Glyphosate: How a Weed Killer Ends Up in Your Body and Your Baby's
Article three of four in the Hidden Triggers series — how a common herbicide wrecks your microbiome, stresses your liver, and drives chronic illness.
Most Americans grew up like me, eating Pop-Tarts, Froot Loops, Reese’s Puffs, and public school lunches, and we played on Roundup weed-killer-sprayed lawns.
If you lived in the country, you watched corn fields turn brown a couple of months before harvest season after being sprayed down with glyphosate.
Most everyone can at least recognize the smell of glyphosate at this point, whether your neighbor was spraying down his weeds, or the farmer was spraying his crops at certain points in the growing season.
I always remember the TV commercials that blared talking about “Did you develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after the use of Roundup?”. Kinda like the commercials about “were you injured in a car crash, if so, call 1-800-get money now and participate in your class action lawsuit.” If you know, you know.
Then, circa 2024, RFK and the MAHA movement get going, and glyphosate toxicity becomes a real mainstream talking point in the US.
So if you haven’t heard about glyphosate at this point in 2026, this article will hopefully be pretty illuminating for you.
Glyphosate Epidemic
Every generation has its “thing.” For the boomers, it was leaded gasoline in the 70s and Agent Orange in Vietnam. Lead in gasoline led to “lower conscientiousness, lower agreeableness, and higher neuroticism” in these cohorts, which led to generational impacts as mothers passed down high lead levels to their babies.1
Agent Orange, a herbicide used in the Vietnam War, was shown to cause prostate cancer, skin cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, lung cancer, birth defects, and sadly, so much more.2
For the newer generations, the story has largely been plastics, PFAS (forever chemicals), and, of course, glyphosate.
Glyphosate is a potent herbicide that is sold under the name Roundup. It is used by US farmers as an extremely effective weed management tool. It kills the weeds but not the crops.
Farmers spray it on crops like wheat, oats, and barley a few weeks before the harvest; the intention being to dry out the crop faster and speed harvest time up.3
Monsanto, the creator of Roundup, also engineered "Roundup Ready" crops. These are genetically modified crops so farmers can spray Roundup on their fields without killing the crop.
Roundup-ready corn and soy fields are sprayed throughout the season, killing off weeds but not the GMO crop. It’s also used as a “burndown spray,” which clears fields of weeds right before the next growing season.
The prevalence of glyphosate in farming is, frankly, overwhelming.
Sometimes it reminds me of the movie “Idiocracy”, where they started watering their crops with Gatorade and wondered why nothing was coming up.
Instead of Gatorade, we just spray our genetically modified crops with a completely toxic chemical and wonder why the average American is so unhealthy.
It is so common that4:
90% of farmers in a South Carolina study had glyphosate in their body.
60–95% of Americans have it show up in their urine, that’s the vast majority of us walking around with it in our bodies.
Even 40–50% of Europeans test positive, despite tighter regulations over there.
30% of newborns had glyphosate in their urine - before they’ve eaten a single bite of solid food. It passes through breast milk, baby formula, and even crosses the placenta before birth.
Those newborns tested positive at a higher rate than older babies aged 10 to 19 months.
Curious how much glyphosate is in your system? Glyphosate shows up on a simple urine test, and I can order one for you through Fullscript. If you want to stop guessing and actually see your numbers, let's talk. Or check out littlewaycoach.com.
A health advocacy group called “Moms Across America” did a little investigation into the prevalence of glyphosate in fast food. They took 42 fast food samples from 21 different restaurants.
Direct from their study5:
100% of Top Twenty ( +1) Fast Food brands contained alarming glyphosate residues.
The highest levels detected, 213.58 ppb and 225.53 ppb, totaling 439.11 in two samples, were in Panera Bread, a self-proclaimed proprietor of “good food” and “clean, wholesome foods.”
The second highest levels of glyphosate were found in Arby’s sandwiches, 124.2 and 99 ppb, totaling 223.33 ppb of glyphosate. Dairy Queen and Little Caesar’s were nearly tied for third highest, at 126 ppb and 128 ppb total glyphosate detected, respectively.
The lowest levels were found in Chipotle meals, totaling 4.65 ppb for both samples, a whopping 94.4 times lower than the highest level, 439.11 ppb detected in Panera Bread.
Great, now my wife is gonna start bugging me for Chipotle again.
For reference, if you had two items from Panera Bread, you would have consumed a total of 439 parts per billion of glyphosate residue. That’s like 439 drops in an Olympic-sized pool.
The problem isn’t a single meal from Panera or your favorite fast food joint; the problem is chronic exposure to these things over years.
Remember the inverse square law from science class? Yeah, me neither, but I gotta sound smart. But it’s the one that says the closer you are to something bad, the worse it affects you.
Stand directly next to an X-ray. Bad. Take a step away from the X-ray. Less bad. Take three steps from the X-ray. Better.
The same principles apply to glyphosate: eat Panera every day. Bad. Eat at Panera every other day. Less bad. Eat at Panera once a week. Better.
Also consider how many conventionally grown foods have this same issue, and how it’s aerosolized from those who use it on their lawns, or if you live near farms using it.
The point isn’t to become neurotic about how it’s in many foods and in the air, rather it is to become educated about the topic, and avoid it when you can.
Monsanto
When you look at many large corporations and the driving factor behind their decisions, it’s usually one thing: MONEY.
Movies like “The Insider,” where a high-up Big Tobacco scientist decided to blow the whistle about the addictive chemical additives being added to cigarettes, communicate how big corporations will stop at nothing if it means their profit margins are on the line.
There is always one guy who has a “come-to-Jesus” moment and blows the facade wide open and exposes the lies. Big corporations have never had the common man’s best interests at heart (cough cough COVID), and never will.
The story with Monsanto, the manufacturer of glyphosate, is not too different.
Here is a snippet from a 2016 article talking about this exactly6:
“Despite Monsanto’s claim that its Roundup weed-killer was “safe enough to drink,” four Nebraska farmers say the widely used herbicide gave them non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma...
The company made $4.8 billion from Roundup sales last year. It is applied to “Roundup-ready” crops that are genetically modified to resist it.
Ubiquitous in hardware stores for home use nationwide, Roundup is used in commercial agriculture on more than 100 varieties of crops.
More than 85 million lbs. of glyphosate was applied to U.S. crops in 2001, and its use more than doubled, to 185 million lbs., by 2007, according to the complaint.
Glyphosate is found in rivers, streams, and groundwater in agricultural areas where Roundup is used. It has been found in food, the urine of exposed persons, and in the urine of urban dwellers without direct contact with glyphosate,” the 48-page complaint states.”
Safe enough to drink? Why wouldn’t someone just challenge a Monsanto board member to drink a daily glass of it then? The funny thing is, these people NEVER put their money where their mouth is.
I sure as heck aint drinking glyphosate. Hopefully this doesn’t become the new tide pod challenge…
Even more insane is how a couple of months after the IARC, the WHO’s cancer agency, labeled glyphosate a probable carcinogen, an exec at Monsanto was busted sending out an email with the subject line “Post-IARC Activities to Support Glyphosate.”
Monsanto's chief of regulatory science, William Heydens, “floated the idea of conducting a meta-analysis — a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. He noted that the manuscript would be ‘initiated by [Monsanto] as ghost writers’ and that it ‘would be more powerful if authored by non-Monsanto scientists.’"
What does that mean? It means Monsanto scientists write the paper. Then, independent scientists (sorry, that’s a contradiction in terms) stamp their names on the paper, and the public sees that neutral scientists found glyphosate to be safe!
“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world only to lose his soul?”
So what does the real research say on glyphosate?
The Studies
One of the most talked-about effects of glyphosate is what it does to your gut. It behaves like an antibiotic, driving dysbiosis and wiping out beneficial bacteria like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium.
The mechanism runs through something called the shikimate pathway. Bacteria depend on this pathway to build essential amino acids, and glyphosate shuts it down by blocking the key enzyme that keeps it running.
Because of this, inflammatory Th17 immune cells get cranked up, and Lipocalin-2, a signal that the gut lining is inflamed, rises.7
What is even more interesting is how glyphosate is synergistic with heavy metals, another root cause issue I work with health coaching clients on, and something also harmful to the gut microbiome.
When worms were exposed to copper, arsenic, and glyphosate, researchers found a negative synergy attached to glyphosate, as glyphosate helped usher arsenic into cells.8
Given that glyphosate was used as a chelating agent for descaling pipes, this may not be surprising.
The liver is one of my favorite organs. It helps process and excrete almost every toxin on the planet, and it keeps your gut microbiome in check. So what happens when glyphosate gets in the mix?
Shockingly, or not so much, it was found to be hepatotoxic, meaning it promoted liver damage. In one study, mice were exposed to glyphosate for 30 days.
After those 30 days, glyphosate caused structural damage to liver cells, bubble-like holes within cells called vacuolation, which can cause cell death, increased oxidative stress, damaged mitochondria, reduced ATP production by inhibiting the electron transport chain, and increased clotting factors.9
For me, my liver was the canary in the coal mine with my health issues like Crohn’s disease and Hidradenitis suppurativa.
Want to dig into your own hidden triggers? Book a free consult and let's talk glyphosate, heavy metals, and the other root-cause contributors behind so many autoimmune and chronic issues.
Closing Out
You can’t dodge glyphosate completely, and that is not even a realistic goal anyways.
What you can do is buy high quality local produce, filter your water, ditch the fast food, and support your detox systems.
Small, boring choices, repeated over years, are what move the needle. This is article three of four in the Hidden Triggers series. Next up: the rest of the toxic chemicals hiding in plain sight.
Lastly book a free consult with me here if you are struggling with your health: https://calendly.com/scott-littlewaycoach/30min
And check out my website littlewaycoach.com to learn more about what I do and my story!
Till next time,
Scott
Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. All opinions expressed are my own and not intended to replace professional medical guidance.
Enjoy some of my tweets on Glyphosate.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8307752/
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/24689-agent-orange-effects
https://www.cornucopia.org/2017/10/glyphosate-used-kill-prepare-crops-harvest/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10561581/
https://www.momsacrossamerica.com/lab-reports/fast-food-glyphosate
https://www.courthousenews.com/farmers-say-roundupgave-them-cancer/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1382668923000911
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00128-017-2042-5
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36608876/