Roundup in Your Wine?

Roundup's active ingredient, glyphosate, is in the food chain. Exactly how dangerous this is to us hasn't been determined, but the fear is certainly helping the drive towards organic products. It's been in the news that even your wine contains glyphosate. As with most headlines a closer look is needed.

Even Two Buck Chuck
is offering organic wines
(for four bucks)

This herbicide is everywhere. Glyphosate is even been detected in rain water. So it's even in organic products, including organically grown grapes. From the testing that's been done, which is not very extensive, it has been shown that conventional wine has about ten times the glyphosate of organic wine, but conventional grains contain at least 50 times that of conventional wine.

The research tested just five mass market wines and 15 beers so it's a small sampling. So how much glyphosate is too much? That's not really known, but there is a link to cancer. Part of the problem is that the use of Roundup has skyrocketed in the last 20 years and often the effects on the body take many years to become clear. The amount of glyphosate in the wines and beers tested is way below the maximum safe level set by the EPA.

So what to do if you're worried? The first thing is probably to pass on conventional cereals and breads and other grains as that's where the real potential danger lies. Whether you look for organically farmed grapes in your wine is up to you, but I wouldn't bother if you're eating conventional bread, pasta, cereal, crackers, etc.