Daily Archives: February 2, 2017

Wheat bran the most toxic of all American foods?

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A shocking revelation

I found the glyphosate in wheat bran, as tested by CFIA, is a shocking story that deserves a section of its own. By “American” in the title, I meant north American which includes Canada. Mexico is out of this comment because Mexico makes so clean foods, as CFIA records show, that it does not belong in the Canada-USA grouping of America.

For the first 3,000 or so records from the CFIA, there was no wheat or wheat byproducts such as flour or bread. This was causing me both frustration and alarm, since most of us were very aware that conventional wheat was being  desiccated by glyphosate (RoundUp herbicide) just before harvest.

Bran, according to Wikipedia, is also known as miller’s bran, is the hard outer layers of cereal grain. It consists of the combined aleurone and pericarp. Therefore, wheat bran is essentially the outer hard layer of wheat kernel.

When wheat is processed to produce flour, this layer becomes a byproduct, and is called bran. In the case of processing wheat to make wheat flour, one gets miller’s or wheat bran. It is supposed to be packed with nutrition, and may offer many dietary benefits.

Wheat bran is commonly found in certain cereals, like Raisin Bran or Bran Flakes, as well as bran muffins, which rose to popularity in the 1980s. Wheat bran is beneficial toward providing digestive regularity and ending constipation because it is very high in dietary fiber. Some also claim that foods containing bran provide a feeling of fullness. This claim may be true, since it tends to absorb water and expand in the digestive system.

Wikipedia

The nutritional benefits of wheat bran are perhaps undisputed. For a time, it was even being touted that it might fight cancer. However, a cup (58 g) of wheat bran does offer significant nutritional pluses. One cup of this product in milk was supposed to contain 99% of the US recommended daily allowance (RDA) of fibre, nine grams of protein, and 34% of the RDA for iron. It was also known to be somewhat high in protein, various minerals and vitamin B6, also low in fat, with little cholesterol, or sugar. A magic food.

Wheat Bran is not a safe food! Not any more.

What happened in North America in the recent years, may have a very far reaching and devastating effect on tis product, by way of massive glyphosate contamination.This has likely not yet fully filtered down to the population, nor its implication sufficiently understood.

Why wheat product was not being tested in the first year of CFIA’s drive to test a wide spectrum of foods available to Canadians is a question only CFIA and the Government of Canada can answer. However, I am happy to find wheat beginning to appear in small samples tested in the second year of CFIA’s efforts, from around the summer of 2016. And the results appear to be shocking.

The table above refers. It has only a few of the most recent wheat bran items transcribed and not the entire lot. But all of them show bad readings and I shall be reporting on them all when I am done transcribing all the data. But these few figures are a good example of what the matter is with wheat in general and wheat bran in particular.

Most of these samples showed up with high measurable amounts of glyphosate and its first metabolite AMPA which is equally nasty. These two figures have been added up in this table to show a combined concentration of glyphosate and AMPA for each sample of wheat bran. Usually the readings show very high levels of glyphosate accompanied by a very small number for AMPA.

We know wheat is heavily desiccated with glyphosate. Now, I wonder if most that that glyphosate, applied just before harvesting, actually accumulates into the wheat bran? Could it be that wheat bran is the primary depository for glyphosate and AMPA? If that is true for wheat, could it also be true for all other grains that are desiccated with glyphosate and what have an identifiable “bran” ?

Guess I shall be looking for these answers elsewhere, to keep me busy.

Meanwhile the table above answers many questions and raises just as many more puzzles and questions. For example, there are wheat bran samples with over 4,000 ppb GLY+AMPA count that are of “unknown” origin. This “unknown” category has been a major irritant for me. I suspect that most of these unmarked food grains are of local (Canadian) grown or from USA. Since both USA and Canada try to protect their own agricultural produce from undue free competition from others, usually transportation of wheat across the border is not permitted by either country, since each of them produce the crop and want to protect its market. That is one reason I suspect most of the “unknown” foods are Canadian, unless the type is something that cannot not grow or is not cultivated in Canada.

Next, most of these samples with high glyphosate content is without any kind of identification mark, such as brand name of the product, or where it was grown or which store or farmer it was collected from. Therefore, it gets nearly impossible for an average consumer to figure out what to buy and what to avoid. This absence of clear identification of a potentially poisonous food item makes the entire class – i.e. wheat bran, a poison pill for me and I am going to avoid it like the plague.

This also proves that there is perhaps a need for grassroots people’s movement to get their local municipalities to start testing a few food items grown locally and sold in local stores, for glyphosate content, every month and making all results public, including brand names and source of the sample. Folks should insist, for example, that the first few food items their municipality tests in the first month should be wheat products such as wheat grains, wheat bran, and bread, that are available in local food stores, and make all results public. Those interested might check a related petition and effort at a movement on this front.

Then there is the question of allowable minimum residue limit (MRL) for glyphosate in wheat bran. From the above table, and going back to the raw data, it gets quite obvious that 4,610 ppb of glyphosate or 28 ppb AMPA is not a violation, but 6630 ppb of glyphosate and 159 ppb of AMPA is a violation. Therefore, the existing MRL lies between 4610 and 6630 ppb for glyphosate in wheat bran, and between 28 and 159 ppb of AMPA in wheat bran.

This observation raises even more questions. First, why is the MRL so low in AMPA and so high in glyphosate? Does the Government have proof that somehow glyphosate is a lot less harmful to us than its first degrading compound, AMPA? From what I hear, there is no evidence that glyphosate is a lot safer in comparison with AMPA and there may not be any provable justification for glyphosate’s MRL to be so much higher than AMPA’s.

Or could it be that the allowable MRL is neither specific to glyphosate nor to AMPA, but the total of both, as is actually shown on the above table? I need to find these answers.

As it is, Health Canada has till date not disclosed the safety test data and documents based on which it is supposed to have approved the use of Glyphosate in Canadian agriculture. My understanding of the law is that it may be illegal to release a product, such as glyphosate, for use in Canada, without disclosing its safety test report and raw data.

I have multiple petitions and ongoing struggles with the Canadian government, spanning two administrations, Harper’s and Trudeau’s, for Health Canada to make public all safety test records and data based on which it approved glyphosate’s use. The government does not deny one’s right to see such document, and yet keep dragging its feet on it. It has been dragging feet for thirty years and counting.
Petition 1
Petition 2 : e-413

Meanwhile, multiple “Access To Information” appeals to various wings of the government for disclosure or records of our foods tested for glyphosate has finally resulted in some success, in me getting over 7,000 records of foods tested by CFIA since 2015. I have so far transcribed only about half of it, and am still checking for errors and typo etc. I intend to publish an e-book of my findings and concerns regarding glyphosate in our food, for which the initial work has started.

Going back to the table above, what happens when the result is found to be in violation? Common sense tells me the product should be taken off the shelves and banned. Also, the public should be notified about it so they can avoid buying it, or return what they already have bought, and claim a refund. Also, folks that have already consumed some of it, should be advised what they need to look out for medically and how to detoxify themselves.

Anybody remembers such as incidence and a warning on wheat bran’s glyphosate content being too high?

There is another issue here. I can see that the allowable MRL is not fixed for all foods. It is argued that the MRL for foods were a lot lower a decade or two ago, and are being constantly raised. Based on what evidence? Has the public been shown this evidence?

The suspicion is, the MRLs are being raised simply because existing limits have already been crossed, so the safe limits are being raised above whatever the current levels turn out to be, so that all foods are still declared safe – never mind the proof and never mind showing such proof to the people.

Once my work in transcribing all the data is done, and I have listed out my range of unanswered questions, I shall be taking these up with the Canadian Government agin. it is a never ending process and highly frustrating since the Government attempts to hide rather than be transparent, o food safety issues, in my experience.

This blog is a kind of space holder for some of the emerging information. I am now convinced, that I myself shall avoid any food that has wheat bran mentioned, like the plague, unless it is certified organic and unless I find CFIA test results of Canadian or US produced wheat bran that is certified organic.

Comments welcome.

Food from China largely free of glyphosate

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We did not expect Chinese foods to be free of glyphosate, primarily because of two reasons.

  • China is the world’s largest producer of glyphosate.
  • China is known to be the largest importer of Argentinian, Brazilian and US RoundUp Ready Soy. The Argentinian Soy being grown in the Pampas is known for aerial spray over the plains which are suspected to be linked to birth defects of indigenous people that live there.

However, the records from CFIA’s testing of foods available in Canada, both of local and imported origin, show a trend of remarkably clean foods as imported from China into Canada.

This had originally made me skeptical and doubt the quality of my transcription of the CFIA data, or the selection of sampling varieties by CFIA. However, as more data is transcribed, totalling over 3,700 records, I can see that the samples have a wide variety. Also, readings of similar foods grown in other countries including Canada and the US are showing much higher level of glyphosate in them. Eventually I had to acknowledge, grudgingly at first, that for some inexplicable reason, the foods exported from China to Canada are a lot better in terms of glyphosate poisoning, than one might expect.

There are around 120 samples of foods listed by CFIA as originating from China, among the fist 3,700 odd records. The average parts per billion count of glyphosate and AMPA turns out to be below 5. This makes China among the best five countries whose foods are available in Canada, and whose sample numbers as tested by CFIA is above 40. The few countries that beat China in this category of clean food supply, are Mexico, Thailand, South Africa and Peru. This has been covered in a separate blog. A few other countries also have exported very good food to Canada, and their numbers are catching up, such as Bolivia, with 23 samples and an average ppb of 4.

Since soy is a big item in Chinese cuisine, there was an expectedly high number of samples tested that contained soy. So a separate table was prepared for them, as shon above. With 26 samples, the average ppb count came to be just 5, and the worst one, a dry, roasted, salted, gluten free soy product, had 51 ppb of the herbicide.

Although soy is also a bean, it was separated from other beans because of the number of samples and because of its prevalence in Chinese food. The rest of the bean containing samples were compiled in a second table, shown above.

A single bad sample, of Pinto Beans with a combined ppb of glyphosate and AMPA measured 204. All others had either zero or low values of the herbicide. The average ppb in this group, totalling 24 samples, came to 10.3.

Next come the grains. Again, out of 21 samples, only a few had any glyphosate or AMPA. The highest concentration was only 24.8 ppb in a sample of Barley. The average ppb for this group was 2.3.

And then comes a long list of almost fifty samples that all showed zero glyphosate.

I consolidated that longish list by category type and number of samples, as shown here. The largest number of samples in this group are baby food.

I remember the local story of baby food scandal in the interiors of China some years ago, when I heard it from locals during one of my past work visits to the coastal region.

Apparently, there was this odd phenomenon of babies in the interior being reported to have a proportionately larger head for its body. Eventually some doctors and specialists went there to look into it and found a whole different and horrible story. The heads were normal, but the body was underdeveloped. The root cause was found to be lack of nutrients and too much of synthetic stuff that looks like food into the baby formulae.

At that time, China was making the major change from a state controlled economy to a free market entrepreneurship. In the process, food quality inspection and control was not as well established, especially in the rural areas, as they should have been. So free market entrepreneurship when rampant and at reached at times extreme levels of adulteration.

Also, at the same time, westernization and modernism was spreading into the rural heartlands, where nursing through breast milk was not as cool as giving modern balanced food through baby formulae.

The combination of all this was causing severe malnourishment in babies. This practice was reportedly put a stop to, and ruthlessly, by a new regime of quality control in baby food. That is what I heard at the time.

And now, so many years later, here is a list of 15 baby food samples from China, tested in Canada, show absolutely no glyphosate at all. Of course, glyphosate was not the issue at the time – adulteration and lack of nutrition was. The current test involves glyphosate and AMPA only. I suspect the reasons such large number of Chinese baby foods are in the test records is because Canadians that trace their origin back to China might be importing these foods for their babies. This is just a guess.

Anyhow, this post was made with the best efforts to show that, whatever might be the case with China producing glyphosate and importing Argentinian RoundUp Ready Soy, the   samples of foods imported from China and collected in Canada seem to show a remarkably clean range of foods comprising of grains, soy, beans and various other natural and processed foods.

All these records were based on the first 3,700 odd records, or about half of the total numbers of tests conducted by CFIA. When the rest are also transcribed, I should be revisiting this topic, if there is a major change in the findings.

A note of caution

We should remember that China is the largest producer as well as exporter of glyphosate, for Roundup as well as many other glyphosate based herbicides for sales around the world.

Following learned from some Chinese activists :
In 2015 and 2016, over 80 million tons of RR (RoundUp Ready) soybeans soaked with glyphosate residues were imported into China, mostly from USA, Brazil and Argentina. They contain neurotoxin solvent hexane (with carcinogen benzene residues) chemically extracted for the RR soybean oil with glyphosate/AMPA residue flooding the domestic food market (inside China).

The side-product RR soybean meal soaked with glyphosate + hexane + benzene residue is partly processed into animal feed, and partly processed into human consumed RR soybean protein, added to ham, sausages, frozen food, bread, cakes, soy milk, infant formulas etc etc. These are again sold on the Chinese market.

China still produces about 10 million tons of non-GMO soybeans, including much smaller amount of organic soybeans. American, European, Japanese importers actively purchase them for processing medical products, health care products and food products, and in many cases hire inspectors to test these soybeans in the field.

Chinese companies exporting food products to USA, Europe, Japan etc., are very careful in only using non-GM soybeans to process such products, Chinese government inspection bureaus also carefully test exported food products, making sure they are not processed by RR soybeans with glyphosate residue which only enter the food supply for Chinese domestic consumption.

For the above reason, China experiences the same dramatic increase of malignant diseases as in the USA

Reference article by Chinese Military Scientist on GM Watch.

Its a bizarre world.

Comments welcome.