycatch and Discards from Marine Capture Fisheries. Section 9: Discards and Bycatch in Shrimp Trawl Fisheries. FAO Fisheries Circular No. 928 FIIU/C928. UN FAO. Oct 1997. Last accessed Mar 31, 2016. Link here. 
9. Banaka, Lee. U.S. National Bycatch Report First Edition Update 2. NOAA. Last accessed Mar 31, 2016. Link here. 
10. Status of Fish Stocks 2013. NOAA Fisheries. Last accessed Mar 31, 2016. Link to page here.  
11. Sustainable Species, By the Numbers. NOAA Fishwatch. Last accessed Mar 31, 2016. Link here. 
12. Annual fish landings data source. NOAA Office of Science and Technology. Last accessed Mar 31, 2016. Link here. This can output a table of one or all fish species, for a date range from 1950 to 2014. for all US states or just one. This table of numbers can then be used to make a graph. You can also download an ASCII file of the numbers. This ASCII file appears to be a comma-delimited file. 
13. Rogers, Alex D. State of the Ocean Report, 2013. International Programmer of the State of the Ocean (IPSO). Last accessed Mar 31, 2016. Link to web page here.  Direct link to PDF. This is a collection of studies, and the first page of the PDF lists the studies inside it.

60% of US canned food contains BPA liners

That's the average of all tested cans of US brand canned food. 100% of Campbell's cans tested positive for BPA. For store brands, 100% of Target brands tested positive for BPA and 88% of Walmart brand canned food.

86% of food cans in Canada still contain BPA, according to this article.

BPA free items, though, do not mean they are safe. There are many more phthalates out there companies can use in plastics. 

Source
Toxic Food Cans Report, March 2016.

Sustainable Local Foods

I've had lettuce from www.sustainablelocalfoods.com several times now and I really like it. It actually tastes like lettuce. It's the buttercrunch variety, grown hydroponically. It's sold with the roots on, and it does last much longer in the fridge than other lettuce with no roots. Meijer carries it.

I enjoyed it and I think you should give it a try.

2014: 60% of bread in the UK contains pesticides

Even though this is older, people should still know about it.

Two in every three loaves of bread sold in the UK contain pesticide residues, according to a new analysis of government data by environmental campaigners. Tests on hundreds of loaves also showed that 25% contained residues of more than one pesticide.

Links

1. Guardian article. 
2. The report PDF in the Guardian article was supposed to be available, but instead redirected me to here. I managed to find the PDF here.
3. Pesticide Action Network, UK.