annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
It's interesting when you approach it from the direction of examining the ramifications of genetically-modified foods. :think:
toldailytopic: Gluten-free food. What do you think of the gluten free craze?
- Thread starter Nathon Detroit
- Start date
It's interesting when you approach it from the direction of examining the ramifications of genetically-modified foods. :think:
LKmommy
New member
(obese) Americans do not like to be told that they "eat too much" and hold accountability for what they cram into their mouths. This is not to say that a small percentage actually have a biological reason for this intolerance.
Too much of anything is not good. Moderation is the key with most things, even with gluten.
LKmommy
New member
Think of milk and research suggesting this is why little girls and boys are hitting puberty at much younger ages.
Wheat wasn't genetically modified it was hybridized. At the time wheat was hybridized there were no regulations on hybridization. The end result from hybridization of wheat was a genetically altered food. When it was hybridized it changed the protein chromosome.
Good post! Yes, however, whole wheat is good for you; the issue with diet is balance. there is no one magic formula.
But people and the food industry don't have balance. Wheat is in many foods and so is gluten. The hybridized wheat is also whole wheat. Whole wheat may be slightly better for you than processed wheat but just because its better for you doesn't mean it's good for you.
Here is a link for further reading and how we got the wheat that we have today.
http://spiritualityhealth.com/articles/wheat-belly
The Begetting of Modern Wheat
Back in Neolithic times, einkorn was mated with another wheat and begat emmer, another wheat found in ancient tombs and still available in modern health food stores. (In fact, emmer is prized in places like Tuscany, where it’s raised under the name farro.) A big difference between einkorn and its progeny is that einkorn has 14 chromosomes and emmer has 28. Then emmer was mated with goat grass, which has 14 chromosomes and, more important, unique glutenin genes. The progeny of emmer and goat grass was essentially modern wheat, which has 42 chromosones and the gluten that makes modern bread chewy, elastic, and shapely.
In early times, plant hybridization was hit or miss and very gradual, depending on local farmers and local conditions. In the nineteenth century, plant genealogy and sophisticated breeding techniques began earning serious attention; nevertheless, modern wheat remained essentially the same until the mid-twentieth century, when the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (IMWIC) and other wheat research centers set out to combat world hunger. Over the following decades, thousands of new varieties were created to dramatically increase yields. According to World Wheat Facts and Trends, yields in China, now the world’s largest producer, have increased from eight to sixty-five bushels per acre. Some of these advances are attributable to nitrogen-rich fertilizers but also to the development of high-yielding dwarf wheat, with a large head and shorter, stouter straw, sturdy enough to support the extra weight without buckling. Some recent estimates have dwarf and semi-dwarf wheat comprising as much as 99 percent of all wheat worldwide.
According to Davis’s research, personal consumption of wheat has grown along with crop yields. For example, the average American now eats 133 pounds of wheat per year, 26 pounds more than in 1970. Davis again: “In parallel with increased consumption, we also have the silent replacement of wheat from four-foot-tall triticum aestivum with high-yield dwarf strains and new gluten structures not previously consumed by humans.”
Our Experiment in Mystery Wheat
As Davis writes, “The oversight in the flurry of breeding activity, such as that conducted at IMWIC, was that, despite dramatic changes in the genetic makeup of wheat and other crops, no animal or human safety testing was conducted on the new genetic strains that were created. So intent were the efforts to increase yield, so confident were plant geneticists that hybridization yielded safe products for human consumption, so urgent was the cause of world hunger, that these products of agricultural research were released into the food supply without human safety concerns being part of the equation.”
A wheat hybrid, for example, retains approximately 95 percent of its parent’s proteins, while the other 5 percent of proteins are new and may have novel characteristics. Gluten proteins seem especially susceptible to structural changes. One hybridization experiment cited in Wheat Belly created 14 new gluten proteins. Remember, these are individual experiments involving only two parents; over the past 60 years, many thousand such hybridizations have accrued in your breakfast bagel. If Davis is right, such relentless hybridization created almost infinite opportunities for wheat to go wrong.
http://spiritualityhealth.com/articles/wheat-belly
All I've had to eat today is a lettuce sandwich on gluten bread.lain:
Better have been a lot of lettuce to achieve balance!
Alate_One
Well-known member
But lets be realistic here, EVERY food we eat has undergone "relentless hybridization". Unless you're going out into the woods and picking actually wild plants or shooting wild game, you simply can't avoid it. And even then, many wild plants and animals have picked up genes from domesticated ones.
The problem with gluten is mostly that some people do actually have allergies to it, resulting in celiac disease. If you're in that boat, gluten free is for you, otherwise it's probably a waste of time.
Gluten is simply a wheat protein (and in a few other related grasses) and it's the protein that makes wheat flour sticky when moist. Without gluten you can't make lovely pastries or noodles. Because of the thickening potential, gluten gets added to a lot of foods you might not otherwise associate with wheat.
Gluten free diets are usually just wheat free diets. You have to eat other grains and grain substitutes. Those grains may be more healthful for other reasons, but considering all the pesticides, plasticizers and flame retardants we're exposed to, I'm not too worried about gluten.
From my understanding most plant hybridization doesn't mutate in the way wheat did and does. When wheat is hybrid the chromosomes always double. In other hybrids the new plant doesn't change as much as wheat does.
Dena
New member
I'm gluten free because I have had issues with my stomach since I was a kid. Removing gluten helped. I find it pretty easy though eating in restaurants can be a bit of an issue but not eating meat is more of a problem. That being said, I don't understand why so many people are removing it from their diet even though they didn't have stomach issues. If you don't have a problem, then you don't need to remove it from your diet.
I have a friend who gets a serious bout of diarrhea after ingesting anything with gluten in it. Gluten free is definitely good for my friend.
Alate_One
Well-known member
The only difference in wheat is it is a composite of three different grass species, that doesn't increase the mutation rate and it doesn't *keep* doubling the chromosomes. There were two major events in the past. Mind you, it's only bread wheat that has all three complete genomes, durum wheat (used in noodles) has 1/3 less.
But again, plenty of hybridization has lead to chromosome doubling. For example cultivated strawberries are a combination of two species. Maize has a massive amount of extra DNA compared to the wild ancestor (cultivated maize has a genome the size of the human genome). Part of the reason for this is, in plants larger genomes tend to make the plant itself larger, thus if humans are selecting for bigger yields, larger plants tend to provide that.
The only difference in wheat is it is a composite of three different grass species, that doesn't increase the mutation rate and it doesn't *keep* doubling the chromosomes. There were two major events in the past. Mind you, it's only bread wheat that has all three complete genomes, durum wheat (used in noodles) has 1/3 less.
But again, plenty of hybridization has lead to chromosome doubling. For example cultivated strawberries are a combination of two species. Maize has a massive amount of extra DNA compared to the wild ancestor (cultivated maize has a genome the size of the human genome). Part of the reason for this is, in plants larger genomes tend to make the plant itself larger, thus if humans are selecting for bigger yields, larger plants tend to provide that.
Well okay big guy. I read the book and it had some pretty awesome information about the changes to wheat over the years.
