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Comment by Danihan | Hacker News Reader

My pet theory is that people are sensitive to the glyphosate sprayed on most wheat, not the actual gluten.

People spray glyphosate on wheat?

Glyphosate is typically used in conjunction with "Roundup Ready" crops, or before/during planting in "no-till" crops. While Monsanto developed a Roundup Ready line of wheat, it never actually made it to market, AFAIK, so why would you be spraying glyphosate on wheat?

(Serious question; while I have some background in agriculture, I'm not familiar with all of even the common practices.)

ETA: Reading the Snopes link, looks like it's mainly practiced in North Dakota, which explains why I've never heard of it.

It's not practiced in ND out anywhere else. The export market won't accept it and it's not deliverable against spring wheat futures so it's not marketable and never has been.

It makes the wheat ready for harvest all at the same time.

Glyphosate is banned from organic wheat farming and organic wheat flour is cheaply and widely available for experimenting. "Bobs Red Mill" and numerous other brands, etc.

Glyphosate is popular when growing non-wheat non-organic produce; if a glyphosate allergy existed, it would likely not appear like a gluten allergy because most products that once contacted it are not gluten-containing.

You can buy glyphosate products at home depot for experimentation.

It would appear to be a cheap and simple hypothesis to test.

> Glyphosate is popular when growing non-wheat non-organic produce

I only know of glyphosate resistant soy which ends up in cow food. You usually don’t spray glyphosate on stuff you want to eat because it kills it, which only in the case of wheat is what you want.

Actually, farmers desiccate wheat before harvest because dying plants yield more seed. Glyphosate is among various pesticides used for desiccation.

Just want to chime in for other confused people (I grew up on a Midwestern farm and had never heard of the practice of desiccating wheat, so I've been reading a lot about it on the internet today) -- this appears to be a northern latitude practice - every reference I can find to it is from Canada, the UK and North Dakota, so I'm guessing this has to do with growing wheat in a shorter growing season.

So it's not nearly a universal practice, but on the other hand, North Dakota does account for 20% of the US wheat production. (And on the gripping hand, I don't know what wheat distribution in the US looks like; will ND wheat tend to be consumed in a particular region, or will secondary distribution through eg packaged foods tend to distribute it nation-wide?)

I'll see your pet theory and raise you mine: most people are sensitive to the additives added to fortified wheat sold in the States, especially Vitamin B[0] and Iron[1].

[0]: https://freetheanimal.com/2016/05/enrichment-promotes-everyt...

[1]: https://freetheanimal.com/2015/06/enrichment-theory-everythi...

This makes even more sense.

I was constantly trying to figure out why people with gluten sensitivities don't have reactions in most European countries. The enrichment theory seems pretty persuasive.

But then why only gluten/wheat products, and not other crops treated with glyphosate?

The EU limit for the residual amount of glyphosate allowed in wheat is higher than many other crops, so maybe that's why. But barley and soya beans, for example, are even higher.

A piece of evidence to add to the puzzle: new study just came out in JAMA looking at urine levels of glyphosate in older adults in California. It's increased a lot over the last few decades. Humans are definitely getting a lot of it. https://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/study-finds-increase...

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