Did your mom or dad ever say: “Eat your breakfast, it is the most important meal of the day!” or “Eat your oatmeal, it will make you strong and healthy!” Well, these words of wisdom are no longer true if children are served Quaker Dinosaur Eggs, Brown Sugar, Instant Oatmeal or, worse, Quaker Old Fashioned Oats. Because these breakfast cereals have have unusually high amounts of glyphosate in them.
What is glyphosate you ask? It is a hazardous chemical in the weed killer Roundup, made by the company Monsanto. Roundup is the most heavily used weed killer in the U.S. – 250 million pounds of it are sprayed on our food every year. Sadly, glyphosate has also been linked to cancer in humans. A California jury recently awarded a man $289 million in damages because he was exposed to large amounts of weed killer and glyphosate while he worked as a school groundskeeper and he is now dying of cancer. It was revealed during the hearings that Monsanto knew glyphosate was not good for humans and they actively tried to discredit this scientific evidence rather than taking other action such as warning people about its dangers or minimizing its use on U.S. food.
It is well known to those who care about these things, like the World Health Organization and state scientists in California, that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to people” and it is on California’s list of “chemicals known to cause cancer.” There have been extensive studies done on this chemical that have shown there are “acceptable” levels for adult people, but even these levels don’t really account for risks to other types of humans that eat cereal such as small children and women who are pregnant with developing fetuses.
A study conducted by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found many cereals have unacceptable levels of glyphosate, including the Quaker products listed above and Cheerios. Yes, Cheerios. You can get all the details on their website. EWG found that even some cereals labeled as organic had more than trace amounts of glyphosate. This probably occurs because there is so much of this poison being used, that it is in the soil and water that travels into organic farms.
What’s really confusing is that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) worked with Monsanto to convince the California jury that glyphosate is safe and does not increase the risk of cancer in humans. The EWG is doing its best to convince the EPA that they should review the evidence because it shows that this chemical is not safe and its use should be minimized. Also, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been testing food in the U.S. for the past two years and has found a “fair amount” of glyphosate, but has not released their findings. We can look forward to hearing their report..
What can we do to make sure our food is not poisoning us? Get educated, let companies know you won’t stand for it, let your government agencies know you want stand for it and let your elected officials know you won’t stand for it. And for heaven’s sake don’t give your children oatmeal without checking the glyphosate levels!