Most Americans Have Roundup in Their Bodies. Researchers Say One Week of Eating Organic Can Help

Photo courtesy of Scott Warman, Unsplash.

One week of eating organic can dramatically reduce pesticide levels in the body, according to a recent study conducted by the Health Research Institute, Commonweal Institute, and Friends of the Earth. 

The group of researchers tracked the pesticide levels of four families across the United States. They took measurements after six days on a non-organic diet and again after six days on an organic diet.

The study, and a companion study published last year, found 16 different kinds of pesticides and chemicals in every participant. But after six days of organic eating, these compounds decreased an average of 60.5 percent—and some as much as 95 percent. Glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup and the most used pesticide in the world, dropped an average of 70 percent.

A study by agricultural economist Charles Benbrook finds that the use of glyphosate has spiked 15-fold globally since genetically modified, “Roundup Ready” crops were introduced in 1996. The percentage of Americans with traceable levels of glyphosate in their bodies rose from 12 percent in 1972 to 70 percent by 2014, according to researchers at the University of California San Diego. 

Glyphosate exposure has been associated with a wide range of health problems. Researchers have flagged glyphosate as a probable carcinogen, and the chemical has been linked to kidney disease, reproductive issues, DNA damage, hormone and digestion disruptions, fatty liver disease, and more.

The recent study poses organic eating as a straightforward way to avoid glyphosate. But the authors also recognize that organic food isn’t always accessible. 

To improve the availability of organic foods in the United States, the team calls for top-down policy changes—like stricter regulations on pesticide use, more federal research into the effects of pesticides, and aid for farmers as they transition to organic farming.

“Our federal pesticide policy system is broken, and we need people shouting about that,” Dr. Kendra Klein, a co-author of the study and Senior Staff Scientist at Friends of the Earth, tells Food Tank. “Companies like Bayer, Syngenta, and Dow are spending millions lobbying, and they’re also spending tens of millions of dollars to shape the narrative and perpetuate myths, like the myth that we need pesticides to feed the world.”

Klein points out that just 1 percent of U.S. federal agricultural research dollars go towards ecological farming, and pesticide regulations are few and far between. In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has loosened some pesticide restrictions in recent years. Between 1993 and 2008, the EPA raised the threshold for glyphosate residues on oats from 0.1 ppm to 30 ppm.

Larry Bohlen, Chief Operating Officer at HRI Labs and another co-author of the study, also emphasizes a lack of resources for farmers who want to transition to organic farming. He explains that universities and government training programs have taught farmers how to use pesticides for decades. “If they placed models of successful organic farming side-by-side with the synthetic chemical models, farmers would have choices instead of just one option,” Bohlen tells Food Tank.

Stringent pesticide regulations might seem like a lofty goal in the U.S., says Klein, but change is already underway abroad. Earlier this year, the European Union announced plans to halve the use of “high risk” pesticides by 2030 and make at least 25 percent of farmland organic.

To spur change in the U.S., Bohlen urges consumers to vote with their wallets, if they’re able. “Each person’s purchase is a small vote that, when considered collectively, sends a signal back to the grocer and the farmer about what type of food is desired. It’s your purchase that has one of the biggest effects on land, farmer, and consumer health.”

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A Healthy Hydroponics Ecosystem

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October 28, 2020

How New Ways of Growing Can Help

The UAE Achieve Food Security

A little under two years ago, Mariam Hareb Almheiri, UAE Minister of State for Food Security, made a presentation to the country’s leadership. The National Strategy for Food Security aims to take the UAE to top spot in the Global Food Security Index by 2021; enable sustainable food production through technological means; improve nutrition; and reduce waste. One of the technologies that can help turn this national strategy into reality is hydroponics.

Rethinking the food system

“I believe the current pandemic has provided us the opportunity to completely reimagine the global food system,” says Tony Hunter, a global food futurist. “Countries should look to ensuring domestic manufacture of basic foodstuffs for their own populations.” Hunter, who gave a talk on the potential silver linings of the pandemic for the global food industry in a Gulfood webinar earlier this year, believes hydroponics may be a promising method of ensuring a country can supply some of its own fresh produce at a time when Covid-19 has rendered international supply chains vulnerable.

Paresh Purushothaman, Managing Director at Greenoponics, says, “There is a lot of support in the local community for developing farms that use water-conserving methods such as hydroponics.” His company, which specialises in hydroponic and other soil-free agricultural technologies, serves both retail customers – primarily homes and offices – and commercial clients, who use slightly larger systems to grow their own produce.

Hydroponics at home

It’s easier than you think to set up a mini hydroponics system in your home – so long as you have a good grasp of its principles and a bit of patience, explains Purushothaman. “All you need is one free square metre to get started. A small system using a technology called deep water culture is the easiest way to start. You can grow leafy greens including basil, parsley, coriander, various varieties of spinach and rocket leaves.”

Greenoponics’ smallest system, Ezee, can grow all of these, and can fit 16 plants at once. Slightly more ambitious home gardeners can opt for the bigger Eva, which can grow up to 20 plants at once – including cucumbers and tomatoes – using a nutrient film technique. A staple for both salads and cooking, these fruits take about 35 to 40 days to mature, and one plant can provide multiple harvests.

New technologies

Meanwhile, The Sustainable City in Dubai is home to special controlled-environment domes that fuse fish farming and urban farming – a term referred to as aquaponics. “We have advocated urban farming since day one not only in response to the UAE’s food security strategy but also as a lifestyle,” explains Karim El-Jisr, Chief Sustainability Officer - Social. “Urban farming can assume many shapes and sizes, including aquaponics, which combines conventional aquaculture (better known as fish farming) with hydroponics (soilless farming).

“Whereas indoor farming tends to focus hydroponics for the production of leafy greens and vegetables, we wanted to explore aquaponics as a way to produce animal protein within a community. We currently operate an aquaponic system that produces fish and fodder such as alfalfa. Aquaponics is about nutrient cycling, whereby fish waste becomes a source of nutrients for the plants, which help maintain water quality for the fish,” he says.

El-Jisr says the pandemic has highlighted the need to prioritise local supply chains, and urban farming is simply a great opportunity to create value for society while protecting the environment. “Food security is about improving the availability of and access to healthy and essential foods, including fibre and protein. The benefits of urban farming, including hydroponics, is that we can produce a lot of food in small spaces, and save a lot of water.”

While he says hydroponics can increase yields over conventional farming by a factor of 12 while reducing per-crop unit of water consumption by up to 95 per cent, he does concede that one of the challenges of indoor farming is the energy requirements of recreating a plant’s natural environment.

Purushothaman points out to the increasing affordability of LED lighting and automation solutions as key to the medium-term growth of indoor farms. “Automation can set the release of nutrients and water circulation to a timer, while ensuring the oxygen content, PH levels and electrical conductivity of the water are at their optimal levels – all factors that determine a plant’s growth.”

Besides energy consumption, both El-Jisr and Hunter highlight the cost competitiveness of hydroponic produce – compared to conventionally farmed imported produce – as a key challenge to hydroponics becoming more mainstream. However, Hunter cites the lowering cost of technology as a means of redressing the balance, while El-Jisr says, “With time, through innovation, indoor farming will overcome these challenges.” With technology, believes Hunter, “Countries no longer need to be bound by the tyrannies of arable land and fresh water or be at the mercy of the agricultural and political policies of other countries.”

Lead photo: A mini hydroponics system at homeImage Credit: Supplied

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The Surprising Effects Trees Versus Grass Have On Your Mental Health

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Sheila McClear

July 31, 2019

Everybody knows that being around nature can make us happy, healthy, and even improve our mental well-being – but we’re human, and we’re inexplicably picky. Not all foliage is created equal when it comes to having a positive effect.

In a study published last week in JAMA Open Network, researchers at Australia’s University of Wollongong attempted to figure out what sort of green space in any given city would provide the biggest mental benefit. Would it be a giant park? A small little patch of grass with a bench? A community garden? Rooftop gardens?

For the study, the researchers compared three types of green spaces: tree canopy (mature trees whose leaves and branches provide coverage of the ground when viewed from above), grass, and low-lying vegetation (like shrubs).

Almost 47,000 Australian adults over 45 reported whether or not they lived near these different types of green spaces, but also their self-reported mental and general health. They were surveyed twice, with the second survey six years later.

Researchers found that exposure to nature can definitely have positive mental health benefits – but it depends on the type of greenery.

Tree canopy was the best. Exposure to 30% or more total green space that included tree canopy is associated with 31% lower rates of psychological distress. The people who reported living near tree canopy reported living one mile from it.

Exposure to only low-lying ground vegetation, however, has no effect. Sorry, shrubs.

Grass wasn’t especially helpful – exposure to 30% or more of grass was associated with 71% higher odds of psychological distress. The researchers noted that the study was based on self-reported surveys that did not show the full spectrum of participants’ mental health.  They warned that “this finding not to be interpreted as evidence for removing existing grassy areas or defunding the planting of new open grassy areas.”

Yes, let’s please leave the grass alone. As poet Walt Whitman wrote in Leaves of Grass, “Do anything, but let it produce joy” – the true lesson for spending time in nature.

Meanwhile, in a related study just released, researchers have began to create a framework for how city planners and municipalities worldwide can measure the mental health benefits of nature, then merge those into plan and policies for cities and residents.

The study was led by the University of Washington and Stanford University.

“Thinking about the direct mental health benefits that nature contact provides is important to take into account when planning how to conserve nature and integrate it into our cities,” said Greg Bratman, lead author and an assistant professor at the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.

Lead Photo: SHUTTERSTOCK

Need For Fresh Office Fruit Is Growing Steadily In Germany

Number of Delivery Points is Increasing At A Rapid Pace

Many companies now offer their employees free fruit. People can organize that themselves or can employ a delivery service. These are now available in almost every town, says the Handwerksblatt.

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Enzio Reuß has been the proud managing director of Fruitful Office since 2011. The delivery service is based, among others, in Frankfurt a.M. - Pictures: Freshplaza.de

Once or twice a week, a fresh fruit basket will be delivered to the office. Bananas, apples, pears, grapes, peaches or kiwis. Employees can pick whatever, whenever. "Fresh fruit is probably the simplest and most cost-effective method of sustainably increasing the quality of life of employees," says Enzio Reuß, who founded Fruitful Office in 2011, a nationwide delivery service for fruit baskets.

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Identification with the company
Reuss is convinced that a serving of fruit a day already helps to reduce absenteeism. In addition to this, it helps to increase the loyalty to the company when management regularly supplies fresh fruit.

For more information:
Fruitful Office GmbH 
GF: Enzio Reuß
Central: Dieselstraße 37 
60314 Frankfurt
+49 69 43008208-0 
enzio@fruitfuloffice.de 
www.fruitfuloffice.de  

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Publication date: 7/19/2019 

US (HI): Researchers Help Waimānalo Families Use Aquaponics, Improve Health

Three researchers at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa have won a national fellowship and will receive $350,000 funding over three years to assist Waimānalo families with backyard aquaponics to sustainably produce healthy food.

The project will connect the modern technology of aquaponics with Native Hawaiian food practices. Aquaponics taps into the power of the natural symbiotic relationship between fish and plants, and combines the raising of plants in water with raising fish in tanks to create a sustainable, contained food production system.

From left, Ilima Ho-Lastimosa, Ted Radovich and Jane Chung-Do

The fellowship was awarded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to promote health equity in the U.S.

The research team is comprised of Jane Chung-Do, an associate professor with the UH Mānoa Office of Public Health Studies in the Myron B. Thompson School of Social Work; Ilima Ho-Lastimosa, community coordinator at the Waimānalo Learning Center and an education specialist in the Department of Tropical Plant and Soil Science (TPSS) in the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources; and Ted Radovich, a TPSS associate specialist.

They will expand their work with families in Waimānalo to develop an aquaponics program to grow fresh fruits and vegetables and raise fish that families can use to prepare meals and Hawaiian medicines. This builds on the decade-long work that Ho-Lastimosa has been promoting in her community of Waimānalo.

The researchers will recruit Native Hawaiian families in Waimānalo to participate in aquaponics lessons and will guide the families in building and maintaining backyard systems. The researchers will follow up to see whether the systems are successful in helping the participants increase their intake of and access to fresh fruits, vegetables and fish, as well as promote healthy eating habits. In addition, impacts on participants’ mental wellness, cultural identity, family strength and community connectedness will be measured.

Ilima Ho-Lastimosa feeds fish in an aquaponics set-up, while Jane Chung-Do looks on.

“Our goal is to restore Native Hawaiian practices related to food and community,” said Chung-Do. “The study embraces the perspective that health is holistic and interconnected with our culture, families, communities and the ʻāina.”

As a public health scientist, Chung-Do has worked to enhance the wellness of children and families in Hawaii, especially in rural and minority communities.

Radovich was born and raised in Waimānalo and holds a PhD in horticulture. His expertise is in sustainable and organic farming systems.

Ho-Lastimosa grew up on the Waimānalo Homestead and holds masters degrees in social work and acupuncture; she is also a master gardener. The community leader and cultural practitioner in Waimānalo founded God’s Country Waimānalo, a group that initiated a food sovereignty and sustainability movement in the community.

Source: University of Hawai'i (Theresa Kreif)

Publication date : 10/11/2018 

The Case For A National Institute of Nutrition

BY DR. JOON YUN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 10/09/18

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THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

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© Getty Images

The time has come for Congress to explore the merits of creating a federal agency solely dedicated to nutritional science — specifically, the establishment of a National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), under the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Here’s why.

The economic impact of managing diet-related chronic conditions in the United States is estimated at over $1 trillion per year and growing. Yet, the evidence base for making many specific dietary recommendations remains suboptimal and often contradictory. Robust, independent research in nutritional science is an urgent public health priority. 

The way federal priorities are currently organized, nutritional science is not the primary focus of any federal agency. None of the 27 institutes and centers that comprise the National Institutes of Health (NIH) focus on nutrition.

The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) oversight is largely limited to food labeling and safety. Research funding from United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is predominantly dedicated to science as applied to farming and food manufacturing, not nutritional science on the effect of food on humans. 

The aggregate sum of research funding set aside for nutritional research across these and all other federal agencies is estimated to be only $1.5 billion annually. To put this into perspective, national spending on candy is about $50 billion per year. 

Given the modest level of available support from public institutions, food scientists rely to a significant degree on research funding from industry sources. On one hand, the industry funding fills an important gap in food science research and has contributed significantly to the body of knowledge. On the other hand, disproportionate reliance on industry sponsorship for research funding poses its own set of risks to public benefit over the long term.

The NIH recently had to shut down a $100 million trial — one that could have enshrined alcohol as part of a healthy diet — because NIH officials running the trial had violated policy by soliciting funding support from industry. Such solicitations of private interests are in no small part a result of the lack of public funding for nutritional research.

The NIN’s mission would be to seek fundamental knowledge about food and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness, disability, and their associated costs. The establishment of the NIN would provide robust, independent, and much needed new evidence on health effects of foods as well as independence in translation of this evidence-based nutritional science into national dietary guidelines.

Improving the nation’s health through better nutrition will pay enormous dividends. The NIN could more than pay for itself over the long term through scientific advances, food and nutrition innovations, and cost savings for the HHS. 

As it stands today, direct and indirect costs of managing diet-related chronic conditions in the United States are estimated at over $1 trillion annually and growing. Private businesses are being crushed by rising healthcare costs. Two-thirds of active duty military personnel are overweight or obese, and obesity is the leading medical reason that otherwise qualified recruits cannot join the military.

Our food system is also a leading cause of environmental impact, for water, land, forests, oceans, and climate. Poor eating also contributes to disparities, especially for children: a vicious cycle of bad health, lost productivity, increased health costs, and poverty. Indeed, given the growing role of diet in human diseases, and the fact that one in four federal dollars is spent on health care, we may not be able to afford not having a National Institute of Nutrition.

Congress launched the National Cancer Institute through the National Cancer Act of 1937 because it recognized that the time had come to seriously address cancer at the national level.

We are at a similar tipping point for nutrition and health.

Dr. Joon Yun is president and managing partner of health care hedge fund Palo Alto Investors. Board certified in radiology, Yun served on the clinical faculty at Stanford from 2000-2006. Yun is a member of the President's Circle of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.Yun launched the $1 million Palo Alto Longevity Prize in 2013 to reverse the aging process and recently donated $2 million to launch the National Academy of Medicine Aging and Longevity Grand Challenge.