Flavanoids and Pesticides

Flavanoids and pesticides

The big picture this pandemic has left us with is the importance of keeping your body resilient. Our best prevention from any contagion is our own immune system. I am going to give you a little snapshot of how big of an impact quality food has on whether you get sick or not.

Flavanoids aka Bioflavanoids

Plants make flavanoids, they get their name from the latin work flava which means yellow. While they are yellow, they appear in foods of all colors that yellow is a part of, for example purple foods. Purple foods are high in flavonoids, the yellow content contributes to their purple hue.

Flavanoids are our body’s anti-viral medicine. They are effective ‘eaten from foods’ anti-virals, and if in our bodies at a time of exposure, can help keep us from getting sick. The less bioflavonoids you have in your body the easier you will get sick.

Plants have different pathways that they make different plant chemicals through, I learned through the module on chemistry in my clinical aromatherapist certification. While there are several different pathways plants use to make primary or secondary metabolites, I learned about 2 different pathways that the plant uses to make their metabolites, the melavonic and shikimate pathways. The shikimate pathway is the pathway of interest here.

The shikimate pathway is the pathway that plants use to make flavonoids. Insects and bacteria also have a shikimate pathway. Roundup destroys shikimate pathways — that is their method of destruction — round up kills weeds and insects by degrading or burning up this pathway. 

Standard non organic food is grown to be resistant to roundup, when sprayed with roundup, they survive, these are the GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) foods. A secondary metabolite is a metabolite that is not necessary for life — but they do serve important functions, like increased immunity, however not all plants have secondary metabolites, plants with secondary metabolites outlive the plants that do not have secondary metabolites. They are sturdier, more resistant or resilient. An example is caffeine, caffeine is a secondary metabolite of the coffee plant. A plant uses caffeine to ward off predators, and just like humans the coffee plant uses caffeine to stimulate — in this case to stimulate photosynthesis and it helps the plant absorb more water and nutrients from the soil.

• Secondary metabolites are used to ward off predators, fight off infections, attract pollinators and the such. Secondary metabolites are what herbalists and aromatherapists get from plants.
• Here is an article in PubMed on plants and their metabolites, and here is another.

These plants when sprayed with roundup survive but lose their shikimate pathway. When a plant’s shikimate pathway is destroyed they no longer make flavonoids. Plants that are either GMO and sprayed with Roundup or desiccated with round up do not provide flavonoids anymore. Degrading the quality of the food.

• Non-GMO crops such as oats, wheat, barley and legumes, beans of all types like chickpeas, black beans, lentils tend to be very high in roundup because these crops are sprayed with roundup right before harvest as a desiccant to speed the drying process.

What percentage of the population eats non-organic? I’m quite sure well over 50%. That leaves most of our population vulnerable to viruses. See the root issue here?

More scientific explanation on how roundup works I found on a general web search.

Also tilling reduces flavonoids in plants because tilling destroys the microbiome of the soil. The microbiome of the soil does for the plants what our microbiome does in our gut. That’s why I’ve alway been a no-till gardener.

Flavanoids are so plentiful they have been broken into sub groups such as: Flavones, flavanols, flavans, isoflavanoids. These subgroups contain many many flavonoids that perform many important functions in our body. Perhaps you have heard of some of these flavanoids? Like proanthocyanidins, Luteolin (rich in celery and other vegetables), quercitin (in red foods and onions), apigenin (in chamomile), kaempferol (plentiful in foods such as grapes, broccoli, ginkgo biloba leaves), ECGC, theaninę (both in green tea) are just a few common ones.

Food makes a difference on whether or not you get a virus. How many non organic foods are you eating? And furthermore how many pre-prepared foods and processed foods can you get out of your diet? Eating less than 10% processed or prepared foods seems to be a marker for the quality of your health. I know these foods are convenient, but the convenience is not worth the health risk.

• Even many organic foods test positive for roundup, for example in CA, organic wines are testing positive for roundup due to the water supply being contaminated with roundup because it was so heavily sprayed, far and wide, for so long.

And are you eating enough vegetables to get enough anti-viral flavanoids? YOU ARE NOT A SITTING DUCK when it comes to contagion. What you eat makes a difference.

And while I am on this subject — those important gut bugs we are all hearing about lately— our microbiome — those lovely bacteria that digest hard to digest foods for us, burn up toxins, and help to keep us lean and happy, all have a shikimate pathway. When you eat non-organic foods they destroy your microbiome’s shikimate pathway and your beneficial gut bugs die off.

Furthermore do you know roundup is FDA approved as an anti-biotic for human use? No one is prescribing roundup (yet) as an anti-biotic, but none the less it is approved to be used which means it is an anti-biotic that is in our everyday food — and we are all well aware of the side effects of antibiotics.

I know the problem is major and how do we get our entire population able to eat mostly organic foods? The answer is somewhere between what the government subsidizes (corn, wheat, soy) and what is made from what they subsidize — ultra processed toxic foods, and our farming methods. Regenerative agriculture is our way out of this, with smarter government funding. I know, I know, getting there is probably easier one person at a time then it is to change an entire industry’s system.

But we do have some power here. Speak with your pocketbook! Manufacturers listen to you by what you spend your money on. For example, organics are now so popular that company’s who previously had no interest in doing anything organic are now growing organic foods just to get in on the money. Your purchase makes a difference. You vote with how you spend your food money.

Our only way out of this pandemic and to prevent this from happening again and again — and it will if we continue as we have been (delta variant … ) — is to get our population healthy. Our current food system is making everyone sick, vulnerable, and fat.

While I am speaking on food I just again want to mention that boxed cereals are not health food, they are extremely high in roundup. My heart cringes when I think of all the children eating boxed cereals out there. They are not good for you, and are not a good way to start your day. They are heavily sprayed, round up saturated, dried out, fake food flakes. If you eat cereal for breakfast you start your day on a blood sugar roller coaster ride and inflamed. Not a good way to start your day … low blood sugar and high inflammation … Even organic cereals are not healthy. The only thing close to cereal I will eat is my own homemade low sugar granola or savory oatmeal.

Better to start your day with protein such as eggs, yogurt, or nuts.