Both humans and domesticated dogs have been eating wheat for many thousands of years. 

I’ve been a veterinarian for over 30 years and it’s only just recently that wheat has become persona non grata in pet foods. In fact, in the 1980’s vegetarian dog foods and gluten products were in vogue.  I couldn’t understand why wheat and some other grains had suddenly become the villains of the food pyramid within pet foods. 

Of course, and at the same time, more and more people have also become ‘gluten-free. For both man and beast the choice was primarily due to health concerns. 

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This is a rather sudden change, when you reflect upon the long history of wheat in the diet of both man and dog. You see, dogs have, basically, been eating the same thing as humans have for millennia.   Over this long period of time, dogs have actually evolved along with humans.

Dogs were domesticated and began living lives that were quite different from their wild wolf cousins well over 100 centuries ago. A lot can change in the canine genetic makeup over that period of time. Our dogs have co-evolved along with us becoming adapted so they could digest the same diets as ours.

From early on, novel adaptations in dogs’ genes allowed the ancestors of or modern dogs to digest and assimilate starches. There’s some pretty impressive genetic research done in Sweden on this very subject. Eric Axelsson, an evolutionary geneticist at the Uppsala University in Sweden, compared the DNA from dogs and wolves. Unlike wolves, dogs had developed genes for digesting starch. Dogs have up to 30 copies of the gene that makes amylase, a protein that starts the breakdown of starch in the intestine, while wolves have only two copies. In addition, the multiple genes for amylase are 28 times more active in dogs, showing that our canine friends are many times better at digesting starches than wolves.

There’s also another gene that codes for an additional enzyme— maltase—important in the digestion of starch. It was found that dogs produce a longer version of the maltase digestive enzyme. In fact, it’s the same type of elongated version seen in herbivores, such as cows and rabbits, making it even more efficient in its ability to digest starch. 

The bottom line is that dogs can and did digest and eat starches and that they’ve developed enzymes and adapted to a diet that’s quite similar to a balanced human diet. So why are wheat and other grains now spurned and avoided in pet foods?  Why did wheat cause nary a problem for years and suddenly it’s searched on ingredient lists and avoided when found?

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Here’s where it gets very interesting for there’s been something that’s been going on with wheat that’s not very well known.

It goes far beyond the often- mentioned organic factor, hybridization factor and gluten factor.  And it clears up a mystery.

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Let’s start by explaining the difficulty farmers face when they harvest wheat.  The kernels of the wheat need to be ripened as evenly as possible and each stalk has many kernels. Normally, a wheat field ripens unevenly. Additionally, moisture in the stalk of the wheat makes it harder to cut with the harvester. To fix this problem, the new protocol that some farmers are using for wheat harvesting in the United States is to generously spray the fields with Roundup about a week before harvest. This allows the kernels to dry out evenly, with the farmer having an easier harvest with a higher yield.  The glyphosate in Roundup and similar herbicides have been used for this purpose for the past 20 years and over this time the percentage of fields sprayed has gone up and up and up until it’s become a somewhat common procedure.

 Every farm does not do this, but most do.

The thing is, this practice is not licensed. Peas or lentils sprayed with glyphosate pre-harvest would not be accepted in the market place. Yet, wheat goes through the same procedure and is accepted. They changed the name for the process and maybe this is why it gets by.  Farmers call this process with wheat ‘dessication’.  While it’s not legal to do this, somehow the legalities are overlooked. 

Certain countries in Europe legally forbid this. But we have to consider that wheat grown in the United States is sent all over the world. In fact,the Food Standards Agency in the United Kingdom reports glyphosate residues regularly showing up in bread samples.

Of course, the herbicide industry touts to us that their products are totally safe. I’m not surprised.  Yet, two researchers, Dr. Stephanie Seneff and Anthony Samsel, from MIT strongly argue in their research published in the Journal Entropy that glyphosate is not safe and that the consumption of this herbicide is greatly contributing to many diseases. I’m saddened to have to tell you that most of the non-organic wheat supplies are now contaminated with glyphosate.

 A large percentage of processed foods are made from wheat, and this helps explain the explosion of gastrointestinal problems in both people and pets as a result of ingesting wheat.    

How does spraying wheat with glyphosate do this? Glyphosate is known to inhibit something called the cytochrome P450 enzyme (CYP enzymes). Cytochrome P450 enzymes are involved with detoxifying environmental toxins, activating vitamin D3, catabolizing vitamin A, and maintaining bile acid production and sulfate supplies to the gut. 

Also, the good intestinal bacteria are rendered impotent by glyphosate in the wheat in the diet.  

 We’re all busy giving our pets probiotics to help their digestive tracts.  It’s become the trend.  At our gut level, have we somehow intuited that something is not right in their guts? Could the real problem be the common use of glyphosates in our foods?  

To quote the article in Entropy, Volume 15, Issue 4: “CYP enzymes play crucial roles in biology, one of which is to detoxify xenobiotics. Thus, glyphosate enhances the damaging effects of other food-borne chemical residues and environmental toxins. Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body. Here, we show how interference with CYP enzymes acts synergistically with disruption of the biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids by gut bacteria, as well as impairment in serum sulfate transport. Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. We explain the documented effects of glyphosate and its ability to induce disease, and we show that glyphosate is the “textbook example” of exogenous semiotic entropy: the disruption of homeostasis by environmental toxins.”

You’re getting it straight from the horse’s mouth. Semiotic entropy means that the addition of environmental toxins disrupts the body’s ability to heal and balance itself. The addition of Roundup to the diet from wheat and other grain products significantly disrupts the functioning of the beneficial bacteria in the gut and contributes to excess, unhealthy permeability of the intestinal wall. If we understand that the health of the gut contributes to 70% of immune function the consequences are even more substantial.

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We can’t forget that Roundup is also used, on some farms, with barley, sugar cane, some rice, sweet potatoes and sugar beets.  This does not even include the GMO Roundup-Ready crops, like soy, that are routinely sprayed with Roundup as part of the protocol. The Roundup Ready GMO crops are not only GMO but the plants have also absorbed the glyphosate from the spraying.

It’s important to understand that you cannot wash glyphosate off foods, as it is incorporated into each cell within the plant. And when you're consuming processed foods you must understand that it's already been processed into the final product. 

So truly, the only way to handle this is to choose for your dog (and yourself) as many organic foods as possible. Organic standards do not permit glyphosate use. This is equally if not more important when it comes to meat and other animal products, as factory-farmed animals are typically raised on a GMO diet with glyphosates bio-accumulating in their tissues Do not confuse ‘organic’ with labels that say "natural" or "all-natural." These are not regulated, and are often GMO!

Once upon a time all people and animals ate organic food with most of it ripening on the vine.  The phytonutrients, vitamins and minerals in the plant worked to promote health and even cure disease.  In today’s world we’re all exposed to more than our fair share of carcinogens and toxic chemicals. We need the ingredients in conscientiously grown food to eliminate these toxins along with preventing and repairing the damage they have done.  It’s more important than ever that we buy ‘organic’ and fight- together- for our right to healthy food. 

Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Modern Diseases   Anthony Samsel  and Stephanie Seneff