Rethinking Lifestyle

Question #1: Would you spray something with Roundup and then eat it? Answer – probably not.

Question #2: Would you eat something that someone else had sprayed with Roundup? The answer is, you are doing it all the time, probably every day.

Looking back a few years you will recall that farmers used to cut their grain with a swather and leave it to dry in windrows across the field. This was because the crop matured unevenly, low wet spots being different from other parts of the field. When the windrows were nice and dry the farmer would come in with the combine harvester to separate the grain from the rest of the plant. Nowadays you have probably noticed that farmers are direct combining their crops without first cutting it to dry in windrows. I always thought this change was due to new faster maturing varieties, but the fact is that the majority of grain crops are sprayed with Roundup or a similar product to kill the plant so that the whole field dries evenly. They call it a desiccant. You will probably notice that there are no green weeds in the stubble after the grain has been harvested, and this is because the Roundup has literally killed everything. So when you buy bread, donuts, pizzas, or anything made with flour, you are probably eating something sprayed with Roundup. Admittedly in 2017 with our hot dry summer there was likely less of this spraying than in recent years.

What about the Roundup itself? The active ingredient is called ‘glyphosate’. In the human body there is a vital essential protein involved with protein synthesis and cell reproduction called ‘glycine’. You will notice both begin with ‘gly’ and apparently the glyphosate can get substituted for glycine. From what I have read glyphosate substitution correlates with several diseases including asthma, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and others – even autism. When a cell is trying to form a protein it may grab glyphosate instead of glycine to form a faulty protein. After that it is medical chaos.

Fertility rates have dropped significantly in North America and this is largely attributed to low viable sperm counts. Sperm cells are rapidly formed on a continuous basis and thus might be highly susceptible to glyphosate substitution and thus poor viability. When you google Roundup and Alzheimers for example you get dozens of ‘hits’ with information. Or google Roundup and sperm counts. We all know that not everything you read on line is totally scientifically accurate and supported by full studies, but I encourage readers to check it out for themselves.

For myself, I am switching to organic flour immediately as organic producers do not use Roundup (or other chemicals for that matter). Does anyone want to buy half a bag of regular flour?