MODERN VERSUS ANCIENT GRAINS
Jump to the 21st century, where wheat is taking a beating in the nutritional stakes, and
the idea of curing yourself of a disease by eating wheat, whole or otherwise, is inclined to
induce mirth in the average punter.
Processed white flour is now as unfashionable as flares. My sister, whose two teenage
boys were both recently diagnosed as coeliacs (sufferers of gluten intolerance), was
appalled that I would grow a gluten product. Wheat, and grains in general, are regarded
with suspicion by food- and health-canny contemporaries, and epidemics of ill-health and
obesity have been laid at the door of the once-humble and now extremely mediated wheat grain.
With today’s wheat being grown on soils pumped with nitrates, saturated with weed-killing chemicals and engineered to
produce high yields and higher levels of gluten for ease in commercial cooking, there are plenty who argue that today’s
industrial broadacre wheat-growing system has helped induce a range of food intolerances and other illnesses.
Others argue that the wheat growing itself is not to blame, and the problem may be due to the overuse of wheat products,
particularly gluten. Gluten is added to a huge array of products throughout the food industry and milling techniques strip the
grain of its goodness, leaving a product that suits commercial baking rather th