Popular Cereal, Granola Found to Contain Unsafe Levels of RoundUp
You might want to think twice before pouring yourself a bowl of your favorite cereal or granola, as Monsanto’s likely-carcinogenic products have probably contaminated your breakfast. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide RoundUp has been found at unsafe levels in popular cereals such as Lucky Charms, Cheerios and Nature Valley granola, according to a recent study.
The study was published by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) – a philanthropic research group dedicated to studying the effects of toxic chemicals on children’s environmental safety. The group set a benchmark for safe levels of glyphosate in food products at 160 parts per billion (ppb), to test 45 conventional products and 16 organic products. Of those, 43 conventional products tested positive for glyphosate, while 5 organic products tested positive, though none of the organic products exceeded EWG’s safety benchmark.
The conventional products that tested high included Lucky Charms around 315 ppb; Quaker Dinosaur Egg Instant Oatmeal between 700 ppb; Quaker’s Old-Fashioned Oats between averaged 930 ppb; Nature Valley Granola Bars around 340 ppb; and Cheerios Whole Grain Oat Cereal averaged 497 ppb.
For a full list of the snacks and cereals tested for glyphosate look here.
EWG’s study was sparked by a recent lawsuit, which awarded $289 million to a man dying of cancer linked to his use of Monsanto’s RoundUp. Hopefully, this latest development will finally bring about the awareness needed for glyphosate-based products to be banned from use or highly regulated.
EWG says there are more than 250 million pounds of glyphosate sprayed on American crops – primarily on genetically modified “Roundup-ready” corn and soybean. Since grains aren’t harvested when they’re green, farmers spray RoundUp on wheat, barley, and oats to dry out the crops, forcing them to die faster, so they can be harvested earlier. This is how EWG suspects unsafe levels of glyphosate are getting into popular food products.
Monsanto has a long track record of dismissing and covering up significant evidence that its products are linked to cancer by hiring former big tobacco lawyers, supporting sympathetic scientists in government roles, and spending tens of millions in lobbying.
According to the Guardian, the company’s recent loss in court found “clear and convincing evidence” that its officials acted with “malice or oppression” in failing to adequately warn of the risks associated with its products.
Glyphosate has been banned for use in 40 different countries and recognized by the state of California’s Proposition 65 and by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen. Monsanto, Quaker, and other companies named in EWG’s study defended themselves saying that the levels found are still below legal limits.
But when the company who’s selling the carcinogenic product spends millions lobbying the legislators and has former board members setting those legal limits, legal doesn’t always equate to safe.
About the Author
Should We Be Hesitant to Embrace Transhumanism?
The human body has somewhere in the vicinity of 50 to 100 trillion cells, depending on who you ask. Each of these cells has .07 volts of electrical energy potential — a relatively small number you might say. But when you multiply those .07 volts times 50 to 100 trillion, you get somewhere between two and a half, to five trillion volts. We are powerhouses of electrical energy potential.
Yet for some, this potential isn’t enough. In the minds of transhumanists, the body is a work in progress — one in which we must actively improve toward some perceived ideal. In some circumstances they may be right; our bodies are not all created equally, some face deformities and defects, or aren’t built as sturdy as others, making a good argument for the need to artificially augment.
But according to researcher and author Gregg Braden, this is a slippery slope — one in which we must tread with caution while appreciating the truly high-tech construction of the biological suits we’ve found ourselves born into.
“All of the technology that is now being developed in the world around us, and I worked in the Cold War years in the defense industry, space-based lasers, ‘Star Wars’ Defense Initiative… and I have yet to this moment, seen any tech in the world around us that does not mimic what we already do in our cells, except our cells do it better,” Braden said in a recent interview with Regina Meredith on Open Minds.
With advancements in microchip technology, futurists envision a world in which we begin to work toward almost complete integration with technology and computers. Some even go so far as to believe we will one day be capable of transferring our consciousness onto a hard drive composed of microscopic silicon chips, experiencing the world through that mechanistic, binary scope of the computer — potentially allowing humans to achieve something that looks like immortality.
But this reductionist mindset of the materialist, scientific lens is incredibly arrogant, Braden said.
Firstly, science’s “hard problem of consciousness” currently limits it from understanding what exactly consciousness is and where it comes from. And secondly, would this really even be the same kind of consciousness? Can you separate consciousness from our biological nature? And if you could, why would you?
Those are the two trains of thought when it comes to the views of our advancing technology and the transhumanist movement, Braden said.
One side views it as, “If we were never supposed to learn how to achieve such a feat, why have we gotten this far?”
While the other side says, “Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.”
