BEN AND JERRY'S ICE CREAM CONTAMINATED WITH ROUNDUP!!

See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

ALL CAPS IS ANNOYING!

As is the use of "Contaminated" when the NY Times points out it is "Traces"

Well, trace is still contamination, isn't it?

Or maybe not?

"Among the flavors tested, Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie showed the highest levels of glyphosate, with 1.74 parts per billion, and glyphosate’s byproduct aminomethylphosphonic acid registering 0.91 parts per billion.

Such amounts might seem negligible. John Fagan, the chief executive of the Health Research Institute Laboratories, which did the testing for the Organic Consumers Association, calculated that a 75-pound child would have to consume 145,000 eight-ounce servings a day of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream to hit the limit set by the Environmental Protection Agency, the government body charged with setting a ceiling on the amount of glyphosate allowed in food.
An adult would have to eat 290,000 servings to hit the agency’s cutoff, Dr. Fagan said.

Even European regulatory limits for glyphosate consumption, which are almost six times lower than limits in the United States, find that a child would have to eat 25,000 servings a day and an adult 50,000 for the herbicide to pose a threat.

“Based on these government thresholds, the levels found in Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream would seem totally irrelevant,” he said."

For once, I'm on Gilgul's side.

yahooyahoo said:

For once, I'm on Gilgul's side.

Me too, but I don't eat chocolate so I am off the hook anyway.

If we want to avoid every single contaminant on earth, we can't breathe the air.

Also, don't eat rice. There's arsenic in it. Truly. Look it up.

And don't drink any water.

shoshannah said:

If we want to avoid every single contaminant on earth, we can't breathe the air.

Also, don't eat rice. There's arsenic in it. Truly. Look it up.

I am not worried about eating B&J's ice cream for this reason, but it is concerning that the chemical is showing up there and in many other places, even if only in trace amounts.  Unless its use is curtailed, those amounts are almost certainly going to increase.

sac said:

I am not worried about eating B&J's ice cream for this reason, but it is concerning that the chemical is showing up there and in many other places, even if only in trace amounts.  Unless its use is curtailed, those amounts are almost certainly going to increase.

And so are thousands of other chemicals in trace amounts. You can drive yourself crazy.

We need to stop using all these chemicals.  People survived for thousands of years without them - and in this case there is no excuse for using products like Round-up anymore.  

shoshannah said:

sac said:

I am not worried about eating B&J's ice cream for this reason, but it is concerning that the chemical is showing up there and in many other places, even if only in trace amounts.  Unless its use is curtailed, those amounts are almost certainly going to increase.

And so are thousands of other chemicals in trace amounts. You can drive yourself crazy.

as far as I know, Ben & Jerry's doesn't market its product as organic, so this isn't a finding that's worthy of all caps and exclamation points.  It's kind of a big nothing.

People are not good at risk analysis. I assume that there are a fair number of people who smoke or who do not limit their sugar consumption who would then freak out at trace amounts of things in their foods. Or who freak out about trace amounts of things in food but have never bothered to have radon levels in their house measured. 

But it is fair to ask if something is REALLY needed. Antibiotic use in poultry was very recently nearly universal and was pitched as absolutely necessary to maintain yield and keep prices down. But now it is well on the way to mostly being phased out. And chicken is still as plentiful and quite affordable.

it's fair to ask questions about the necessity of chemical use in agriculture.  I don't think it's fair to single out one brand of ice cream for having trace amounts of a substance that has widespread presence in our environment.

mikescott said:

We need to stop using all these chemicals.  People survived for thousands of years without them - and in this case there is no excuse for using products like Round-up anymore.  

People may have survived but life spans were much shorter even a few hundred years ago.  So "Better things for better living through chemistry".

Gilgul said:


An adult would have to eat 290,000 servings to hit the agency’s cutoff, Dr. Fagan said.

Great! I can still eat a couple of hundred.

Considering that a single serving exceeds the recommended sugar intake of an average woman, which is 25g, I would not go for a couple of hundred.

Gilgul said:

People are not good at risk analysis. I assume that there are a fair number of people who smoke or who do not limit their sugar consumption who would then freak out at trace amounts of things in their foods. Or who freak out about trace amounts of things in food but have never bothered to have radon levels in their house measured. 

Somewhat like being afraid of flying but thinking nothing of getting in a car and driving on the highways around here (or anywhere.)

I think the Township should move to ban Ben & Jerry's ice cream, posthaste.

lord_pabulum said:

mikescott said:

We need to stop using all these chemicals.  People survived for thousands of years without them - and in this case there is no excuse for using products like Round-up anymore.  

People may have survived but life spans were much shorter even a few hundred years ago.  So "Better things for better living through chemistry".

The biggest driver of longevity is sanitation and access to clean water.  That has done more to extend our lifespans than increased nutrition or modern medicine, including vaccines. 

I've already decided not to spread any on my lawn

Robert_Casotto said:

I think the Township should move to ban Ben & Jerry's ice cream, posthaste.

Actually the biggest driver of longevity has been the discovery of antibiotics. But sanitation is important too.

Robert_Casotto said:

I think the Township should move to ban Ben & Jerry's ice cream, posthaste.

Send it all to my house, I'll be sure to dispose of it so that no one else needs to risk eating contaminated ice cream.  And if you have any Caramel Core on hand you don't even have to send it my way, I'll be willing to go to your house to pick it up for you.

I'd be willing to settle for a Frusen Glädjé ban.

Gilgul said:

Actually the biggest driver of longevity has been the discovery of antibiotics. But sanitation is important too.

Antibiotics weren't invented in a vacuum, there were gains seen after their invention, but other things were invented at the same time, insulin, chemotherapy, better medical care in general.  The gains seen from the pre-sanitation/safe water period to the post-sanitation/clean water period are bigger than the gains seen from the post-sanitation/clean water-pre-antibiotic/modern medicine period to the post-sanitation/clean water/antibiotic/modern medicine period.

Cholera, hepatitis A, typhoid, and a host of other diseases are directly linked to poor sanitation systems and lack of safe drinking water.

sac said:

I am not worried about eating B&J's ice cream for this reason, but it is concerning that the chemical is showing up there and in many other places, even if only in trace amounts.  Unless its use is curtailed, those amounts are almost certainly going to increase.

Bingo!

For science nerds see https://www.sciencebase.gov/ca...

Which shows glyphosate among many other contaminants in streams across the USA. Look at max concentration levels, scroll down to glyphosate and see that it is one of the highest contaminants out of dozens. Note that glyphosate(Roundup) is not tested in drinking water. Glyphosate is contaminating all our streams. Maybe the issues related to corn, wheat, soy, even dairy and allergies and hyperactivity is really related to glyphosate contamination rather than just gluten? All these crops are heavily GMO Roundup crops. There is some data that suspects glyphosate molecules mimic and disrupt glycine processes in the developing brain and may have something to do with high Autism rates which coincidentally seem to correspond with the tremendous increasing use of glyphosate over the past 20 years. See https://www.omicsonline.com/op... And they are talking about just molecules of glyphosate in the brain at just the right time in development. Only molecules!

Sugar will kill many more people than Round Up, but we put sugar in everything.

Gilgul said:

Considering that a single serving exceeds the recommended sugar intake of an average woman, which is 25g, I would not go for a couple of hundred.