Bread
Culture: How our bread became what it is.
The typical American family
has at least one loaf of bread in the house at any given time. Some more than
others, but production consumption of our favorite and most bountiful
carbohydrate is at an all-time high. To match that, production of wheat in the
United States has been booming as well. In 2013 wheat production exceeded 2.27
billion bushels, growing well beyond 1% margin needed to adjust for population
growth.
However,
in the past decade or so, there has been a growing trend of abstaining from
eating wheat products due to allergic reactions to Gluten which is found in all
wheat. Gluten is the stuff that makes dough sticky, binds it together, holds in
firm so that you can spread deliciously butter all over it and feed your carb
craving. For some however, a Gluten allergy spells pain, itchiness, and a far
range of discomforts from eating our friendly carb friend.
Manyhave pointed to the evolution of the wheat
strains over time, blaming genetic modification and “disaster proofing” our
wheat to the point of poisoning some of our population. Though scientific studies
have not been able to at this time pinpoint the origin of Gluten allergies I think
that it is still good to know our breads history to understand how that load of
white bread has changed over the years.
A
grain called Einkorn started it all in the Mediterranean and Near East areas as
the first wild grass we see that was wild harvested for consumption. This dates
back to around 16,000 to 15,000 BCE, and moving forward we see its dominance
lost to Emmer wheat in the mid Bronze Age. Emmer wheat was a nutritious grain
with high levels of proteins, fats, and vitamins and survived well in a
multitude of temperatures, especially cold, which made it a ripe candidate for
spreading its cultivation. At some point emmer moved into a geographic area
where it naturally hybridized with goat grass or spelt. These two together help each other and created an extremely strong,
healthy grain know scientifically as T. activism.
This common bread wheat had high gluten content which made it perfect for the
creation of leavened bread (sound familiar). Leavened bread is made from extremely
refined and sifted flour that is milled from wheat kernels. Without these
gluten molecules we would have bread more common in the east, such as flat
breads and puffy breads.
As we see, we would not
even have the bread we love today if it was not for genetic modification, albeit
natural. If spelt and emmer had not accidently bumped into each other we would
never have gotten the high gluten bread to make the delicious croissants, doughnuts
or cakes that we love. However as wheat production ramps, and the need to make
wheat more sturdy from natural forces we can overstep ourselves and create
problems with the genetic material. This I believe is where people are
concerned, that overdoing genetic modifications can be bad not only for crops
and biodiversity but for us as people, the consumer. Also, some point not to
the strain of wheat, but to the production of the bread products in general.
Some Gluten free eaters report being able to eat bread made from home, bread
bought in Europe as opposed to the United States. Or being able to eat just
certain types of grain that still have gluten. For now we can only wait and
hope food scientists figure out the problem as an ever increasing amount of
people in the United States are reporting that they are now allergic to Gluten,
about 1 in 100 around 1%. So this problem is not going to solve itself.
Skyler Finney.
finney@pdx.edu
Sources and other links:
http://maninisglutenfreeblog.com/2011/07/05/the-history-of-how-wheat-became-toxic/
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