celiac’s disease and gluten intolerance is a myth. i work for *big wheat *and our studies show it. Eat wheat!!!
Diet soda consumption is correlated with obesity because landwhales have a habit of ordering 3 Baconators, 5 large fries, some chili, and a Diet Coke, then patting themselves on the back because they think they’re being healthy. Diet soda consumption is an effect of obesity, not a cause. There’s a huge correlation between nicotine gum chewing and lung cancer, as well, for the same reason.
Landwhales?
My point was that dataguy responded to a post regarding the altered state of our ordinary wheat with an analogy comparing hybridization and GM with the approved API and hacking. Since hybridization is only part of how ordinary wheat has been altered, the analogy was flawed.
I know what genetic modification is, and haven’t claimed it includes mutation breeding.
Totally!!! I tell this to people all the time. Want to get more done? Stop sleeping. You can totally ignore those feelings that your body sends. Its easy, and no repercussions. Just lots and lots of extra time!
You aren’t thinking this through. All of your choices are things that cost more than bread and you would normally not have to buy if you could eat bread. Bread, if you get it late, is still as low as $0.60 a loaf. Plus most “poor people foods” contain gluten or are manufactured on shared equipment that processes gluten. And, since current law does not require them to list possible contamination from shared equipment, you have to be wary of any food that does not mention manufacturing problems. (Did you know you can’t eat oatmeal, for example? The current theory is that it is from cross contamination in the field. So you have to get special oatmeal that is grown in conditions to prevent that.)
I’m not saying gluten free foods are anywhere near the most expensive things in the world, but your are delusional if you think that you can afford the same amount of food. The Canadian government even recognizes this and helps subsidize the foods for celiac sufferers as part of universal health care. I think you just haven’t had to deal with it because your daughter’s allergies don’t quite require a truly gluten-free diet.
One of my pet peeves are people who think they are on a gluten free diet who can’t understand why the real thing is more expensive. I absolutely hate how careful I have to be–it stirs up OCD tendencies that I have worked hard to break. And then you get ridiculed for having to do that much work just to be able to find foods you can afford. I’ve actually been losing weight since I switched, as I can’t afford as many calories as before. I’ve even paid a little less rent sometimes just because I was so hungry and got food instead.
I found this articlein the NY Times to be interesting. It discusses the possibility that wheat and gluten problems can be traced to “leaky gut syndrome”, which can sometimes be attributed to overuse of antibiotics, disturbing the balance of organisms in the gut. Basically what happens (so they theorize) is that gluten is allowed to migrate outside the gut where it is attacked by the body which uses inflammation as its weapon. Avoiding gluten is a useful tool in this context, but they raise the possibility that restoring the organisms in the gut would also help.
I have no expertise with which to criticize this hypothesis, but I did find it compelling.
I have a friend who swears by probiotics.
You raise some good points, BigT. However, we did do very strict gluten free with her for 3 years on (US) food stamps and food pantries, so yes, I do know how it is. She just didn’t eat a lot of processed foods or grains except rice. Once a week we’d spend the food stamps for the gf bread and eat beans instead of meat. And I cooked a lot. Fresh whole foods you make at home don’t risk cross contamination if you keep a clean kitchen. Is it cheap and easy and fast? No. As always, pick two - you can’t have all three.
While the law doesn’t mandate cross contamination potential on labels, most of the products I see do it voluntarily now for soy, wheat and nuts. Do you have Aldi near you? Their labels are great, and their food cheap. And they keep bringing in new (labeled) gluten free processed foods every week which are much less expensive than the ones at the supermarket.
I’m glad to hear Canada subsidizes food for people with Celiac. That’s pretty awesome.
An analogy doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful. However, in response to your earlier question, I stated that I consider “mutation breeding” to also be a “non-API” method, so I don’t consider the analogy flawed because it didn’t originally address this method.
Can you provide a cite for this. The best I can find is that it is derived from Norin 10 a semi-dwarf wheat hybrid. I haven’t found any indication of mutagenic techniques.
OK, I just googled to find the process - in a nutshell they take a lower protein wheat [like for cake flour] and process it by adding ascorbic acid [vit C] fat yeast and whiping the fuck out of it in a giant sealed temperature controled blender. To be honest, other than being mechanically ‘kneaded’ by superman at maximum speed, they are not taking anything out of the bread, although they use a lower protein flour that would be more suitable for cakes. They could modify this by adding protein, but I don’t see that as really an issue. I will make the assumption that the flour is ‘enriched’ by adding the same stuff to it that is added to regular flour.
It would be more or less the same as making a loaf of bread entirely processed by a kitchenaid, and popped into the bread tin for baking and not bothering to knead by hand, and using cake flour.
I still don’t see any reference that the mutagenically-modified Triticum aestivum varieties are 95% of the wheat consumed today. I did find references that said that Triticum aestivum is 95% of the wheat consumed, the other kinds being for pasta and semolina, but that makes me think that Triticum aestivum just refers to the common domesticated wheat crop, not necessarily the genetically modified (by chemicals/radiation) kind.
All fine, except the way in which the low-quality flour is made is terrible too - they basically remove all the goodness (all the bad-coloured grains), bleach the hell out of it, and leave nothing but starch and gluten, send it through hot rollers that partially cook the grain further removing the good bits, then whip the fuck out of it in the Chorley-Wood process to make bread that is basically diabetes-inducing crap.
Whereas if you use good flour, preferably whole-grain, you get all kinds of good nutrients and a decent dose of protein, and making something that is both low-GI and actually good for you rather than something completely rubbish.
The Chorley-Wood process isn’t so bad, it’s the ingredients that go into it to make white bread that make it so much worse.
Exactly. “Enriched” flour isn’t *more *healthy, it’s enriched to try to add back in the nutrients that have already been lost during processing.
“Bad colored grains”?
You do realize that wheat smut [a potentially toxic fungal infestation in wheat, with correlations to other grain fungi like ergot] discolors grains and is a cracking good reason to remove them from the grind?
And the manufacturers that make the flour are generally not the ones who are baking the bread? The bakers buy it in carloads and bake with it, the mills are the ones producing the soft wheat flour.
I’m not talking about smut, I’m talking about anything but pure white grains. Problem is, the pure white grains aren’t where the good nutrition comes from.
The problem is the whole chain IMO:
- Farmers grow the wheat. They select varieties that are resistant to disease and pests, but not necessarily the best nutritional value
- Millers then make the flour using industrial processes that further remove the nutritional bits in grain to make it appealing to consumers. The process itself also destroys some of the nutritional value of the grain through heat and other processes including bleaching
- Bakers buy the flour. They don’t necessarily buy what’s nutritionally best for their customers, but what they know they can sell and white plain bread sells
- Then they use industrial processes to make the bread that further remove good nutritional elements from the bread.
The end result is crap, plain and simple, but most people don’t know any better and / or don’t have the money (or are willing to spend the money) to buy better, ore the time to make their own and get the better flour from suppliers (my sourdough bread takes a day and a half; most of it is just letting the dough rise, but still) so it goes on and on.
And the few who care can’t get high-quality flour easily either - I have to seek out suppliers for my flour that are few and far between (and dying out!) to make nutritionally good bread, as most of the flour bought in supermarkets is the same processed crap that the professional bakers get.
You see the same thing with white rice, which is actually kind of bad for you compared to brown rice or wild rice.