Glyphosate, Gluten, and Nutritional Victim Complex

And how to stay in the frying pan and out of the fire

For the last couple of years, I have been unwell, and unwell in a way too acute to tolerate but not extreme enough to medically diagnose. The joys, they are, of immune system afflictions - coupled with womanhood, the eponymous hormonal imbalance, rumored gut disbiosis and what the fuck you’re allowed to eat at the end of it all - you already know I hate “gut health”, but man, the demonization of benign foods for the wrong reasons annoys me to no end. We’ve somehow made the internal rotation from whole milk, to soy milk, to oat milk, back to whole milk, we’ve learned absolutely nothing, and we stupidly respond to products like dried fruit or potato chips bearing the self appointed medal that says “gluten free.” But why is it better? Is anything better? Well, yes, and also, no, not at all. We’ve conflated gluten intolerance with poison intolerance, and we need to understand the poison part. And before some very annoying people comment that celiacs exist, as though it’s my first day on earth and I don’t know that, let me make it clear: there are very real medical conditions which cause partial or total gluten intolerances. When I make fun of people who don’t eat gluten, I do not mean any of these people, and honestly, I only make fun of the others because it’s all we can do to keep from crying. Nobody is invalidating your allergies or intolerances. It’s going to be okay.

You may have heard recently that Banza, the millennialcore chickpea pasta, tested positive for glyphosate - not just tested for some, but tested for the highest contamination content of any food product tested at that lab, ever. I really, really recommend reading the entirety of this study - it’s a horrifying look into the lack of regulation in the very industry that convinces you that products are “clean,” “guilt-free”, or “healthy.” There is a direct association between gluten free products and glyphosate - let’s dive into what it is, and why 95% of samples tested (44 out of 46 products, all of which are sold readily at Sprouts, Whole Foods, other “healthy places”, etc.) tested positive for glyphosate, fucking AGENT ORANGE components, and more.

When most folks hear the word glyphosate, they very likely think of RoundUp. The highly contested weed killer is, no doubt, a horrible product to use or buy, and I’ve plastered many fliers in the RoundUp areas of my local Home Depots explaining the increased cancer risk associated with being anywhere near this shit. The combination of glyphosate as well as other compounds in the bottle absolutely kills bees, destroys microbiota in insects and soil organisms, accumulates in birds, water tables, and utterly destroys everything it comes into contact with - the speed is the only variable. When we talk about glyphosate contamination in food, it’s important to understand what glyphosate is, how it’s used, and how exactly it causes us harm - and it’s not as simple as you think.

When you google “is glyphosate bad?”, you get a lot of articles asking if glyphosate is bad and doing a terrible job explaining further. I’m here to help. Glyphosate, in and of itself, is what’s known as a weak acid - all you really need to know here is it acts as a substitute amino acid which interferes with a plant’s ability to synthesize amino acids. When a glyphosate salt formulation is applied, the salt disassociates at the action site (honestly same) and the glyphosate acid stops the production of an enzyme called EPSPS, which is a crucial and well studied component of the shikimate pathway. Glyphosate acids interfere with this pathway and ultimately lead to the death of the plant - hence, herbicide - that’s how it kills the weeds you spray it on as well as all the grass around it. It’s used on plants creepily called “RoundUp Ready” in commercial, conventional agriculture, because these plants have been genetically modified not to die from glyphosate application. Yikes.

If your eyes are crossing, I assure you that’s as far into the chemistry of herbicide we’re going to get - what you should remember from that clusterfuck of a paragraph is glyphosate stops shikimate pathway, glyphosate kills plants. Now, the association here is not glyphosate kills plant = glyphosate kills me. Humans, and mammals in general, do not contain this pathway at all - therefore, we don’t contain the enzyme so it can’t be interfered with by glyphosate. However, the shikimate pathway is present in microorganisms and plants - you know, the basis of all life on earth.

So now, we’ve got a widely used pesticide which has been successfully marketed as “safe”, because technically, no, glyphosate cannot disrupt a pathway that we don’t have. For years, this has somehow been enough to keep the product on shelves, despite billions of dollars being paid out in settlements for folks with cancer linked directly to prolonged use of RoundUp. But what’s the connection? Stay with me here. We’ll come back to that.

You’ve probably heard some annoying, selectively gluten free person in your life tell you that when they’re in Europe, they have no problem with gluten. As much as I agree that this particular archetype of person is insufferable, they aren’t actually wrong, and it isn’t from wheat genetics - it’s from glyphosate. Glyphosate is banned across multiple uses in the EU, the most aggressive of anti-glyphosate policies targeting its use as an early ripener. How does a weed killer ripen grains faster? It kills the vegetative part of the plant, forcing the formation of the “seed” - or grain - to happen faster, and more uniformly. If you’ve ever grown herbs in the summer, you’ve seen them bolt - seed heads popping up towards the sky. Bolting is your sign that the plant is ready to die - and its swan song is reproducing. Significantly damaging a plant’s ability to photosynthesize, as well as blocking a pathway crucial to its growth, is a surefire way to get a plant to produce a seed - or in this case, a chikpea, wheat kernel, or buckwheat groat - to hurry up.

The United States is the highest user in the world of glyphosate in agriculture, and interestingly enough, we’re the only place on this planet that thinks being gluten free is a personality type. We also have the worst gut health of any other country, and we eat the most UFP’s - ultra processed foods - which are foods made with ingredients you literally cannot buy at a grocery store. These are your colors, emulsifiers, mystery fats and preservatives - the shit that will kill you. If you’ve made it this far and you don’t think these things are connected, you are probably experiencing glyphosate poisoning and it’s making you dumber. Best of luck.

Ok, so, let’s combine unregulated glyphosate use, ultra processed foods, a diet mostly consisting of grains + corn, and a growing number of Americans with relentless gut health issues - bloating, IBS, constipation, unexplained weight gain, nutrient malabsorption. Naturally, a gluten free lifestyle rose to popularity as wheat was demonized. But the reality is, wheat itself is not an irritant, unless you’re allergic to it. In fact, wheat has been and continues to be a staple foodstuff for most of the planet - and we’re the only ones experiencing so many belly issues. Instead of, I don’t know, admitting that glyphosate, as well as other chemical residues, present on the corn and wheat because we have to make sure we grow enough consistent corn and wheat or else everything will fucking collapse, the wellness and nutrition industries were quick to capitalize on the gluten free lifestyle. I imagine the CEO of Monsanto sitting on a throne made of dead bird skeletons, sipping a glass of scotch, laughing - “sure, let them think it’s the wheat. Wait til they find out about the chickpeas.” Now, we have just as many, if not more, gluten free versions of shit we didn’t even ask for - and somehow, we’ve been convinced that the lack of gluten means more than the chemicals used in growing the replacement. For fuck’s sake, you guys. We can do better than that.

So, back to Banza, the company that will no doubt lose its ass because it has been thrown under the proverbial bus of a nationwide problem much bigger than its little chickpea rotini operation. The alarming presence of glyphosate residue on this product is bad. But do you even wash your produce? The reality that’s important here is that if you want to avoid harmful pesticide residues, you need to stop eating processed food. You need to stop believing that gluten free means it’s healthy. You need to fork up the extra money, or the extra time, to cook things from scratch. Organically grown grains, non GMO grains, heirloom grains - these are plants that will die if sprayed with glyphosate - the only plants that survive it have been modified scientifically not to die from it. Like, why the fuck would you eat that? Knowledge is power, and if you’ve made it this far, you hold the key to saving yourself from at least one kind of cancer. Again, we end up at the same truth - it takes time to invest in your health, and if you don’t do it now, you will die earlier, sicker, and sadder. And I hate that for you.

I have been sick for a few years now, and it’s been diagnosed incorrectly as everything you can imagine - autoimmune conditions, food allergies, stress, you name it. I recently took an amino acids test, which showed deficiencies that led my practitioner to guess I had either heavy metal or glyphosate poisoning. The latter was confirmed by testing recently. She was right. My body is literally failing, system wide, because I had high exposure to this stuff while working on commercial farms and operating a commercial greenhouse. I didn’t spray it. But I inhaled it, stepped on it, cuddled with my dog who rolled in it, ate plants watered by water containing it. I had more exposure than most would have to it, and sure, I have a preexisting autoimmune condition which makes it harder for me to process bad things. No matter what, it doesn’t just go away - and while it may not have a direct pathway to murder in our bodies, it does something much worse - it destroys the microbiota that our bodies, and our bellies, depend on to be healthy. If these organisms continue to die in our crops and in the bacteria that exists symbiotically with them, we will have nowhere to source them from - this is the definitive relationship between glyphosate residues and stomach problems in the United States (and elsewhere, but like, mostly here). The entire source of our health is in our stomachs, and we are constantly depleting the once thriving community of bacteria. This invites opportunistic pathogens in, this imbalances our bodies, this makes us susceptible to failing detox pathways, cancers, and absolutely early death.

I wish that I had good news. I have bad news and less bad news. The bad news is, this poison is only one of many that our bodies are bombarded with every single day. From heavy metals in our water, formaldehyde in our soil, toxins in our air, and of course, residues on our crops - we are living in the end times of the planet we have destroyed. The less bad news, though, is that you can mitigate these risks, at least somewhat, and it is absolutely worth whatever you have to do to make that happen. You must eat organic foods. If that means you eat less blueberries and more spinach because one is cheaper than the other, than so be it. Your preferences today are not worth cancer down the line. You must limit your intake of processed foods. Teach yourself to snack on things you make, from ingredients you can count on one hand. If a conclusive test has not confirmed that you are allergic to something, don’t automatically assume that you are. If you avoid gluten because it makes you feel bad, but you aren’t allergic to it - I encourage you to try eating organic, non - GMO wheat gluten. You may be pleasantly surprised. There is much investigation required in a deep understanding of our bodies and our health. I hope this is a conclusive first step towards taking control of what you put in your body. The most important takeaway here is that corporations and regulation boards do not care if you live or die. Please don’t trust them, ever again.

The topic of glyphosate is always a spicy one. I welcome anybody in the comments who wants to argue about its toxicity to humans to pay my medical bills.

In Health,

Anna