Preparedness for when

Cappella

Thanks GreyQueen. I'll look out for the book, or order it on inter-library loan if it's not easily available.
Interesting though from what you say, that the rising number of coeliac sufferers DOES appears to be linked to the time period since the introduction of the hybridised wheats - hadn't realised that they were introduced quite as early as the 1960s - and would seem to bear out my hypothesis.
Will definitely read further on this issue.
I eat very little bread, and avoid processed foods completely. We've always eaten a natural, wholefood diet high in fibre. My heart attack was linked to hereditary and genetic, rather than dietary issues. My sisters diet was very heavily skewed the other way; with bread being eaten at every meal. She also favoured processed meats and 'ready meals'.

I planted rainbow chard in the garden - be interesting to see if it self seeds, as the soil isn't good at all there

GreyQueen

I got my copy from the library, so I expect yours will have it.

My chard self-seeded very easily, it grew long flowering spires, like bolting lettuce, and I just left it in situ. Seeds come up everywhere, even the length of the lottie from where the original plants were.

Gotta run out the door to work now.

mardatha

Quite scary reading today ladies. But I think you're right.

[Deleted User]

D'ya know I'd never considered that the hybridisation of wheat and the limiting by the EU of the number of species it's legal to grow might be a contributory factor in obesity and colitis type reactions in people but it makes such perfect sense doesn't it? I wonder if the 'it doesn't taste like it used to' that we hear so often IS because it doesn't taste like it used to as it's made from something totally different nowadays. Certainly with bread I've always assumed it was because of the cooking methods used nowadays, not that the flour is changed in ways that make the taste and our reaction to ingesting it different to the days of our youth. I wonder if SPELT would be better for our gut? certainly bread made from spelt flour is perfectly acceptable but it will have to be home made as I've never come across a spelt loaf that wasn't half and half with wheat in the shops. Rye bread, which I love, is perhaps another alternative but again it's not often that it doesn't contain wheat flour, the exception being PUMPERNICKEL but again that's an acquired taste. Interesting ideas folks!

mardatha

I get Spelt & Qinoa bread from Sainsbugs, it's lovely.

[Deleted User]

Thanks MAR I'll look for some.

GreyQueen

The really poignant thing for me is that it wasn't some mad evil scientist working for money-grubbing agro-biz who dwarfed wheat.

It was done with the best possible motives to save tens of millions from starvation by Nobel prize winner Dr Norman Borlaug, who died in 2009, aged 95. The forced two-crops-a-season engineering of wheat done in Mexico (where the climate allowed two growing seasons a year) increased the yield of wheat 2-3 times over non-dwarf wheat. Dr Borlaug is credited with saving millions of people from starvation by dwarfing wheat and I guess if the good doctor was alive today, he'd be horrified that there were any adverse consquences for anybody.

Orignally, when the Nautafians first domesticated wheat, it had 14 chromosones. Wheat had the feature that when you cross it with another grass, the orginal chromsones are joined by another set, so 14 became 28 still in ancient times. This first wheat was einkorn, the second wheat was emmer, and we eventually ended up with dwarf wheat in 1960 with a whopping 48 chromosones. The sets are known as A, B, C and D, with D being the dwarf wheat set, and this is believed to be the source of a lot of modern problems.

No one thought it would be a problem. Why should they, what could be more benign and wholesome than wheat? Never mind that some populations and individuals haven't made the necessary adaptions to eat any kind of grains, as some people are still lactose intolerant.

There are some very frightening results about wheat and mental health problems, especially schizophrenia. As in, relief from symptoms when abstaining from wheat, only to return when it was re-introduced. Plus the arrival of schizophrenia in populations previously without it, concurrent with adoption of wheat into the diet.

[Deleted User]

Sometimes GQ the best intentions lead to the biggest problems for mankind don't they? Perhaps there should be a lobby to bring back ancient strains even if yields are smaller, maybe we could use set aside land to grow them on or some of the land currently being used for solar farms?

GreyQueen

There are people growing and preserving the ancient middle-eastern grains on a small scale so the varieties are not yet lost. Don't know if you can purchase them, tho.

Trouble is, you can't make these wheats perform like modern wheats and you could kiss goodbye to everything we know and love about baked goods if you tried.

Interestingly, there is no biological need for homo sapiens to eat any kind of grains whatsoever, it's just a convenient way of getting cheap calories. And has been attributed with the rise of civilisation as we know it, with the attendant social stratification, warfare and gender inequalities.

By removing it from my diet, bar for a couple of sandwich lapses when away from home, for the past 12 weeks, I have misplaced 9 kg/ 19.8 lb of flab, improved my sleep and got relief from arthritic type pain in my fingers which has been bugging me since last summer. I'm intending to enjoy further weight loss until I achieve the proper weight for my height and build and am slightly less than one-third of the way there right now.

When you read of people's death by dementia being diagnosed at post-morten as due to wheat glutens crossing the blood-brain barrier and docking onto the same receptors where the opiates dock, it suddenly starts looking a lot less palatable.

[Deleted User]

As long as I can still munch the humble spud in some form or other I won't mourn the demise of wheat in my diet, spuds I like, spuds I really would miss!!!

Do we know WHY and/or HOW the wheat glutens cross the blood/brain barrier and dock on the receptors? is this something that is a recent occurrence and is it because of the modifications in wheat strains or is there another dietary/lifestyle factor that allows this to happen?