Glyphosate-contaminated beer, anyone?

This week we tasked two members of our team to evaluate what we’ve called ”the world’s most expensive quiz”. I’m referring to the quiz that is integral to the OneYou campaign launched at the start of the week by Public Health England. The idea is to have an online tool and a series of apps that can help Brits adopt healthier diets and lifestyles to increase the chances of them being healthy in retirement. Nice idea, and it would be a rather impressive return-on-investment if the £3.5 million invested this far in the scheme really did save the “£11bn a year [spent by the UK’s National Health Service] on treating illnesses caused by the effects of diet, inactivity, smoking and drinking alcohol”.

We’ve had the benefit of working on a our own self-care empowerment online tool for the last three years in the form of Bite the Sun, albeit with a budget that was a mere fraction of the OneYou budget. Our concern is that the solutions are always going to be based on the scientific or medical views of the experts being consulted. Our limited and provisional testing of the quiz and related apps have revealed some significant problems with the system. But why not see for yourself? We hope you’ll engage with OneYou, take the quiz and please then provide us with your own feedback, emailing [email protected], with email subject ‘OneYou’. We’re keen to prepare a future piece including a diverse range of inputs. It may be that with your help we can help influence some tweaking of the system that will make it more useful to people. Thank you in anticipation.

In the meantime, please digest our two main pieces this week, the first relating to emerging issues of concern about the world’s number one pesticide, glyphosate-containing herbicides. Monsanto’s patent for the original Roundup Ready crops may have expired in 2015, but other traits with renewed patents are now in place.

Beer links the two stories, given the first includes the revelation that many leading German beers appear to be significantly contaminated with glyphosate, and the second queries the common reliance by so many people on alcohol.

Then there’s the week’s natural health news, including the FDA’s decision to start evaluating glyphosate (but not adjuvant?) levels in a wide range of foodstuffs.

In health naturally,

 

Rob Verkerk, PhD

Founder, executive & scientific director