Glyphosate.  The secret sauce to feeding the growing world population.  A dash of chemical here and a splash of it there and – voila! Food fore everyone!  How can that possibly be a bad thing? 

If you are not already familiar with glyphosate, it is time to get acquainted with it because you likely eat it and feed it to your family every day, all the while believing naively that you are making smart food choices.  And believe me, it is the antithesis of healthy eating even though the label on the packaging may say otherwise.

So what exactly is glyphosate, you may now be wondering?  Simply put – it is the primary chemical ingredient in a specific brand of weed killer (which I choose not to identify).  You can easily Google this if you are insistent on knowing.

Glyphosate may not sound like a big deal, especially since you use weed killer to keep your lawn lush and free of weeds but the difference is that you’re not consuming your lawn.  Glyphosate, on the other hand, is a big deal.  It is a chemical that is sprayed onto crops that are grown in abundance such as oats, barley, wheat and beans.  I would expect that these are ingredients found in the many foods in your pantry and that you put in your kids lunch box each morning, and likely yours as well.

While the original intent of glyphosate was to prevent weed invasion, it is now used regularly to speed up the growth of crops. This of course going back to a growing population with more mouths to feed.  Again, perhaps not sounding all that bad, but consider that it takes time for a plant to mature and develop to its full nutritional value.  If the speed at which it is grown is increased, how can it truly mature the way nature has intended it to?  

In addition to the rapid growth of these crops, they are being harvested before the chemical can properly break down which means that we are eating the chemical that resides on our food. This now poses the question – what is the true nutritional value of these crops that we consume?

As you contemplate glyphosate and the role it plays in your life, consider this last piece of information.  Glyphosate is considered a “probable carcinogen” by the World Health Organization and a number of lawsuits have developed over the years by people who have been diagnosed with cancer from exposure to glyphosate.  If cancer has developed by exposure as a farmer, then what is the probability of developing cancer from actually consuming it?

I am far from an expert on the topic and I continue to have questions but the knowledge I do have allows me to be more informed with each visit to the grocery store.

Understanding glyphosate is important, and deserves more of your time.  A great website to learn more is mygenefood.com. Here you will also find a list of companies who use glyphosate!