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No one knows how much of this pesticide is in the produce we eat

The herbicide glyphosate, known by the commercial name Roundup, is the most commonly used agricultural pesticide in the U.S. on farms. (Home gardeners use it too.) Yet we have no idea how much of it is in our food because the government doesn’t regularly test produce for it.

Glyphosate use has increased tenfold in the past 20 years thanks to the rise in genetically modified corn and soy. Most of those crops are engineered to be resistant to glyphosate, which means Roundup will kill the weeds but not the crops. According to Charles Benbrook, Ph.D., of Washington State University, data shows that U.S. farmers used enough glyphosate in 2014 to apply the equivalent of almost three-quarters of a pound on every acre of farmland used to grow crops. “When a single pesticide is used that widely, people can’t help but be exposed to it,” Benbrook says.