As a fun project started during the long days of COVID immobility we've been publishing a little 'newsletter' about sustainability.

We've just pushed issue #3, which is mostly about farming/gardening, biodiversity, etc. and has a really interesting interview with Ben, a natural winegrower in Northern Italy. Personally I get massively confused between terms like natural, ecologicial, organic, etc. and until recently didn't really know that 'natural wine' was a thing.

Would be very happy if anyone wants to take a look, read, share, subscribe, and also give any comments and thoughts!

Towards Sustainability - Platforma EkoOur monthly free magazine about sustainable living, climate change, and the environment.platformaeko.com

Loved it. Good oat milk recipe too.

I think there is a renaissance in medical research going on now that really got traction starting around 2006 — tracking down the cause of the stunning rise of diseases of the industrial age: Parkinson's, Autism, Crohn's, Colitis, allergies among children, yada. They've been a huge medical mystery, but it sure looks like an avalanche of good science is singling out the things that kill our gut microbes, especially antibiotics.

The king of them is one you mention: Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. Monsanto was issued a patent for using it as an antimicrobial in 2010.

I want to be a scientist, not a conspiracy theorist, so out of an abundance of caution I'll say there doesn't seem to be proof of causation wrt Glyphosate, but there is so much correlation, I avoid it.

I want to be a scientist, not a conspiracy theorist

Really, but it's so popular these days ;-)

Thanks for the nice comments Chris.

I'm clearly not a large scale agricultural company and I do get why they use chemicals pesticides, etc. but the basic rule is simple, putting anything on crops that is designed to kill or inhibit just sounds like a bad idea to me. Of course they are designed to kill specific organisms but still... it doesn't seem like the smartest thing to be doing.

For decades there has been a load of negative press, health scares, legal suits, etc. over Roundup, surely too many for them to not have at least some basis even if there is no direct proof of causation, and yet it's still widely used in over 160 countries. Gah!