Excerpts from the book – Poison Foods of North America.
The top five origins whose food samples were the most in number as tested by CFIA are: United States, Unknown, Canada, India and China.
The chart below gives one view of the average glyphosate content in foods from these five origins, calculated as the total glyphosate in all foods divided by the number of food samples that actually contained glyphosate, excluding the clean samples, for each region. This represents the average level of contamination among the contaminated samples. The averages for all samples is the basis by which contamination levels are calculated for the rest of the book. The median line represents sort of the average, but is weighted according to the number of samples. Since number of samples are the highest from the United States, ‘Unknown” and Canada, the median is more influenced by them than by India or China. If there were equal number of samples from all these regions and more so from other countries from the world, the median would have been much lower as an indication of world average. In the chart below, this dotted red line carries a value of 204 as a whole number.
The good the bad and the ugly (median)
Thus, the United States and ‘Unknown’ are seen as sort of average, not an ideal average though. Canada is rated as bad because of having levels of contamination in its food that is 50% worse than even the median. India and China, having much lower levels of contamination, are rated good.
The table/chart below is one way to explain how foods available in Canada that originated in Canada, Unknown, the United States, India and China compare between them, with regard to glyphosate contamination.
The table gives two sets of values for each region. the chart superimposed over the table presents the same two values for each region.
These two values are average level of glyphosate contamination for each region, but calculated in under two different criteria, using two different ratio.
The bottom line, in green represents the values in the second column from left, titled “overall ppb”. This means, all the readings of glyphosate from samples from the region that had any glyphosate, was added, and then divided by the total number of samples, including samples that had no glyphosate.
The upper line, in black, represents the last column from left, where the same total amount of glyphosate was divided by only the number of samples that had any glyphosate.
In other words, the bottom line shows average glyphosate for every sample of the region, irrespective of if they were clean samples or dirty samples, while the top line is the average glyphosate content for only those samples that did have some glyphosate.
These two lines would merge in cases where a region had no clean sample at all, and all the samples contained some glyphosate, or where 100% of the samples were contaminated.
Both of them give varied but statistically significant indication for a consumer, about foods from which countries that are available in Canada, contain how much glyphosate. Foods imported from China ranked fifth number of samples, and proves to be the best food with the least amount of glyphosate in them, in either representation.
This may not be what the people of China are eating, but this is how those varieties that are exported by them to Canada, compare with the rest.
Meanwhile I made a 3 minute video on who the book Poison Foods of North America is for.