Dear Wal-Mart,
On the way home from work I met Jane Doe, who had
to go to Wal-Mart anyway, so I rode along. Each of us went into the store and
bought a few things. On the way out, Jane Doe asked, joking, “Did you have a
good time?”
It occurred to me that your company headquarters
needs to know exactly what sort of time I had.
I am a celiac, unlike the hordes of
non-celiacs who suddenly discovered, about ten years ago, that they too felt
better when they “went gluten-free.” But only for a short time.
I grew up feeling draggy and sluggish all the
time, with no resistance to infections. When I developed "celiac sprue" at thirty, I felt free to marry an older man, being convinced
I had less time to live than he had. Though I felt better immediately after going gluten-free, only around age thirty-nine did I start to
believe I’d ever reach age forty.
However, after going gluten-free, I became a
healthy person. My example convinced relatives that they too could become
healthy people. Mother became active in a celiac support group. It seemed
strange that the incidence of celiac disease in our neighborhood was so much
higher than it was in Ireland, but it’s fairly easy to eat a healthy diet
without wheat, rye, or barley. For about fifteen years we all enjoyed normal
health, which no celiac ever takes for granted.
Then, in 2014, I started having celiac reactions
to corn. Then to rice. Then to all sorts of things that didn’t even contain
grain. I’ve had celiac reactions to beans, to potatoes, to tomatoes, to coffee,
to strawberries, even to orange juice, during the last few years.
Celiacs network on the Internet these days. I
learned that celiac reactions to corn and rice didn’t mean that we’d become
unable to digest natural corn or rice, but that corn and rice were being
genetically modified to make them more like wheat. I learned that, because
“gluten-free food” often contained GMO alternative grain, “gluten-free”
pastries were not only likely to taste unexciting but also likely to make me
sick. By 2015 food producers were assuring us that GMO rice was not being used
in the United States, but that any and all food these days was likely to
contain “pesticide residues.”
Aha! From
that point, it wasn’t hard to identify a specific “pesticide” that had always been known to trigger celiac
reactions—namely, glyphosate, the main ingredient in “Roundup” and some other
“herbicides.”
These products are not merely “herbicides.” They
do not kill only plants. You can tell when someone has sprayed “Roundup” in his
garden by the dead birds, dead insects, sick cats and dogs, and conspicuously sick humans in the vicinity.
Make no mistake: Glyphosate in any significant
amount is toxic to all living creatures. Toxicity increases with exposure.
However, statistical studies have consistently failed to prove a correlation
between glyphosate exposure and one
specific kind of reaction, because, across species, individual reactions
vary, depending partly on the individuals’ genetic heritage.
(Here is the post where I linked to about a dozen very formal and heavily vetted statistical studies; if the links don't work for you, e-mail me for copies of the PDFs.
True celiac disease is produced by a “strong form”
of a genetic pattern that’s rare in Ireland and virtually unknown anywhere
else. A “weak form” of the celiac pattern is fairly common in western Europe
but rare elsewhere. People who feel better when they “go gluten-free” are
usually in this group of White people who thrived on a wheat-based diet before
glyphosate started to build up in the environment. Their sensitivity to natural
wheat, itself, is mild but their sensitivity to glyphosate-poisoned wheat can
be disabling.
Some humans who have been directly exposed to
glyphosate claim that the worst effect they noticed was a bitter taste. (That’s
debatable, because some people have mental and emotional reactions, obvious to
others, that they are not able to recognize in themselves...mood swings,
narcolepsy, vertigo, anxiety attacks, rage attacks, learning
disorders...There’s a strong correlation between glyphosate exposure and
autism.)
Other people who have been directly exposed to
glyphosate have been hospitalized with intense, immediate reactions that
included anaphylactic shock, skin damage, bleeding, loss of consciousness, and
paralysis. One patient was paralyzed for 39 days. Across species, genes
determine whether humans or animals initially react to glyphosate with no noticeable
reaction (a substantial minority in all species studied), immune reactions like
hayfever, enteric reactions like diarrhea, kidney reactions like narcolepsy, or
death. Mental/emotional reactions are easily identified only in humans, but pet
lovers have seen “the look on Fluffy’s face” too.
People who use glyphosate find it very convenient
to be able to produce more grain with less weeding and cultivating. They can be
unreasonable even when it’s pointed out to them that they are the ones who
“sleep” (black out) all day after spraying the garden, or have disabling
vertigo or uncontrollable diarrhea or setbacks in physical therapy. They want
to believe that they are “older” than they were the day before, or that, since
a lot of people had hayfever on the day when this poison was sprayed, “a cold
is going around,” or that they’re “allergic to” some sort of flower that had
been blooming all week with no effect on them.
We’re talking about people who would never dream
of recklessly endangering their neighbors by letting a four-year-old drive a
car, or yelling “Fire” in a crowded theatre. Because they are not the kind of
people who recklessly endanger others in the usual ways, they don’t want to
admit that they are recklessly endangering their neighbors by spraying
“pesticides.”
We’ve allowed manufacturers, notably Monsanto, to
defend the use of this poison on the sole grounds that, although it causes
painful reactions in a majority of living creatures of any species, in all species studied those reactions vary. In the
case of glyphosate, appealing to statistical studies of specific disease
conditions is like arguing that, if a man shoots one victim,
strangles another, stabs another in the back, and cuts another’s head off, he’s
not a serial murderer.
What’s happened since 2014 is that the Monsanto
Corporation urged farmers to explore new uses for their “safe” product,
“Roundup,” which had not been linked to any consistent statistical increase in
any single specific reaction. They
could use glyphosate to “ripen” crops in the field, or even to “preserve” crops
before trucking them to market—even crops like tomatoes, strawberries, and
apples, which are normally not even peeled before they are eaten. As a result
most of the plant-based food in the U.S. food supply is tainted with enough
glyphosate to induce celiac sprue in anyone who has the celiac gene.
As a result, for me, pushing a shopping cart
through Wal-Mart involves a thought process like this one:
“Start at the back wall of the grocery section,
with beverages. How ridiculous is it that because
high-fructose corn syrup is so denatured by extensive processing, soda pop
doesn’t make me sick? Ridiculous but true. I like the taste of real orange
juice, and I love strawberries, but until we get glyphosate out of the food
supply I have to make do with soda pop.
Snack aisle. Since complaining about one batch of
Planters peanuts in 2017 I’ve had no further trouble with subsequent batches,
but of course, as long as Planters’ parent company won’t even label the tainted and/or genetically
modified products, I have to be careful about peanuts. Planters said nothing
about other nut and seed products. I like sunflower seeds, almonds, cashews,
and pumpkin seeds, but I don’t dare try those until we get glyphosate banned.
Dairy section. Yuck. Glyphosate builds up in milk
faster than it does in meat, and at my age I probably don’t digest milk
efficiently in any case. Cheese, I never have been able to digest. Eggs are
good in baked dishes but I’ve never liked them all by themselves.
Baking supplies. Don’t even go there any more. I
used to love to bake. Baking was a bonding activity I shared with my mother,
who is not ‘old’ now, being only 83, but who is unlikely to recover
from the obviously glyphosate-related resurgence of her celiac symptoms since
age 80. Gluten-free baking was a new adventure in a mutual hobby. Probably
we’ll never do it again.
Cereals. Forget about it. The companies have
worked hard to make Chex and Cheerios gluten-free, but as long as they’re in denial
about glyphosate being more harmful to more cereal eaters than gluten is, I
might as well eat ‘D-Con, the Exterminator in a Box’ as eat Chex or Cheerios. I
used to like Chex and Cheerios.
Canned fruit and vegetables. Don’t go there any
more. About the only brand that still seems to be safe, for now, is that
Mexican brand of canned beans that’s cheaper at the Dollar Store. Of course,
being Mexican, they’re probably loaded with all sorts of other toxins and
carcinogens that affect me more slowly anyway. I am so much luckier than most
Irish-American celiacs because, when I crave applesauce or pineapples, at least
I can go out and look for wild persimmons.
Rice and beans. So many flavors used to work for
me, and I miss them, but I can’t use them. Other flavors are new and I’d like
to try them, but I don’t dare. Since I wrote to the company Zatarain’s has been
careful about using un-poisoned rice...but no beans, and no tomatoes.
Pasta and sauce. Forget about it. They have all
those gluten-free pastas these days, and all of them are probably poisonous to
me. In any case, if the rice-based pasta were safe, the tomato sauce wouldn’t
be, any more.
Frozen foods. Mostly tainted. Frozen veg used to
be mostly safe but are now mostly poisoned. Ice cream, likewise.
Meat cooler. Stock up on meat. I don’t actually
crave meat as often as the cats do, although sharing meat with the cats is a
bonding experience for them. However, meat,
Planters peanuts, Zatarain’s rice, M&M’s, and soda pop are just
about the only things in this super-size 24-7 grocery store I can eat now. At
least I can eat the unsprayed raw ‘weeds’ like fresh dandelions out of my
garden at home. Many cannot.
Produce. Try to rush around the whole produce
section, but a whiff of fresh tomatoes grabs at my memories. I loved tomatoes. I like cucumbers. I like
onions and bell peppers and sweetpotatoes and broccoli and spinach, raw spinach
right out of the bag like chips, and leaf lettuce and radishes and jicama and
corn on the cob and turnips. I miss vegetables so much right now, I could
positively relish zucchini! But no,
no, no, no vegetables unless I know
for sure that the farmer didn’t spray poison on them right before sending them
to the store.
That will bring us to the checkout counter, and if
I can’t resist the M&M’s in the checkout line, how could I resist them when there’s so little else in this store that
I dare to eat, and I can’t really trust even what I’ve bought? Not one thing in
this grocery cart can be considered health food, but everything else in this
store is positively poisonous.”
I went to Wal-Mart to get a week’s groceries. In
2013 that would have meant spending about $50 and taking home sacks of fruit
and veg as well as cheap, heavily processed chicken, peanuts, rice, plus candy
and soda pop. Today I brought in $90, but spent less than $15 for one bag of
junkfood. If I look more than five years older than I did in 2013, I wonder why
that might be...Not!
You can do so much better than this, Wal-Mart. Big
corporations have a lot of power to do good as well as harm. Wal-Mart is such a
large share of the market that Wal-Mart could singlehandedly restore food
sanity to the United States with one easy step:
REQUIRE
FOOD TO BE “THREE-GEE-FREE.”
That would be gluten-free and GMO-free and glyphosate-free.
(Food naturally made from wheat, like flour and sandwich bread, doesn’t have to
be gluten-free since celiacs know it’s wheat-based and can avoid it, and since
natural wheat gluten is a good source of healthy protein for most of
humankind.) Stock natural wheat products on a separate shelf from corn and rice
products. You could even stock GMO products provided
that the farmers and manufacturers were proud to label them, as it might be
“Made with BT corn, which is glyphosate-free and is chemically more like a
disease germ than like wheat.” (BT corn made some people sick, but not nearly
as many as glyphosate-marinated E. Coli corn.) Let farmers know that, if any
trace of glyphosate is detected in food products, they’ll never sell food to
Wal-Mart again.
Require farmers to accept the fact that glyphosate
is more toxic to more people than either GMO foods, as such, or natural wheat
gluten.
By purging glyphosate-tainted food from its
shelves, Wal-Mart could force other stores to stop selling glyphosate-tainted
food, as the word would get around...
“Food Lion had a better price on tomato sauce last
week, but when I used their tomato sauce one child threw up, the other child
misbehaved at school, my husband yelled at me, and I had a migraine. I’ll stick
with Wal-Mart’s tomato sauce.”
“I told the housekeeper I’d rather support the
local supermarket, but I will admit I’ve felt better since she’s been buying
groceries at Wal-Mart.”
Of course nobody’s saying that now. Actually I’ve
had more celiac reactions to gluten-free food Wal-Mart sells than to
gluten-free food Price-Less sells. (Food Lion is the worst. Since about 2014, if I’ve bought food at Food Lion and not had a celiac reaction, that’s been
because a salmonella reaction purged it out of my system first.) But people could be saying that food they bought
from Wal-Mart was healthier than
food, even from the same brands, they bought from other stores, if Wal-Mart
would go Three-Gee-Free.
I’ve noticed a funny thing, Wal-Mart, about the
food items that have been discontinued for lack of sales in recent years. I
have tried a few new food products, and the ones that haven’t survived on the
market have been the ones that made me sick. I've seen even Necco Wafers, a staple junkfood from the 1860s, vanish from Dollar Stores--because they're made mostly of sugar and cornstarch, and these days, most sugar and cornstarch contain enough glyphosate to make me sick. Most people don’t have an obvious
immediate reaction to food with high levels of glyphosate in it, and don’t
recognize it as having made them ill if they even realize they were ill...but they don’t like the
products and don’t buy more of them.
If you want to help people be healthier, Wal-Mart,
forget about obviously greed-driven ideas like “We’ll help people drink less
soda pop by doubling the prices on the advertised brands, switching from sturdy
24-ounce bottles or stubby little 16-ounce bottles to terribly cute tall-and-skinny
16.9-ounce bottles that tip over so easily people won’t allow them in their
houses, and maintaining a reasonable price only on our in-house brands.” We all understand why Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi-Cola
want to raise the price of a bottle of Coke or Pepsi, and we all know that that has nothing to do with our health. Inflating prices on soda pop or on anything else does not promote the perception that Wal-Mart's owners care about people's health.
Going glyphosate-free would actually improve people’s health, and attract them to
Wal-Mart in a healthy way that would make people like Wal-Mart.
Farmers will wail and howl, and food processors
will probably lie on the floor kicking and hold their breath till they turn
blue, when told they need to burn their poisoned “food” now...but you could
allow them to ease back into the market next year by grandfathering in food
containing substantially decreased traces
of accurately labelled, naturally decomposing glyphosate residues, on condition that they pledged to stop using any kind of "cides" on or near any food crop, ever again.
It’d be a total win-win for Wal-Mart just to let Kraft and Nestle turn blue, work
with farmers, and send the huge agro-businesses a clear message: They’re going
to have to get on board, or let smaller farmers leave them behind. They cannot
be allowed to continue recklessly endangering people’s lives.
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| https://www.paypal.me/PriscillaKingUS/25 |
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