Welcome to the apple worm. Once upon a time we considered those with the bug "bacate": today the exact opposite should be true. The dangerous apples they are the shiny and apparently perfect ones, as is all that processed fruit and vegetables, born, raised and preserved post-mortem with poisonous chemicals. The glyphosate it is one of those, omnipresent and officially dangerous, but lawful.

Contaminated foods from bacteria, viruses, parasites and chemicals they are responsible for over 200 diseases, the World Health Organization has established. Some of them – starting from apples and strawberries – invariably appear in the annual ranking of 12 foods more contaminated by pesticides, the famous and disturbing "Dirty Dozen". Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world. Almost everywhere, and also in Italy, it is one of the best-selling plant protection products.

Red stripes on green fields: glyphosate is served. Historically produced by Monsanto (recently acquired by the multinational Bayer pharmaceutical company) is aggressively marketed under the name Roundup, today it is also produced by other chemical companies with names such as Accord and Rodeo. At the end of 2017 it was re-authorized by the European Union for another 5 years, despite Italy's contrary vote and of other 8 nations (in our country the #StopGlifosato campaign brings together the adhesion of 45 important associations including Slow Food, Pediatricians and ISDE Cultural Association, Physicians for the Environment). From this point of view, the legislation of countries such as Sri Lanka is better.

"The glyphosate was judged by the IARC, an international agency for cancer research, as a" carcinogen "- he explains Francesco Balducci, medical expert in preventive medicine it's atnti-Aging – Then under pressure from EFSA, the EU food security body was downgraded to "probably carcinogenic" (more precisely as '2a', or agent whose carcinogenicity is confirmed on animals but not on man, ed), despite the existence of independent studies that have revealed its dangerousness ". And despite this, this monographic study is currently under indictment, in particular by the US Congress. "Not only: in a recent statement by EFSA, glyphosate was certainly not considered hormonal interfering. But it is: it is a destroyer of our hormonal balance; in the areas of mass production and use there are problems with hormonal and renal levels ”.

What are the hormonal problems arising from glyphosate intake? "Lowers testosterone, estrogen and progesterone levels. Promotes estrogenic prevalence, both in men and women: in humans it is devastating, because the level of testosterone is lowered, with the risk of feminization – loss of power and libido, body shape with female type breasts, future problems. Problems all the more serious as they affect children. In women, it leads to a predisposition to cancer of the sexual organs: ovaries, uterus … Studies show that also in Italy, for example in Trentino and in Veneto in areas of intensive apple production, there has been an increase in cases of hormonal problems. And independent studies have been silenced by commercial interests ".

Patrizia Gentilini, oncologist and member of the Scientific Committee of Doctors for the Environment, said: "There are numerous experimental data conducted on placental and human embryonic cells that demonstrate how glyphosate induces necrosis and promote programmed cell death, so it is a genotoxic substance (which damages genetic information within a cell, ed) as well as carcinogenic, not forgetting that the herbicide also acts as an endocrine disruptor ”.

How to defend ourselves?

"If we want to eat glyphosate-free fruits and vegetables we must eat the organic one or certified biodynamic and avoid companies – even the most famous ones – that use it in large quantities and the products that come from production areas where people in waterfalls flush the soil with this substance. You have to go to stores that sell products safe biological products or gardeners who buy from small local producers, from to verify. Possibly in person. Never trust them. And when in doubt, choose a product that is less perfect in appearance: ugly, irregular apples, for example, are less likely to be treated. Don't always demand beautiful fruit, because perfection is not of nature, it is a perfection that is paid for in a salty way … ".

Glyphosate is not only present in fruits and vegetables, but in many foods: pasta, flour and starchy foods – especially in that of the big companies that buy most of the grain from North American countries like Canada, where the laws are more permissive. Under consumer pressure, many large Italian pasta-producing companies are opting for "100% Italian wheat": a report last fall by Il Salvagente, a leading consumer-testing laboratory magazine, found glyphosate in abundant quantities in 27 'Italian' pasta brands.

Glyphosate is also found in meat, milk and derivatives: over 85% of the feed used in farms, in fact, they are made up of corn, rape, soybeans for which the herbicide is abundantly used, accumulating in the meat of animals and in the derived products which we then feed on. "It is not the occasional use that gives problems – continues Balducci – because we have detox capacity able to compensate. It is the continuous use and accumulated with other xenobiotic substances (extraneous to the normal nutrition of the organism and its normal metabolism, ed) which creates the overload, and this is a real time bomb ".

Carola Traverso Saibante
March 2018
updated in April 2019

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