Researchers Discover Glyphosate Herbicide in Honey, Soy Sauce
The chemical in Monsanto's RoundUp herbicide
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How ubiquitous is Monsanto’s RoundUp herbicide, really? Researchers have discovered that a chemical in the world’s most used herbicide – RoundUp – is tainting the world’s food supply at large. It was recently found that this chemical, known as glyphosate, is present concerning amounts in honey and soy sauce.
For the study, researchers from Abraxis LLC and Boston University purchased sample sizes of various foods to analyze levels of glyphosate. Bought from the Philadelphia, US metropolitan area, the following foods were analyzed:
- 69 samples of honey
- 26 samples of pancake and corn syrup
- 28 samples of soy sauce
- 11 samples of soy milk
- 20 samples of tofu
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. What this means is that products could have contained minimal levels of glyphosate even though they turned up negative.
While glyphosate residues above the limit weren’t detected in the soy milk, pancake and corn syrup, and tofu, shocking residues were found in the honey. Of the 69 honey samples tested, 41 of them (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.
And it wasn’t just commercial honey that was tainted; 5 of the 11 samples of organic honey contained high levels of glyphosate – with a range of 26 to 93 ppb and a mean of 50 ppb.
Sustainable Pulse Director Henry Rowlands reacted Thursday to the published results;
“This sad news shows just how widespread glyphosate is in our food. With the increase in GM crops being cultivated worldwide it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid. If you ask anyone if they feel there should be ‘allowed’ levels of toxic chemicals such as glyphosate in their bodies the answer will of course always be ‘No’. It is a fact that the scientific and regulatory process cannot evidence ‘safe’ levels for these chemicals.”
Sustainable Pulse notes:
“The results showed that honey from countries that permit GM crops contained far more glyphosate than honey from countries which limit or prohibit the cultivation of GM crops, with the levels in the U.S. by far the highest.”
Approximately 1 billion pounds of pesticides are sprayed on crops in the United States alone every single year, with much of it containing glyphosate. Regulators as well as Monsanto claim that this ingredient is excreted from the body, but numerous studies have shown that not only is it causing numerous health problems, but it is showing up in urine samples, blood samples, and even breast milk.
Despite testing for hundreds of pesticides in food commodities, the USDA does not test for glyphosate residues. Why?
| | Mike is the co-founder, editor, and researcher behind Natural Society. Studying the work of top natural health activists, and writing special reports for top 10 alternative health websites, Mike has written hundreds of articles and pages on how to obtain optimum wellness through natural health. |
“Regulators as well as Monsanto claim that this ingredient is excreted from the body, but numerous studies have shown that not only is it causing numerous health problems,”
Sources please. Hyperbole is not a source. Please link to studies that demonstrate that glycophos is causing health problems. When you make a claim like this it is your responsibility to provide sources.
So what happens when Monsanto kills everyone, and has all of their money?
I am 66 year old gardener, hobbyist since I was 10.In old country (Poland) we used hoe for weed control. When I was 27, I came to US & immediately I started to use Roundup. Safe, breaks down when it hits the soil(box said that), great. But I noticed that worms, night crawlers(soil builders) disappear. Every year recommended spray dose doubles, weeds get resistant to it. In the begging, next day weeds were dead, today you have to wait weeks or does not work at all. Crops are getting smaller & smaller because the chemical does not break down as promised, but stays in the soil for the next year. The price of the staff goes up every year & costs more then value of your crops. I stopped using this crap years ago & went back to the hoe. Warms are back, crops are huge, no money spent for stupid, useless, poison. I recently purchased large amount of buckwheat honey, cheap. How to test it for Roundup?
Monsanto is the devil incarnate. It’s a shame they own the politicians lock stock and barrel. It’s funny, they only serve certified organic food in the cafeteria at their headquarters. They don’t even eat their own products. Should tell you something!
those honey may be used in making chips.
GMO BAN ALL GMO POISONOUS FOODS.
BOYCOTT KELLOGG’S POISONOUS GMO FOODS.
GMO POISONOUS FOODS are designed to give you massive incurable tumors and Cancer to kill you to cut down the World Population.
BAN all MONSANTO GMO POISONOUS FOODS.
President Putin of Russia has already BANNED all GMO in Russia.
Disruption is the strenuously overworked
marketing buzzword du jour that typically appears in a digital context.
It’s gotten quite a workout in the recent past to describe the impact of
location-based upstarts like Uber or Airbnb on the conventional
transportation and lodging sectors, for example.
But it’s also a very apt characterization of Coca-Cola’s lower tech but equally startling incursion into fluid milk with its Fairlife brand,
an initiative that has the potential to upend not only how business is
done in the dairy case, but also in other highly commoditized
supermarket categories like meat and produce.
Coca-Cola’s product-portfolio diversification makes sense given that carbonated-soft-drink consumption as reported by Nielsen Scantrack
and others has been in steady decline for the last decade or so as
consumers shun added sugars. The drop in diet soft drinks has been
equally precipitous, reflecting growing unease with artificial
sweeteners.
Arguably the only other major beverage category to
experience such a dramatic reversal of fortunes has been fluid milk;
once touted as nature’s most perfect food, milk has lost substantial
volume over the past decades. USDA reports
that milk consumption has sunk from 32 gallons per capita in 1970 to
less than 20 gallons per capita in 2012, despite high profile efforts of
the dairy industry to stem the flow.
The
Fairlife product itself represents a savvy synthesis of current dietary
imperatives, where addition counts more than subtraction. What’s been
added? It has 50 percent more protein—the hottest ticket in the food
business at the moment—and 30 percent more calcium. To be sure, some
stuff has also been removed: It is lactose free and boasts 50 percent
less sugar than conventional milk. All of this is made possible by a
proprietary filtration process that separates various components of
milk; however, lest it seem a few steps too far removed from the udder,
promotional material reassures us that the product comes from
sustainable family farms and tastes just like regular milk. All of this
also comes with a hefty price tag, since a 52-ounce bottle will sell for
about $4.60, more than twice the typical cost of a 64-ounce half gallon
of ordinary milk.
Sandy Douglas, president of Coca-Cola North
America, has acknowledged that it may take quite a long time to
establish a beachhead in the dairy aisle, but he absolutely believes
that the product will eventually “rain money.”
Given both Fairlife’s higher price tag and the moribund nature of the
traditional milk category, that’s the kind of bold prediction that seems
calculated to invite failure. There are some positive augurs, however.
First and foremost is the strong tailwind provided by Starbucks and
various bottled-water brands that prove it’s possible to add value,
goose prices and contemporize tired beverage commodities.
Second, Coca-Cola has a strong success template with its Simply
Orange Juice. A home run that’s totally in tune with the zeitgeist, the
juice is never frozen, sweetened or made from concentrate, and a
“majority of its fruit is still picked by hand.” It doesn’t hurt, of
course, that Donald Sutherland lends credibility and gravitas with his
voiceovers on the Simply commercials.
While functional foods have been the next big thing for a darn long
time, they are getting real traction buoyed by a one-two push from both
Baby Boomers and Millennials and exemplified by the runaway success of
Greek yogurt, which turned around a similarly mature, lackluster dairy
category.
What’s more, organic milk sales are booming despite a substantial
price premium, proving that the milk cooler is not immune to value-added
merchandising.
There’s no question that Coca-Cola will face some real
challenges, starting with the fact that it’s Coca-Cola, a brand not
exactly synonymous with better-for-you potables.
To
address this potential disconnect, press releases have put the focus on
the Fairlife company, a separate entity for which Coke’s primary job is
to leverage its formidable distribution capability to get the milk jugs
into milk coolers from coast to coast. This last is also a potential
sticking point. Big national beverage brands are swimming upstream
against a rising tide of local, artisanal and craft drinks, the
popularity of which has led to some interesting contortions as giants
like Anheuser-Busch attempt to establish their bona fides in the
burgeoning craft-brewed beer business.
No matter how Fairlife
fares in the long term, other food marketers plagued by a low margin
commodity positioning should be lining up to take notes from its
playbook. If Fairlife succeeds, it will be responsible for the
premiumization of much more than the fluid-milk category.
Nancy Kruse is a menu trends analyst and the president of The Kruse Company. She is also a contributing editor to Nation’s Restaurant News.
Photos: Getty Images