Real Grain and Its Fake Cousin
The author of Wheat Belly, Dr. William Davis, posted this photo of wheat hybridization on his website (www.wheatbellyblog.com). It shows the much shorter hybrid semi-dwarf and dwarf wheat developed in the 1950s.
While einkorn grain has 14 chromosomes, today’s dwarf wheat has 42. It’s a super starch, super sugar, and super gluten—really, it’s a super drug. Genetically manipulated in the laboratory, it has seeds that cannot survive in the wild, it is designed to be profitable, and it is easy to grow. They engineered it so that it has a very short stalk, so they don’t have to deal with the straw and the waste; and the shorter stalks hold up the heavy heads of grain. It’s not designed to improve health. It’s a “frankenfood.”
How many of you have walked into a store recently and tried to buy a loaf of einkorn bread? How many of you have walked into a store in the last two years and seen one side of the bread aisle with gluten-free breads? Mary and I have bought several different kinds of gluten-free breads over the past two or three years. Eating cardboard would be better. The gluten-free breads we’ve tried are so nonflavorful and nonappealing. In fact, I think we’ve got a couple of loaves of gluten-free bread sitting in our fridge now, and nobody will touch them unless we’re desperate.
Look at the bread aisles in your grocery stores; they’re staggering. It has been believed for years that bread is the staff of life; true or false? True, of course. The Bible says wheat is the staff of life. But it wasn’t talking about American hybridized wheat. It didn’t exist then.
