Organic whole wheat bread, organic multigrain bagels, and organic cage-free eggs were found to contain the pesticide glyphosate. Photo source: Pinterest

The Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) purchased common breakfast foods and tested them for glyphosate:

Glyphosate Levels In Breakfast Foods: What Is Safe?, The Alliance for Natural Health USA, 19 April 2016

The ANH tested regular and organic versions of these 12 foods: wheat flour, corn flakes, instant oatmeal, bagels, yogurt, bread, frozen hash browns, potatoes, cream of wheat, eggs, non-dairy creamers, dairy-based creamers.

These 10 foods contained glyphosate. Half of the 10 were organic:

Instant Oatmeal
Whole Wheat Bagels
Organic Multigrain Bagels
Whole Wheat Bread
Organic Whole Wheat Bread
Cream of Wheat Cereal
Eggs
Organic Cage-Free Antibiotic-Free Eggs
Organic Coffee Creamer
Organic Soy-Based Creamer

I’ve been saying for a while now that pesticides – such as glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, the world’s most widely used weedkiller – are in foods other than produce, other than the fresh fruits and vegetables that comprise the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) Dirty Dozen lists. They are in grains, notably GMO Roundup Ready corn and soy which are literally doused with the stuff in the field (over 90% of all corn and soy in the US is GMO), but also in non-GMO grains like wheat, and in livestock. I wrote to the EWG asking how wheat fared against produce and included a link to a study that found pesticides in bread but they never replied.

First … why is glyphosate in bread and other wheat products? Because the herbicide is used as a desiccant to dry crops at harvest time. It’s in livestock because animals are fed glyphosate-contaminated crops and it bioaccumulates in their tissues.

Foods with the highest levels of glyphosate – oatmeal, bagels, bread, and wheat cereal – are from non-Roundup Ready crops, the residues likely being present as a result of the common practice to use the herbicide as a desiccant shortly before harvest.

The food with the highest levels of glyphosate in this study – organic eggs (over three times the EPA limit!):

… are not sprayed directly with gluphosate, which indicates that the chemical is entering the food chain and building up in the tissues of the animals, otherwise known as bioaccumulation.

Glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor at levels much lower than that which makes the chemical a carcinogen. Endocrine disruptors cause diabetes. They cause endometriosis and fertility problems. They cause obesity. We’re blaming the individual when we should be blaming biotechnology and agriculture industries.

I keep telling you … organic foods are a marketing ploy. They offer a false sense of security. We need to get pesticides out of all foods.

Update, September 2018: