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The following are excerpts from a report published by Moms Across America. Here are more reasons (1) to homeschool your kids, and (2) to get to know your local farmers and/or grow your own food. All *emphasis* (unless otherwise noted) and comments within [brackets] are mine—JWB.
QUOTE: Thirty million genetically modified school meals are served daily in America to our children.
For millions of underserved children, school meals are the only meals they consume. School lunches contain many GM [genetically-modified] crop ingredients such as corn, soy, and sugar from sugar beets and are processed with GM oils such as canola and soybean oil. Most genetically modified crops are engineered to withstand toxic chemicals such as glyphosate, glufosinate, dicamba, and many more harmful chemicals.
The wheat, peas, beans, oats, and other grain ingredients found in school lunches, such as in hot dog and burger buns, bread crumb coating, pasta, pizza crusts, etc., are primarily derived from conventional crops that are often sprayed with glyphosate as a drying agent before harvest—this practice results in high levels of glyphosate residues in the foods. Thousands of food samples have been tested for glyphosate; we are unaware of such testing on school lunches.
The frequent use of these chemicals, for instance, 280 million pounds of glyphosate herbicides are used each year in the United States, has been shown to kill the microorganisms in the soil that are critical for soil health. Glyphosate also traps many minerals, depleting the soil of essential nutrients.
[Glyphosate exposure has been linked in court cases to cancers and has resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments against the manufacturers. Do your homework online; you will find tons of information about this poisonous chemical.]
Therefore, an increasing amount of fertilizers are required to grow crops—over 500 million pounds of fertilizers were reported to be used in 2008. Many fertilizers are derived from manure from animals fed genetically modified grains sprayed with glyphosate and other petrochemicals.
Studies have shown that these petrochemicals contain heavy metals, such as arsenic, cadmium, barium, and aluminum [emphasis in original article]. The chemical residues, especially glyphosate, do not wash off. The heavy metals in the fertilizer leach into the soil, are taken up into the crop, and are found in wheat, corn, soy and many other food ingredients.
[Rapeseed oil is marketed as “canola” oil, a made-up word, to deflect attention from “rapeseed,” which obviously has a bad connotation. In fact, rapeseed thrives by taking up heavy metals from the soil. We eat the canola oil and voilà, we have heavy metal poisoning in our bodies!]
Baby food manufacturers have already detected high levels of heavy metals in six of the most popular baby food brands. The Congressional baby food report showed levels of arsenic as high as 913 ppb, cadmium at 344 ppb, and lead at 886 ppb.
Heavy metals have been shown to cause mental retardation, neurocognitive disorders, behavioral disorders, ADHD, respiratory problems, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. There is no reason to believe that the same high level of heavy metals would not be in school lunch food as well.
The depletion of nutrients in the soil from agrochemicals results in nutrient-deficient crops. Preliminary testing on conventional foods resulted in “embarrassingly low” nutrient levels, according to plant pathologist Don Huber, PhD., with sixty years of experience.
We suspected that school lunch nutrient density is also extremely low. Testing for nutrients in school lunch food is a necessary step in ensuring the health of our children and the success of the future of our country.
Low nutrient levels in the grains fed to livestock animals could result in low growth rates and sickness. Farmers often inject dozens of medications, such as antibiotics, into their livestock to prevent or treat ailments. This practice is especially prevalent in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), where thousands of pigs, cows, or chickens are crammed into tiny, unsanitary spaces.
Livestock farmers artificially stimulate growth by injecting livestock with growth hormones. These hormones can have adverse health impacts on consumers, disrupting the hormonal balance of humans consuming the meat and provoking adverse effects such as early menstruation in girls and the growth of belly fat and breast tissue in boys.
An imbalance in hormones can also affect sleep and mood and can cause emotional outbursts and reduced attention span, causing behavioral and learning problems. Therefore, we initiated testing for 108 of the most concerning veterinary drugs and hormones, including antibiotics.
Testing school lunches for glyphosate, pesticides, heavy metals, hormones, and nutrients is something our federal government agencies should be doing. These test results should be made publicly available. Moms Across America is clear that the federal government is primarily in the pockets of Big Ag and Big Chem, so these actions are unlikely ever to be taken.
The rest of this long report along with the hyperlink is available here.
3 John 1:2 Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.
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https://www.momsacrossamerica.com/national_school_lunch_testing_program
