Alarming Glyphosate Levels Detected in Cereals: Important Details Revealed About Monsanto’s Herbicide

There is important and revealing information on the amounts of glyphosate consumed by children and adults.

Less than a week after a jury found Monsanto liable for a $ 289 million cancer verdict, independent laboratory tests commissioned by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) reported large doses of glyphosate in children’s cereals.

Excessive doses were also reported in oatmeal bars and other oat-based products.

Previously, estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggest that children ages 1 to 2 probably experience the most significant exposure to glyphosate, the potentially cancer-causing chemical used in Roundup’s brand herbicide. Monsanto.

And according to the agency’s risk assessment, the level of exposure is 230 times higher than the EWG health benchmark.

What does this mean for our children?

Without some profound changes made to the food industry and EPA standards, they will continue to eat potentially toxic levels of glyphosate at breakfast. Maybe this will be the last straw for consumers to understand?

Glyphosate in cereals: Details of the EWG study

The EWG turned to Eurofins, a nationally recognized laboratory with extensive experience in chemical testing. This test involved measuring the amount of glyphosate found in popular oatmeal-containing products. Is this a big problem? You must ask.

 

Previous research suggests that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicidal chemical Roundup, is linked to the development of NHL.

The bad news? The latest tests detected it in all but two of the 45 non-organic product samples.

The list of tested products includes:

  • Cheerios.
  • Lucky Charms.
  • Nature Valley granola bars.
  • Avena Quaker.

Alexis Temkin, Ph.D., EWG toxicologist and author of the report, expressed concern about these findings.

“Parents shouldn’t worry that feeding their children healthy oatmeal foods exposes them to a cancer-related chemical. The government must take steps to protect our vulnerable populations, ”he said.

For this study, the EWG established a stricter health benchmark for daily exposure to glyphosate in food than the EPA.

Considering the EWG standard of 160 parts per billion (ppb), the following products exceeded that limit in one or both samples tested, with these products exceeding 400 ppb:

Granola

  • Granola Classic Back a Nature.
  • Quaker Simply Granola Oats, Honey, Raisins & Almonds.
  • Nature Valley Granola.
  • Protein Oats ‘n Honey.

Instant oatmeal

  • Giant Instant Oatmeal, Sabor’s original
  • Quaker dinosaur eggs, brown sugar, instant oatmeal.
  • Umpqua Avena, Maple Pecan.
  • Market Pantry Instant Oatmeal, strawberries, and cream.

Oat cereal for breakfast

  • Toasted Cheerios Whole Grain Oat Cereal.
  • Lucky charms.
  • Barbara’s Multigrain Spoonfuls, Original Cereal.
  • Kellogg’s Cracklin ‘Oat Bran Oatmeal Cereal.

Snack bars

Nature Valley crunchy granola bars, oatmeal, and Honey.

Whole oats

  • Quaker Steel Cut Oats.
  • Quaker Old Fashioned Oats.
  • Bob’s Red Mill Steel Cut Oats.

These products are mainly sold only in the United States market.

Why is there glyphosate in our food?

According to the US Geological Survey, 250 million pounds of glyphosate are sprayed on US crops each year. Glyphosate is used primarily in Roundup Ready corn and soybeans genetically modified to resist the herbicide.

Glyphosate is a systemic herbicide, which means it is used inside the plant, including parts of livestock that humans eat.

And on top of that, glyphosate is sprayed on other non-GMO crops, such as wheat, oats, barley, and beans, just before harvest. Farmers sometimes call this “burning” crops and do this to kill food plants and dry them so they can be harvested earlier.

How much glyphosate is too much?

Why do we have to pay attention to the glyphosate levels in our food?

The simple answer is that glyphosate is linked to elevated cancer risk. The World Health Organization classifies the weed-killing chemical as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

So really, any amount of glyphosate in our food is of concern, mainly when it is found in our children’s food. (And especially since children consume it during critical stages of development.)

So how did the EWG come up with the limit for childhood exposure to glyphosate?

Using a cancer risk assessment developed by California state scientists, the EWG calculated that glyphosate levels above 160 parts per billion (ppb) are considered too high for children.

To break it down in simplest terms, a child should not ingest more than 0.01 milligrams of glyphosate per day.

How did the EWG determine this health benchmark?

According to the California Proposition 65 Registry of Chemicals Known to Cause Cancer, the “No Significant Risk Level” for glyphosate for an average adult weighing approximately 154 pounds is 1.1 milligrams per day.

This level of safety is more than 60 times lower than the standards set by the EPA.

To calculate the recommendation for children, the EWG took California’s highest lifetime cancer risk of one in 1 million (the number used for many cancer-causing contaminants in drinking water).

And a 10-fold margin of safety, recommended by the federal Food Quality Protection Act, was added to support children and develop fetuses that are more susceptible to carcinogens.

This is how the EWG reached the safe limit of 0.01 milligrams of glyphosate per day for children.

The EWG health benchmark regarding the amount of glyphosate that poses a threat in our food is much stricter than the EPA allows.

Although this amount of glyphosate in oatmeal products does not appear to be very high in a single serving, imagine consuming that amount every day for a lifetime. Exposure to this toxic herbicide will increase over time, which is concerning.

“The concern about glyphosate is about long-term exposure. As most health agencies say, a single serving would not cause harmful effects, ”explains Olga Naidenko, Ph.D., EWG’s senior scientific advisor for children’s health.

“But think about eating popular foods like oatmeal every day or almost every day is when, according to scientific evaluations, such amounts of glyphosate could cause harm to health.”

And there is some controversy over whether we can trust government regulators to make sure the food we eat is safe.

Last April, internal emails obtained by the nonprofit US Right to Know revealed that the FDA has been testing foods for glyphosate for two years and found “a fair amount.”

But these findings have not been released to the public. According to The Guardian, the media outlet that obtained these internal documents, an FDA chemist wrote: “I have brought wheat crackers, granola cereal, and cornmeal from home, and there is a fair amount in all of them.”

According to Naidenko, “It is essential for companies to take action and choose oats grown without herbicides. This can be done, and the EWG urges government agencies like the EPA and other companies to restrict the use of herbicides that end up in food. “

Glyphosate in cereals: organic products vs. not organic

What about organic cereals and oats?

The EWG findings suggest that organic products contain significantly less glyphosate than non-organic products.

To be exact, 31 of 45 conventional product samples contained glyphosate levels of 160 ppb or more, while 5 of 16 organic brand products had low glyphosate levels (10 to 30 ppb).

None of the organic products tested contained a glyphosate level close to the EWG reference value of 160 ppb.

Glyphosate can get into organic foods by deriving from nearby fields that grow conventional crops.

Organic produce can also be cross-contaminated during processing in a facility that handles conventional crops.

While glyphosate was detected in some organic oat products, the levels were much, much lower than conventional products or nonexistent.

So it seems the rule still stands: to avoid further exposure to cancer-causing chemicals like glyphosate, choose organic.

Final thoughts on glyphosate in cereal

  • The EWG commissioned independent laboratory tests to measure the levels of glyphosate present in popular oat-based products.
  • The scientists found that nearly three-quarters of conventionally grown produce contained levels of glyphosate that are higher than what EWG considers safe for children.
  • Feeding your family clean and healthy meals can seem like a daily challenge. We shouldn’t have to worry about whether our seemingly healthy choices contain toxic herbicides.
  • It is relevant to know that not only countries like the US are affected by the consumption of cereals with glyphosate, but also Latin American countries since these products are manufactured with raw material that is imported or the cereals are directly imported such as corn flakes, and Quaker Oats, which are widely consumed by Latinos.
  • It is necessary to add that the Monsanto macro company has exported its products worldwide.