Of late there has been a commercial on our TV promoting 12 grain bagels. Sounds yum doesn’t it?
But it got me to wondering, could I name 12 grains?
Sadly, the answer was no. However in an attempt to remedy that, I began asking clever people I know if they could name 12 grains.
Sadly, neither could they. But what ensued every time was a discussion that started on grains then strayed into seeds and eventually vegetables.
I never did get to the twelve grains but managed to confuse a boatload of people, who will no doubt expect me to have answers when I see them next.
Like flax, grain or seed?
What about sesame seeds?
Corn?
Poppy seeds?
Just to end off these discussions I then asked about a phrase I heard on a commercial for premium chicken parts, “Not just grain fed, vegetable grain fed!” Huh? Aren’t all grains vegetables?
It seems my friends had no more patience for my grain quandries, but I have to know.
And for the other part of your question, from the company’s own website,
Basically it seems to mean that there’s no animal by-product filler in the grain mix they feed their chickens. It doesn’t seem to have any real meaning beyond that.
elbows, flax IS considered a grain. It is from the flax plant, whose fibres are used in making linen, among other things. Fields of flax in blossom in summer turn Saskatchewan a beautiful lavender-grey blue colour.
I thought that, botanically-speaking, “grains” come only from the true grasses (Family Poaceae). That would include corn, wheat, barley, rice, rye, oats and others, but exclude commonly eaten seeds such as flax, poppy, sunflower, sesame, et al.
Like corn, what makes it a grain and not just another vegetable?
Soya bean is another, surely it’s a bean, no?
And as for the chicken thing, does that mean that ‘grain fed’ chicken is fed grain ‘enhanced’ with animal by product? Really? If that’s true, it’s shocking to me.
It should be noted that most, if not all, multi-grain products contain mostly ordinary wheat flour and just a smidgen of other kinds of grains.
As another data point, I have here a box of multi-grain crackers which claims to have “12 grains and seeds”. Its main ingredient is enriched wheat flour but next in the list is whole wheat flour (which was a surprise to me – I didn’t expect that). Somewhat further down the ingredient list is “ten grain blend” composed of “purple wheat, tritcale, rye, malted red wheat, barley, spelt, kamut wheat, wild rice, millet seed, quinoa”. Way down towards the end are sunflower seeds and sesame seeds.
I don’t know what the differences are between purple wheat and red wheat and regular wheat is. I know there are a variety of wheats grown that have slightly different properties making them better or worse for various uses, but I think they are all the same species. So I’m not sure if it’s really proper to count them as distinct grains.
As usual though, the botanical definition isn’t necessarily strictly in use in culinary (and indeed broader cultural) contexts. I would say the general definition of ‘grain’ would be any seed (or similar/analogous structure) that is traditionally ground or milled to make flour or meal.
Actually, after all that, is there a botanical definition of ‘grain’, at all?
Grain can mean “only true grass” or it can mean “anything that looks like grain, and you can use to make bread out of” - the latter group includes soya and maize and Buckwheat and so on.
As for chicken feed: under normal circumstances, chickens are fed vegetable grains. But under industrial circumstances (which are unnatural as possible), chickens are fed a high-protein mix that may include animal left-overs (just as cows are fed soya and ground-up beef in industrial production, although naturally, they eat grass.)
I get the impression that ‘grain’ in the term ‘vegetable grains’, as it applies to poultry feed, is actually being used as a synonym for ‘pellet’, rather than ‘seed’.
Do you mean to imply that maize isn’t a true grass? That’s news to me, if so.
And a hijack on amaranth, I just recently learned that pigweed, the most common weed in my garden, is actually a variety of amaranth. Now I just need to figure out how to harvest the stuff…
That was once entirely true, but part of it isn’t true now. The change came from Mad Cow Disease (BSE.) Cattle are no longer fed any cattle parts; it’s now against the law because that practice can pass on BSE to the next generation. It is still legal, and common, to beef up chicken feed with beef scraps. It is safe, because chickens don’t get BSE.
There’s a loophole, but AFAIK it hasn’t yet been a problem. Chickens are sloppy eaters, so lots of feed is spilled and swept up. It is legal to feed these floor sweepings, with little beef bits, to cattle.
I may be out of date on that last part, and I hope I am.
Ameranth was imported in the 70’s buy Organic Gardening for their trial on arid soil high protein grain crops. They collected it in the wild in Mexico. They planted it for about three years., and did a rough sort by characteristics. It went from a 2 to 12 feet high originaly. Some of the head were almost two feet wide and 3 feet tall. That was the high end of the yeild spectrum, and not waht you want in a commerical feild, if the head break ober the plants. They offered it to gardeners through the mail and got it into comercial production. They experimented with cooking methods for it in the test kitchens. You can pop amaranth seeds. They look like poppy seeds in size, shape and color. Mostly it’s an additive to breads. You do not want to use pigweed for food, it’s not the same plant.
I was thinking of the true grasses I learned about in Biology (or rather, the development of wheat from Einkorn=one corn through different stages), and we didn’t talk about maize at all. Since it’s a new world plant, I thought it belongs in a different class - but then, IANABotanist.
