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Comment by devilmoon | Hacker News Reader

Something to consider when talking about anything wheat/gluten related is that SO many people nowadays are starting to show signs of gluten intolerance/allergy and this might be due to glyphosate rather than the gluten itself. I come from Italy and trust me when I tell you that everyone and their uncles eat a diet that is 99% gluten-based, however until a few years ago nobody ever had problems with it. I am starting to truly believe that we are slowly poisoning ourselves without realising it and then blaming the wrong culprits for it.

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> I am starting to truly believe that we are slowly poisoning ourselves without realising it and then blaming the wrong culprits for it.

I have a background in hospitality, so I used to think about this all the time. I fully agree with you because I have no idea where all these allergies came from. It doesn't help that the problem is exacerbated by restaurants bending over backwards to fill chairs -- many of those allergies are just diets with parlance that cooks easily understand.

The fear for me is that we, as the affected mass, can be cognisant but remain powerless. We still go to the same brick and mortars and that's our only participation in the process. The changes that happen to our food are already delivered by a fully functioning system, at a scale unlikely to make swift changes, before we get any or notice it's bad. Only when we die are changes made, like seatbelts, but tasty.

I watched Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams last night (Crazy Diamond). "What would happen to our local economy if everyone grew their own food?" <-- Chills, man. Won't be long.

> many of those allergies are just diets with parlance that cooks easily understand

Absolutely. My dad has a strong aversion to garlic - it's not an alergy, he just can't stand even the faintest taste of it in food. After years of telling the waiters "absolutely no garlic" and the waiters bringing food with garlic and him complaining and the waiters answering "the cook said it's so little you shouldn't be able to taste it" nowadays he just says "I'm alergic to garlic" and he has problems much more rarely.

Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide and crop desiccant. It is an organophosphorus compound, specifically a phosphonate, which acts by inhibiting the plant enzyme 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase. It is used to kill weeds, especially annual broadleaf weeds and grasses that compete with crops. (Wikipedia)

It is also being linked to celiac disease and gluten intolerance more and more https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/

The reason so many people are showing a gluten allergy/intolerance is a fad propagated by social media.

It has nothing to do with evolution - obviously - since it doesn't work in such a small time frame, and it has nothing to do with glyphosate, since glyphosate is used in most of the other (gluten free) crops as well.

>it has nothing to do with glyphosate, since glyphosate is used in most of the other (gluten free) crops as well.

That would be relevant if people ate those crops at the same quantities (and at the same processing) as they do gluten containing crops...

I used to think like you wrt the social media conditioning, however now that I've experienced IBS on myself I changed my outlook on it. I am sure that there are people who eat specific diets just because it is a fad and they get conditioned into it by their social circles or influencers they follow, however I am also now quite sure that some of these conditions are very real and people suffer quite a lot because of it (and not necessarily in a physical way but through a very high psychological burden also).

I can tell you from my personal experience (YMMV etc.) that I was able to eat anything and everything without a single problem whatsoever until my early twenties. I was the type of person to eat a kebab at 4am and then go straight to bed and sleep like a baby, now even thinking of doing something like that makes me feel sick. Some of it might be due to aging, certainly, and the doctors I've spoken to have also suggested that increased level of stress might've had something to do with it (which ties in nicely with the gut-brain link), but still what I experienced is that from a certain point forward I wasn't able to eat most foods anymore without feeling really sick (and this has been diagnosed as being IBS, which is truly just a catch-all for gastroenterologists when they don't know what the fuck is causing you problems). From my experience going forward I don't think that it's triggered by very specific foods or stress by themselves, and I've come to the conclusion that it must've been something systemic that I did that led to this outcome (i.e., eat small amounts of glyphosate every day multiple times a day for years).

I think we should really take better care of ourselves and at least explore these potential risks very carefully before dismissing everything as a social media fad / zoomer thing

Never underestimate/write-off the placebo effect.

Never write off going to Europe and eating their food for a few weeks and trying to figure out for months why your chronic skin conditions/etc go away, only to be told the exact stuff you're reading in these threads.

In many climates wheat and oats are subject to pre-harvest dessication. Guess what herbicide is commonly used.

What's the advice for avoiding it? Organic food (which I always thought was a fad)?

I don't think there's a way to readily avoid it, unless you can grow and process the crops yourself. Organic food, afaik, more times than not is worse than run-of-the-mill industrial products so tread carefully. Unfortunately I don't have much advice to give here since I cut out gluten almost entirely from my diet.

one tip is avoid GMO foods. the mods make the food resistant to glyphosate, so they can spray it heavily and the crop survives, weeds don't. more gets in your body though.

there are also many google-able tips, such as washing foods better, choosing organic, eating less processed food and more, e.g. https://janeshealthykitchen.com/avoid-these-foods-with-monsa...

On what basis do you make that connection?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/

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