Would You Spray Weedkiller on Your Cereal?

While you may never want to spray your cereal with weedkiller, a new study shows that it may already have! The Environmental Working Group recently published a shocking study showing high amounts of the weedkiller in cereals you may eat every day. This weed killer is known as glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Round Up Weed Killer.

So, maybe you are thinking that is no big deal and that weed killers are typically used in farming. Well, glyphosate is an herbicide that has been linked to cancer by California scientists and the World Health Organization. In fact, a $289 million lawsuit was recently won by a groundskeeper dying of cancer in California. He had repeated exposure to Monsanto’s Round Up while performing his job at a school! Gee that makes me feel good about our children at school playing outside. At least here in NJ, groundskeepers are prohibited from using glyphosate for that very reason. Then, why is it on our shelves??

Well, it turns out that our children may be getting an “unhealthy” dose of this poison every morning in their breakfast cereal or snack. This independent study showed that in all but 2 out of 45 samples of products made with conventionally grown oats contained glyphosate, with 3/4 of these containing levels higher than what EWG would determine as safe. Yikes!

Here are a few of some big offenders that you may have in your pantry now, some even being organic:

Cheerios*

Quaker Steel Cut Oats*

Quaker Old Fashioned Oats*

Barbara’s Multigrain Spoonfuls*

Lucky Charms*

Great Value Instant Oatmeal*

Quaker Dinosaur Eggs, Brown Sugar Instant Oatmeal*

Giant Instant Oatmeal*

Bob’s Red Mill Steel Cut Oats

Nature Valley Granola Protein Oat’s ‘n Honey

Back to Nature Classic Granola*

*vey high levels of glyphosate over 400 ppb (“safe” levels under 160 ppb)

I was even a bit devastated to learn that Bob’s Red Mill Steel Cut Oats, that I’ve always trusted as organic, had some higher levels of glyphosate:(.

Check out all of these “healthy” breakfasts and snacks that contain this toxin that suppresses our immune system and has been shown to cause cancer.

There is a reason that some countries ban the use of glyphosate such as Israel, Malta, The Netherlands, Argentina with Switzerland, Germany and Columbia banning it for certain types of crops.

Beware of the most common crops here in the US that commonly have this dangerous weedkiller sprayed on them which includes corn, wheat, oats and soybeans. Other common crops such as peanuts, lentils, peas, flax, rye, buckwheat, millet, canola, sugar beets and potatoes are also slathered with glyphosate just before harvesting. Great–seems like that just seals in more concentrated amounts of this toxic soup.

The bottom line is that you should pay extra careful attention to purchase only organic types of the above crops.

We need a louder voice here in the US and that can be done with our wallets. Invest in your health and good old fashioned capitalism will give us the healthier food options that will nourish our bodies and make us feel better. Knowledge is power, so please share the Health!