Amerika

Modernity centers around a simple idea: if you can convince most people to do something the same way, you can use economies of scale to make that cheap, and then take the profit to go hire bureaucrats who hide behind the aegis of altruistic motivation.

However, the pocket of time between discovering a new method and finding its downsides may have concluded. Part of the modern miracle is our democratized food that is mass-produced cheaply, despite leaving an obese population, and two of its primary methods have just failed according to recent research.

First, glyphosate has been implicated in the ongoing crisis of dementia-related diseases which seems to plague industrialized societies:

Glyphosate-dosed 3xTg-AD mice showed reduced survival, increased thigmotaxia in the Morris water maze, significant increases in the beta secretase enzyme (BACE-1) of amyloidogenic processing, amyloid-β (Aβ) 42 insoluble fractions, Aβ 42 plaque load and plaque size, and phosphorylated tau (pTau) at epitopes Threonine 181, Serine 396, and AT8 (Serine 202, Threonine 205). Notably, we found increased pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines persisting in both 3xTg-AD and NonTg brain tissue and in 3xTg-AD peripheral blood plasma.

This is part of a growing body of research which links glyphosate with a number of negative health outcomes:

Animal studies have shown that glyphosate is carcinogenic in rodents and causes NHL in mice. Mechanistic studies have demonstrated that glyphosate and GBFs are genotoxic to human lymphocytes, the normal cell of origin of NHL, both in vitro and in vivo. Genotoxic and other biological effects have also been shown in various animal and cell models with these agents even at low doses. A novel mechanism underlying the specificity of glyphosate for NHL, that is upregulation of the B-cell genome mutator enzyme activation-induced cytidine deaminase, has recently been demonstrated.

Even worse for industrial farming and the billions it supports, fructose — including High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), the primary sweetener in most packaged foods — has been implicated in feeding cancers:

WashU scientists discovered that the liver converts fructose into usable nutrients for cancer cells, a compelling finding that could open up new avenues for care and treatment of many different types of cancer.

Without glyphosate to produce cheap grain and HFCS to sweeten packaged foods, the democratized food industry will find itself having trouble producing food at its previous levels, which in turn means that the world population will need to drop to avoid mass starvation. Perhaps a new ice age will intervene.

Tags: alzheimers, cancer, dementia, fructose, glyphosate, HFCS, high fructose corn syrup