Glysophate in Flour

Amber waves of grain. Photo by Cindy Hill

It Could Be Glysophate, not Gluten, Bugging Your Tummy

Since the 1980s, glysophate -- aka Roundup -- has been used off-label by non-organic-certified grain growers to dessicate (dry) the grain before harvest and grinding.  Glysophate is at heart a salt, which is why it kills leafy weeds, and why it can be used to drive the moisture out of grains.

The University of Minnesota Cooperative Extension describes this process and use in a 2002 edition of its Prairie Grains newsletter. The FAO's 2005 survey of pesticide residues in food found that glysophate residues remained in flour and were not removed by milling. 

Having baked all my own bread (and pizza crust and everything else) for decades, I was baffled to find the unbleached commercially popular brand of flour that I've always used getting drier, chalkier, and harder to work with over the last five years or so. I was nearly doubling the water in my usual bread recipe, and there was still something 'off' with the texture. I've deduced that the use of glysophate to dry the grain is the most likely answer, though higher-speed, hotter milling processes might also be a factor. 

Mother Earth News did a fabulous job this past spring of presenting the latest scientific information on this subject, a technical article from the Journal of Interdisciplinary Toxicology on the question of whether glysophate, rather than gluten, could be the cause of the American epidemic of a wide array of ailments running from the merely embarassing digestive distress to the fatal, and including mental and emotional health ramifications like depression. 

I've had numerous friends making the anecdotal link in their own lives between eating white flour and having episodes of negative, sometimes extremely dark, mood changes. I had started noticing problems of my own associated with eating flour. I was wary, however -- was I  merely influenced by my friends, or by the trendiness of gluten intolerance?  Was I misattributing symptoms of menopause to eating toast? Trying my objective best, I found that I really did feel better on days I didn't eat flour. I cut my flour consumption way back, and tried to balance any bread with a hefty dose of fruits and vegetables, which I found minimized digestive reactions. My hand-crank pasta machine sat unused on the shelf, which was very sad. My husband -- our household bread baker -- kept cranking out loaves, complaining ever more about the chalkiness of the flour. 

Then, my food co-op started getting in an array of local organic flours. I started buying a cup or two of one or another and baking a loaf of bread with it. Champlain Valley Milling Corporation and Gleason Grains are just two of the growing list of locally grown and/or locally milled organic -- no glysophate -- flours in my neck of the woods. I started returning to my usual bread consumption habits -- with no ill effects. In fact, quite the opposite. 

Last night I used Nitty Gritty Grain Company's high-protein extra fine organic whole wheat flour to make pasta for the summer's first batch of pesto -- and I was blown away by how alive it felt. The pasta is springy and flavorful and went through the hand-cranked Imperia pasta machine in silky, beautiful sheets. 

Obviously anyone experiencing gastric and digestive distress or more serious medical symptoms like depression and exhaustion should seek medical attention and follow the advice of your doctor. But if your health permits it, or if you are just trying to find better, healthier, pesticide-residue-free flour that doesn't behave like chalk dust, hunt down locally-milled organic alternatives (or mail order from any of the above suppliers) and give it a try.