this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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The levels (of glyphosate that the) French researchers found in sperm were four times higher than in the men’s blood

Eating organic produce did not have a clear impact on levels.

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[–] nehal3m@sh.itjust.works 107 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Remember kids, the market does not aim to produce food but profit. If it can get you to pay for eating sawdust or forever chemicals it will and it has.

[–] prole@sh.itjust.works 33 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Meh, this is just the free market in action. Now after decades of "collateral damage," the market can correct itself. People will stop using the offending brand(s) because everyone needs to be an expert on literally everything or else they too can become collateral damage while the market "corrects." It's their own fault really.

And in this case, customers will stop using companies and services that use RoundUp, because again, they need to know everything including what chemicals that the contractor their town hired uses in the public park. And then lobby them to switch to a (likely more expensive) alternative.

Come on, that's just capitalism, guys smh

[–] rayyy@lemmy.world 18 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Don't forget people use a lot of Roundup for lawns and weed control too. Few homeowners wear respirators when using the stuff and pets track it back into homes. Also glyphosate remains in the soil for years too.

[–] Maeve@kbin.social 6 points 6 months ago

Mexico was going to ban it, but guess which nation leaves hard on them until they didn't.

[–] Maeve@kbin.social 5 points 6 months ago

Average consumers can't keep up with everything, which makes this especially egregious.

[–] rayyy@lemmy.world 15 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Hey, sawdust is in our foods. Cellulose is generally okay but corporations will always find the cheapest source and that may not be so good for you.

[–] neo@lemy.lol 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Sawdust from hazel wood? Great, I guess.

Sawdust from old IKEA furniture? Cheaper / better!

[–] veganpizza69@lemmy.world 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Sawdust would be an improvement. It's just fiber, desperately absent fiber.

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 months ago

Since we're not starving to death, in fact are more likely to be obese, the addition of fiber can be a good thing. It helps move the starch molecules through the stomach and small intestine faster so they don't cause a blood sugar spike, and helps you feel full longer. In the case of cheese, which is very constipating, the addition of fiber can mitigate that effect. It's good for the bowels and may help prevent hemorrhoids. Psyllium is more effective because it absorbs water and surrounds the starch and fat molecules, but it has a negative effect on the texture of dough and would make the grated cheese more gluey rather than keeping it from sticking together. Cheese itself isn't starchy but it's often eaten with starch, like pizza crust or croutons. Wheat bran is full of cellulose, it's part of why whole-wheat flour is healthier.

(Sorry for disorganized sentences but hard to fix on little phone text box)

Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" gave a [somewhat] fictionalized account of the conditions of the meat packing industry in the early 20th century. It paints a gruesome picture. Federal agents sent to the Chicago slaughterhouses to investigate by then President Theodore Roosevelt confirmed the truth of most of the books details. And that was after the plant owners found out they were coming and had the plants thoroughly cleaned.

The market (aka greedy assholes) have conned people into paying for and eating worse things than sawdust.

[–] horsey@lemm.ee 39 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Well great, this justifies jizzing in my garden.

[–] zabadoh@ani.social 10 points 6 months ago

Killing weeds never felt so good!

[–] Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 8 points 6 months ago

Jizz has a great C:N ratio!

[–] Ioughttamow@kbin.run 29 points 6 months ago (1 children)

So the Bible telling us not to spill out seed on the ground was just Monsanto lobbying?

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 11 points 6 months ago

Gonna try this on my weeds now. The neighbors don't have to look.

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 22 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I get that Organic is not an end all solution but I swear not enough people realize that eating produce that was grown in roundup ready acid probably isn't a valid solution either.

It's kind of annoying that there's no easy way to tell how something was grown because it could range anything from barely any added targeted weed killer to air dropped agent orange (/s) lol.

Lots of non organic farms can be perfectly healthy if they opt to control weeds with a variety of methods instead of letting ~~Monsanto~~ Bayer nuke the soil.

[–] Bell@lemmy.world 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Roundup also weakens the plants overall by letting them survive weeds over and over without developing their own defences

[–] zabadoh@ani.social 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Most plants survive just fine on their own.

What spraying herbicide like glyphosate does is evolutionarily select for pesticide resistant weeds, aka superweeds. Free gift link for you.

[–] FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

Roundup acid? Now there's a phrase I've never heard before. Depending on if it's buffered or not Roundup can have a pH of 3.5 to 9. But it's not the pH of glyphosate that makes it an effective herbicide. I'd probably not use that phrase in the future because it's a distraction that undermines your point.

[–] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 15 points 6 months ago

I guess its a good thing that Missouri is trying to carve out a clause for Roundup from the EPA's glyphosphate ban then.

[–] hsdkfr734r@feddit.nl 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

The levels (of glyphosate that the) French researchers found in sperm were four times higher than in the men’s blood

Meh. It's not that I need it for something useful. So all is well. I guess.

[–] sqibkw@lemmy.world 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

As bad as this sounds, I'm glad it has an outlet, rather than living 100% in someone's blood for the rest of their life

[–] Liz@midwest.social 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

So what you're saying is, we all gotta just wank it like mad to get it out of our system?

[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago

Been self medicating my whole life.

Be right back. Gotta go dump some toxins real quick.

[–] FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago

You ever see an article about a "this changes everything" study but when you look at the study you start seeing all kinds of problems?

There is an untested assumption here. Just because glyphosate is present doesn't mean it's having an effect. That's like when we found aluminum plaques in Alzheimer's brains and assumed the aluminum was causing it.

I know that this article mentions new research showing DNA harm. This is counter to all previous studies so it will require a bit of replication to confirm that. The study they are depending on doesn't do a very good job showing it. The DNA damage they focused on was exclusively oxidative stress [OS] and at least twice that I saw they suggested looking to see if this could be counted with antioxidants. I expected it to be mentioned once because I had the same idea myself by the second time I had to fight the impulse to check and see if this was funded by Big Antioxidant.

Prior studies have shown that if you give super doses of GLY to sperm that it does effect motility for up to an hour, but a) this hasn't been shown in realistic dosages or in vivo. Just in vitro. b) hasn't shown to effect DNA. I don't think this study did a good enough job of countering the prior data. As can be seen in these key graphs below. c) they only tested for GLY. By not testing for anything else they get to attribute all variances to the one thing they tested for when it could have been something else. That alone should disqualify the study from being taken seriously without replication with better controls. This is exactly the kind of thing that gets weeded (no pun intended) out in replication and where Regression Towards the Mean rears its omnipresent head.

Only infertile couples were selected to be in this study. That creates a Texas Sharpshooter problem. There is no control group. Without s control you don't have a valid study.

The study found that eating an organic diet had no impact on GLY levels. That's worrying. Either their tests failed to find a difference, the study participants lied about their diet, or GLY is everywhere in the environment (both cities and farms). The study does not tell us how it was determined that the people included that only eat organic are, in fact, organic only eaters. It doesn't tell us if this was a check box or observation. If it was a checkbox what was the wording? Because self reporting and question design is important. "Do you eat only organic?" "Do you eat only certified organic?" "Have you had an diet that consist of only certified organic foods for at least 6 months?" Those are all going to give very different answers and because they didn't find any GLY variation between organic and non-organic diets the way they determined who had an organic and non-organic diet really matters.

There is definitely some shadiness going on with GLY. Bayer said that it was going to stop selling GLY to filthy casuals by January 2023. It is still very much for sale and shows no signs of going away.

Two asides.

  1. according to this study being a smoker has a much larger impact than GLY. Given that a third of French people (all subjects in the study were French) smoke this seems like a much bigger concern than GLY.
  2. The antinatalist in me is kinda fine with the whole situation because if it does actually reduce births then, sarcastically, this is a self limiting problem. Eventually there won't be enough people to mess things up and this is just a tool to get us there. The unspoken premise behind this study is that not having kids is bad.
[–] juicy 3 points 6 months ago

So that's why it tastes a bit funny