Healthy Nonhybridized Wheat
Gary took this photo of Pakistanis threshing their einkorn wheat. Northern Pakistan doesn’t have dwarf wheat.
For over 30 years, I’ve been watching the trend in our food supply; and the parallel of diseases with gluten consumption from hybridized wheat is scary.
I was in Morocco last year. We were driving down the road going into the hills to look for plants, and I saw wheat on the side of the road and said to the driver, “Pull over; I want to take some pictures of this wheat. I have not seen wheat that tall in a long time.” So he pulled over and I jumped out. I walked over to the field; and lo and behold, it looked like the wheat that I grew up on, nonhybridized wheat. I jumped back in the car and drove down the road to the other field, and it was the dwarf wheat.
I asked the agricultural engineer who was with us, “What’s the deal with the tall wheat there and this little short wheat here?” I didn’t want to say anything to him, I just wanted to hear what he had to say.
He said, “The tall wheat over there is our traditional nonhybrid wheat that we grow and eat here in Morocco.”
I said, “Well, what about this dwarf wheat here?”
He said, “Well, we grow that and export it for sale to make money. That’s the American wheat.” Interesting.
Well, here was my next question, “Have you ever heard of celiac disease?”
He said, “What’s that?”
I said, “It’s an inflammation in the gut that causes proliferation and a lot of other inflammation in the body, including pain, digestive problems, and bloating.”
He said, “Oh, we don’t have that in Morocco.”
I didn’t find it in Hunzaland, I didn’t find it in northern Pakistan, and I didn’t find it in Azerbaijan, either.
