Hey everyone, so I been taking a class called APES, Advanced Placement Environmental Science and hands down it is my favorite class. Recently, we have on the food unit (the only real reason I took the class) I absolutely love it so her is a quick article I wrote up.
Evolution of Wheat
Over the summer I picked up the book Wheat Belly, by William Davis. William Davis has also written the book Grain Brain, but I have not gotten a hold of it to read, yet. The book is a rhetoric book arguing about how the consumption of wheat is leading to many of our health problems.
You may ask yourself, well why is it that people thousands of years ago, like ancient civilizations, used wheat and were completely fine? Well, the wheat we consume is not the same wheat that was once used.
Jump back to 3300 BC in Europe; the wheat that was being used was called einkorn wheat. This wheat was grown in Europe because it could with stand the cold. Remember back then you ate what you could farm during that current season, they could not ship some nice tropically grown foods around the world. We know that einkorn wheat was the wheat being consumed because traces of the wheat has been found in mummified Neolithic hunters.
Over time einkorn wheat mixed with wild grass. Unlike humans, these simple species "mate" and then combine chromosomes. So, a new wheat, the emmer variety, formed containing 28- chromosomes. The emmer is more complex and is known as a polyploid. These two forms of wheat, einkorn and emmer, are the type of wheat referred to in biblical texts and ancient Sumerian recipes. You know it is real wheat when the recipe calls for a mortar, pestle, and some sand to help grind it down.
As einkorn and wild grass mated to form emmer wheat, is to emmer and a wild grass forming Triticum Aestivum. This wheat is even more complex and is made of 42-chromosomes. This form of wheat has chromosomes from 3 different "parents", so it becomes most "pliable" for genetic scientists to mutilate.
Vineyard Vines brought us our wheat? Yep, the little whale on everyone's shirt swam over the Atlantic from Europe and transported our wheat... kinda. The discoverer of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard (the land that brings us Vineyard Vines), Bartholomew Gosnold brought wheat to New England in 1602. The Pilgrims also brought us wheat when they came over on the May Flower. Now, there are new species of the original Triticum aestivum like, Triticum durum and Tiritcum compactum which form flours for pasta, and baked goods.
The people responsible for our genetically modified wheat is the IMWIC (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center). It was originally made to help Mexico achieve agricultural self-sustainability. They began creating new strains of wheat to help create greater yields in shorter time.
Meet Dr. Borlaug aka "Father of the Green Revolution". In the mid 1900's the IMWIC began to use nitrogen heavy fertilizer to form wheat that produces larger seed heads, leading a greater yield. However, the heads were so heavy the stalks would collapse. Borlaug came up with dwarf wheat. The dwarfs are able to reach maturity earlier allowing an early harvest. Borlaug won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and the Novel Peace Prize in 1970 for his agricultural advances.
What's wrong with this form of wheat? It seems to be perfect, helping end world hunger and all. However, this new hybridized crop was never tested. Once tested, agricultural geneticists realized that 95% of the proteins in the dwarf wheat were expressed in the parent wheat. However, 5% of the proteins were not found in either parent, proving that wheat gluten proteins were created during the genetic change.
Genetically modified foods are becoming widely popular with our growing population, and companies like Monsanto, Cargill, and ADM are patenting our food. Foods like our "synthetic wheat" are causing our health problems because our bodies are not made to break down molecules not found in nature.
A quote from the Wall Street Journal in 2009 stated that "Borlaug showed that nature is no match for human ingenuity in setting the real limits to growth". Is this statement really true? It seems that nature will take us down from the inside out, slowly destroying our bodies by what we eat. So, are we really proving to nature that it is no match to human ingenuity?
Source: Wheat Belly Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, by William Davis MD
Evolution of Wheat
Over the summer I picked up the book Wheat Belly, by William Davis. William Davis has also written the book Grain Brain, but I have not gotten a hold of it to read, yet. The book is a rhetoric book arguing about how the consumption of wheat is leading to many of our health problems.
You may ask yourself, well why is it that people thousands of years ago, like ancient civilizations, used wheat and were completely fine? Well, the wheat we consume is not the same wheat that was once used.
Jump back to 3300 BC in Europe; the wheat that was being used was called einkorn wheat. This wheat was grown in Europe because it could with stand the cold. Remember back then you ate what you could farm during that current season, they could not ship some nice tropically grown foods around the world. We know that einkorn wheat was the wheat being consumed because traces of the wheat has been found in mummified Neolithic hunters.
Over time einkorn wheat mixed with wild grass. Unlike humans, these simple species "mate" and then combine chromosomes. So, a new wheat, the emmer variety, formed containing 28- chromosomes. The emmer is more complex and is known as a polyploid. These two forms of wheat, einkorn and emmer, are the type of wheat referred to in biblical texts and ancient Sumerian recipes. You know it is real wheat when the recipe calls for a mortar, pestle, and some sand to help grind it down.
As einkorn and wild grass mated to form emmer wheat, is to emmer and a wild grass forming Triticum Aestivum. This wheat is even more complex and is made of 42-chromosomes. This form of wheat has chromosomes from 3 different "parents", so it becomes most "pliable" for genetic scientists to mutilate.
Vineyard Vines brought us our wheat? Yep, the little whale on everyone's shirt swam over the Atlantic from Europe and transported our wheat... kinda. The discoverer of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard (the land that brings us Vineyard Vines), Bartholomew Gosnold brought wheat to New England in 1602. The Pilgrims also brought us wheat when they came over on the May Flower. Now, there are new species of the original Triticum aestivum like, Triticum durum and Tiritcum compactum which form flours for pasta, and baked goods.
The people responsible for our genetically modified wheat is the IMWIC (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center). It was originally made to help Mexico achieve agricultural self-sustainability. They began creating new strains of wheat to help create greater yields in shorter time.
Meet Dr. Borlaug aka "Father of the Green Revolution". In the mid 1900's the IMWIC began to use nitrogen heavy fertilizer to form wheat that produces larger seed heads, leading a greater yield. However, the heads were so heavy the stalks would collapse. Borlaug came up with dwarf wheat. The dwarfs are able to reach maturity earlier allowing an early harvest. Borlaug won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and the Novel Peace Prize in 1970 for his agricultural advances.
What's wrong with this form of wheat? It seems to be perfect, helping end world hunger and all. However, this new hybridized crop was never tested. Once tested, agricultural geneticists realized that 95% of the proteins in the dwarf wheat were expressed in the parent wheat. However, 5% of the proteins were not found in either parent, proving that wheat gluten proteins were created during the genetic change.
Genetically modified foods are becoming widely popular with our growing population, and companies like Monsanto, Cargill, and ADM are patenting our food. Foods like our "synthetic wheat" are causing our health problems because our bodies are not made to break down molecules not found in nature.
A quote from the Wall Street Journal in 2009 stated that "Borlaug showed that nature is no match for human ingenuity in setting the real limits to growth". Is this statement really true? It seems that nature will take us down from the inside out, slowly destroying our bodies by what we eat. So, are we really proving to nature that it is no match to human ingenuity?
Source: Wheat Belly Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, by William Davis MD