Grain Discussion

[tropical]

...
It is not about organic or non organic farms, it is about modern varieties versus old and ancient varieties.
...
My advice... Eat local, eat heritage, eat ancient if you can.
...
Not cheap to grow means difficult to find.

GT, #263:
"Trouble is, small farms are not cost effective and many consumers will be foregoing better, more nutritious food due to cost, not realizing the true cost of their choice. Hopefully, the backyard garden movement will pick up steam. If you'll allow me to boast a bit, I have over 20 fruit trees and berries in addition to many vegetables on a smallish city lot. I ate my last plum yesterday. The cherries are a memory. The apricot tree too immature. Still harvesting blueberries, limes and lemons. Looking forward to peaches, nectarines, apples, pears, grapes, persimmons,figs, oranges, more lemons, and lots more veggies. What a joy!"


I tend to the tolenio, and GT, organic and old natural genetic seeds/pharming,
because such plants had got a very large time schedule of natural changings and adaptations.

Even the local sorts prior the WWII have great capacity for local soil/weather adaptation, apart episodes of introduced new pests plant destructors.

But unfortunaly, such sorts were mostly vanished (seed vaults apart), mainly because the corp.'s pushings of new hybrids, and gmo seeds on the global markets; because of reinforced plant pests, dificultly controlable without pesticides - 60 years of pesticide usage reinforced the remaining pests; and because of the climatic change.

From the global wide markets, which no more wants to produce old natural seeds, the mutant seeds are buyed from local sellers, and distributed to the pharms/individuals, which could not find their old local seeds any more in many world areas.

The hybreeds, no matter their declarations, mainly did not have the resistance, especialy without pesticides and plenty water, of the old, localy adapted, plants, to not mention that many don't have any real taste, compared to the old natural ones.

When to the above we adeed the actual problem of the today heavy changeable weather, with repentine harsh changings of hot/cold, dry/moist, and not rains at all when rain is needed, the result is catastrophic in many areas for the organic production of old plants species, and to the new ones also.

So, I congrat. to GT, tolenio, and all others who stil could mantain such kind of local productions.

About the quality of old plants, to me, there were an enormous diference in their taste and wild resistance, compared to actual sorts.
And their whole natural provenience warant an balanced safety/nutritive value probably.

 

[Lizw]

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Trouble is, small farms are not cost effective and many consumers will be foregoing better, more nutritious food due to cost, not realizing the true cost of their choice. Hopefully, the backyard garden movement will pick up steam.

It's a bit off topic, but I wanted to address this comment. Small farms are less cost effective only if one measures solely by how many people it takes to perform the labor, and ignores all the hidden costs of monoculture farming with expensive machinery, expensive pesticides, expensive fertilizer, and expensive genetically modified seed that has to be purchased new each year. In the days when most families grew at least some of their food, and purchased the rest from nearby family famrs (which employed far more people than now), food grown on small farms was indeed cost effective. If we could get back to that model, many more people who are now jobless could be employed (though not at the luxurious standard of living they were accustomed to, granted), and they'd all be out working in the sunshine absorbing vitamin D and contributing less to the nation's health care cost.

 

[Shannon Bennett]

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Sorry, I am not buying the grains are bad argument. Cows are ruminants, people are omnivores, we simply cannot compare the two diets equally. What are you suggesting we eat in exchange of grain? What do you think feeds most of the world? People flourish when they have access to quinoa, wheat, rice, barley, maize, etc... Each of those grains grows abundantly. Much of it grows on marginal lands. The problem isn't the grain, the problem is lack of variety along with the grain. Just what are you suggesting we replace the grain with? There are no substitutes, at least not in quantities that approaching what is necessary.

We already see a significant number of people who do not eat daily. With the exceptions of rice and maize most grains require very little water. With much of the world lacking water to begin with, what do you suggest we use instead?

I too am a huge believer in eating locally grown food. I have a big vegetable garden and make it a practice to use only non-hybrid seeds. Taste is far more varied and I can select for strains that do better in my micro-climate. But then I am blessed with land, water, sunlight, fertile soil which I have further enhanced, time and enough money to buy all those things. A Somali tribeswoman would give everything she had to have a quarter of the abundance I have. The real problem isn't grain, it is not adding enough other foods to make a nutritionally complete diet. Reasons for this may range from ignorance to poverty. But to simply suggest that we should stop using grain as a staple is preposterous.

 

[Shannon Bennett]

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

The Doctor,

Yes, people eat Asian people eat ginkgo. The female trees produce nuts which are considered delicious. They are rarely grown for nut production outside of Asia because of the malodorous fruit encapsulating the nut. Think latrine.

 

[Lizw]

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Hello,

I am not an advocate of eating grains (very counter intuitive to most everything people are taught) but to put it as simply as possible... We did not evole to eat grains. To look at our cattle friends again what happens to the quality of their meat when force fed grain

snip...

Now emmer and einkorn wheat (10,000 year old varieties) have some very interesting varietal traits. It has been found to mine nutrients from the soil better. It has been found to have more disease resistance. It has been found to be more drought tolerant. It is twice as tall as modern wheat choking out weeds. The grain itself is not a "naked wheat" (does not fall free from husk). It is lower yielding than modern wheat.

We aren't ruminants, of course, like cattle. We can eat grains with fewer of the digestive problems that cattle have. But the typical western diet is still way too high in carbohydrates derived from grains.

Emmer wheat is called "farro" in Italy. It is very similar genetically to spelt, and in fact, some researchers claim that emmer is actually a variety of T. speltas. As far as I know, emmer is not available to purchase for planting in the US, though it would be interesting to purchase some whole emmer (or farro) meant for grinding into flour and see whether it would grow. I'll bet that it would.

Spelt is making a comeback, and in fact is available to plant. Einkorn is nearly impossible to find. There don't seem to be any commercial sources of it at all. I have a friend in Turkey and will ask her whether it's available there--that seems to be the only place where it is still grown for animal fodder. But spelt can be purchased both for sprouting and for planting from several sources.

Sustainable Seed Company (currently out of stock)
Sprout People They sell hulled spelt for sprouting, and say it doesn't grow well as a grain, because of being mechanically hulled.

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Sorry, I am not buying the grains are bad argument. Cows are ruminants, people are omnivores, we simply cannot compare the two diets equally. What are you suggesting we eat in exchange of grain? What do you think feeds most of the world? People flourish when they have access to quinoa, wheat, rice, barley, maize, etc... ................

I agree with Shannon.

First, cows don't eat only grain, they eat grass and people "grain them" prior to slaughter to put "fat" into the meat. You should try eating 100% grass-fed beef. It has an entirely different taste, which is more like wild meat.

Even some ruminants prefer not to eat what people force them to eat - like goats. They prefer weeds, bushes, small trees, etc. The 2 goats I used to have would stand in their paddock of 2 foot tall green grass crying for me to take them out - then they'd make a beeline for willow, various weeds, elderberry, dandelions, etc. Their meat is exceptionally healthy. It's no wonder goats were one of the earliest domesticated livestock.

Early diets included various forms of smashing, grinding, or sprouting grains. Grains have sustained people for thousands of years. Most important today is the energy, land resources, chemical fertilizers, etc. consumed for excessive meat consumption. If anything, we should eat meat only from animals that don't consume valuable resources.

Grain traditions:

It is estimated that the first bread was made around 10000 years BC or over 12,000 years in the past.

This bread was more than likely flatbread, similar to a tortilla, made simply of ground grains (flour) and water that was mashed and baked. The first tools and implements used in the making of bread are dated to about 8000 years BC.

Egypt is attributed with popularizing the art of making bread. Egyptians are considered to be the agricultural pioneers of the old world, probably benefiting from interactions with Samaria.

The closed oven was invented circa 3000 BC and allowed for more varieties of bread to be produced. It is around this time that leavened bread is first described - bread with yeast added so that it would rise during production.

Refined grains were considered superior and therefore were prevalent in the higher courts, so the poorer populations used barley and sorghum in their breads.

Biblical Era

Around 1000 BC the Mosaic laws were introduced. These laws, in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, contained instructions to the nation of Israel regarding proper food preparation.

When the Hebrew people fled Egypt during the legendary Exodus, they were forced to make unleavened (flat) bread in their haste. Leviticus declares a feast commemorating the exodus using flatbread.

Bread is a common symbol of bounty in the bible ? Leviticus 21:22 declares, ?He shall eat the bread of his God.? When the people of God were lost in the wilderness, they were fed manna, which was described as bread from heaven. The Christian Savior, Jesus Christ, is called the ?Bread of Life?.

The bible also gives one of the earliest recipes for sprouted grain bread. It reads, in Ezekiel 4:9-17: ?Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.?

While more than a year of nothing but this bread sounds like quite a marathon diet, analysis of products today using the same recipe show that it was a well-balanced, nutritious bread that yielded plenty of protein, fiber, carbohydrate, and healthy fat.

(snipped from below - read the rest of the article)

http://www.everydiet.org/articles/bread.htm

.

 

[Shannon Bennett]

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Actually, hominids ate anything that held still long enough to devour. That included the earliest kinds of grains. They just didn't have access to large-kerneled, easily harvested and ample amounts. It wasn't until they figured out how to grow grains on a large scale that we stopped being hunter gatherers and started becoming civilized. Grain is solely responsible for civilization as we know it.

Your argument is biased, elitist and completely unsupportable on anything other than a small scale. Allergic reactions can happen to anyone for any substance. I am deathly allergic to cilantro. So, does that mean I should suggest the world give it up? Absurd. We have done remarkably well as a species given the indisputable fact that our ancestors based their diets on grain. Instead of a few thousand hunter-gathers we now have 6 billion souls alive today. As I said above, the problem is too much and over-processed-not give up grain entirely. If that is an option. In too many places in the world a bowl of rice would be greeted with prayers of gratitude. We are truly blessed we not only have rice, we have vegetables, meats and fish. If you have a problem with celiac disease I suggest you try another grain which does not have the same consequences. Try this http://www.bobsredmill.com/gluten-free-flours-meals/ . You will find 26 alternative flours and grains that do not contain gluten.

 

[Lizw]

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

A good place to start learning about gluten is here;

Against the Grain
The Case for Rejecting or Respecting
the Staff of Life
http://www.westonaprice.org/moderndiseases/gluten-intolerance.html

Interesting that you quote the Weston A. Price site, as one of their most vocal and visible followers, Sally Fallon, is well known for showing how to mitigate the toxic effects of raw grains and legumes--soak them in a weak acid. Our ancestors figured this out somehow, which is why virtually all breads were made with a sponge, i.e. the flour was combined with the liquid in the recipe and the whole thing was soaked at least overnight before baking. Or whole grains were sprouted and then dried and ground for flour, which accomplishes the same thing.

But I think we're running down a rabbit trail here--this doesn't have anything to do with vitamin D and cytokine storms.

 

[the doctor]

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Interesting that you quote the Weston A. Price site, as one of their most vocal and visible followers, Sally Fallon, is well known for showing how to mitigate the toxic effects of raw grains and legumes--soak them in a weak acid. Our ancestors figured this out somehow, which is why virtually all breads were made with a sponge, i.e. the flour was combined with the liquid in the recipe and the whole thing was soaked at least overnight before baking. Or whole grains were sprouted and then dried and ground for flour, which accomplishes the same thing.

But I think we're running down a rabbit trail here--this doesn't have anything to do with vitamin D and cytokine storms.

The nutritional rabbit hole we have descended into is very interesting though. I suggest one of the mods consider breaking that part of the thread off and starting a new thread with it.

GW

 

[Lizw]

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Actually, hominids ate anything that held still long enough to devour.

I'm sorry, I know this is a serious subject, but it reminded me of something that perfectly illustrates your statement. Years ago I did computer work for a now-defunct federal health program. Because I'd had some hospital lab training, I sometimes got roped into going out with the team that visited the public health clinics, to help the overworked lab technician. One day I overheard a conversation between a mother and the team nurse about the woman's two-year-old:

Nurse: What does he like to eat?

Mother: Anything that runs slower than he does . . .

 

[JimO]

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

Re: Cytokine Storm & Vitamin D relationship?

The Doctor,

Yes, people eat Asian people eat ginkgo. The female trees produce nuts which are considered delicious. They are rarely grown for nut production outside of Asia because of the malodorous fruit encapsulating the nut. Think latrine.

I once stepped on some ginko fruit when I was at the University of VA, where they had quite a few ginko trees on campus. It was a stinky mess.

I agree that grains are a necessary part of our diet, but I doubt someone would thrive only on grains. As you pointed out, we are omnivores.

 

[Laidback Al]

Re: Grain Discussion

This is a foolish discussion revolving around the word ?grain?, infusing it with a highly connotative negative meaning. Hominids are omnivores and have been throughout human evolution. That means that humans eat a great variety of items from both the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom and have done so for several million years. Humans didn?t just start eating ?grain? 10,000 years ago. What happened starting about 10,000 years ago and continued for several thousand more years is the domestication of food sources from the plant kingdom, mostly wild grasses including wheat, barley, and oats in <st1lace w:st="on">Central Eurasia</st1lace>. Elsewhere in the world, other cereal crops, primarily rice and corn, were also domesticated independently.
<o> </o>
These domesticated cereal crops are what we are calling grain today, but the ancestors of each these crops was always part of the human diet. Obviously, through plant domestication, human were able to provide a stable food base that allowed for hunter-gatherers to finally congregate into sedentary farming communities, and communities into city states, giving rise to civilization (and over population) as we know it today.
<o> </o>
?Grains? are not inherently bad. It is the restrictive consumption of a single or limited food items that is unhealthy as is the overconsumption of ?grain?, or any other foodstuffs for that matter.

 

[mixin]

Re: Grain Discussion

I also question just how good for us a diet high in grain/carbs is.

I went on a version of the Atkins diet several years ago, which greatly restricts carbs, and was truly surprised at how good I felt. I love carbs so it was a hard diet to stick to but I did because I realized my body was telling me something.

As a society, we could probably cut out a huge amount of grains and be healthier for it. We all know the negative impact of obesity.

Additionally, my veterinarian told me recently to cut back on the high grain content dry cat food. She said many of the vets are now re-thinking the carb content due to all the health problems our cats are having. She suggested I feed meat-based moist food to mine and feed dry as a side.

 

[tropicalgirl]

Re: Grain Discussion

We still have those "purple" bananas in here. They are completely different variety from the bananas we usually see in market, the yellow ones (among the yellow ones, some are better than others, must say, I'm able to identify some types - for foreign people they are all bananas, for us they are "banana nanica", "banana prata", "banana ouro", "nanic?o" etc). Sorry to say, the purple or red ones are not easy to grown at all and is very hard to make it work even in small markets. We don't even have them every year. I do eat them sometimes because my family does have it and we all love it, you eat it fried with sugar... maybe we add the sugar it doesn't have, but we also put some cinnamon too... it becomes completely black outside and you have to touch it to know when it's mature to eat... completely delicious, my favorite among all others, a little more bitter than others.
I was raised eating good fruits, which we knew how they grew and who took care of it. After I moved to a bigger (very bigger) city, no more "home" food, so, I do have to content what I can have in the market, I must say I really have a hard time on eating fruits or vegetables because most of them are tasteless and weird... even if I got them in the producers market. Most of them use too much stuff to make it grow and have some very small profit. Too bad I don't have any land to grow my own garden in here.
About the hybrids, they are not new, even natives used to do it. But I do agree that we lost something on doing food grow too fast, too big, too beautiful, light colors, no spots and no taste. I will never forget the taste of an orange I ate when I was a kid. The tree was about 100 yo, full of spikes, it was able to produce just 3 or 4 oranges... delicious... the tree is dead for a long time now... we were not able to have another one like that... it was hard to grow too... at least we still have some good bananas...

 

[tyto]

Re: Grain Discussion

There's a hypothesis that wheat contain neuroactive peptides. And these peptides are the cause of acute psychoses and schizophrenia in some people. Check out these articles in MEDLINE. Food for thought - literally.


Wheat "consumption" and hospital admissions for schizophrenia during World War II. A preliminary report. Dohan FC.
Am J Clin Nutr. 1966 Jan;18(1):7-10. No abstract available.
PMID: 5900428 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Is celiac disease a clue to the pathogenesis of schizophrenia?
Dohan FC. Ment Hyg. 1969 Oct;53(4):525-9. No abstract available.
PMID: 5344577 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Relapsed schizophrenics: earlier discharge from the hospital after cereal-free, milk-free diet. Dohan FC, Grasberger JC.
Am J Psychiatry. 1973 Jun;130(6):685-8. No abstract available.
PMID: 4739849 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Wheat gluten as a pathogenic factor in schizophrenia.
Singh MM, Kay SR. Science. 1976 Jan 30;191(4225):401-2.
PMID: 1246624 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Letter: Gluten and schizophrenia.
Singh MM, Kay SR. Lancet. 1976 Sep 25;2(7987):689-90.
PMID: 60548 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Wheat gluten-schizophrenia findings.
[No authors listed] Science. 1976 Oct 22;194(4263):448-50. No abstract available.
PMID: 982028 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Abnormal behavior after intracerebral injection of polypeptides from wheat gliadin: possible relevance to schizophrenia. Dohan FC, Levitt DR, Kushnir LD.
Pavlov J Biol Sci. 1978 Apr-Jun;13(2):73-82. No abstract available.
PMID: 567316 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Another look at gluten in schizophrenia.
Rice JR, Ham CH, Gore WE. Am J Psychiatry. 1978 Nov;135(11):1417-8. No abstract available.
PMID: 707651 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Schizophrenia: Reconciliation of the dopamine, prostaglandin, and opioid concepts and the role of the pineal. Horrobin DF.
Lancet. 1979 Mar 10;1(8115):529-31.
PMID: 85110 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Diet (gluten) and schizophrenia.
Ross-Smith P, Jenner FA.
J Hum Nutr. 1980 Apr;34(2):107-12. Review.
PMID: 6989901 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Wheat gluten challenge in schizophrenic patients.
Potkin SG, Weinberger D, Kleinman J, Nasrallah H, Luchins D, Bigelow L, Linnoila M, Fischer SH, Bjornsson TD, Carman J, Gillin JC, Wyatt RJ.
Am J Psychiatry. 1981 Sep;138(9):1208-11.
PMID: 7270725 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Psychological and behavioral effects of food and chemical exposure in sensitive individuals. King DS.
Nutr Health. 1984;3(3):137-51. Review.
PMID: 6400044 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Is schizophrenia rare if grain is rare?
Dohan FC, Harper EH, Clark MH, Rodrigue RB, Zigas V.
Biol Psychiatry. 1984 Mar;19(3):385-99.
PMID: 6609726 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Schizophrenia and wheat gluten enteropathy.
Pfeiffer CC.
Biol Psychiatry. 1984 Mar;19(3):279-80. No abstract available.
PMID: 6722225 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Statistical power of the controlled research on wheat gluten and schizophrenia.
King DS.
Biol Psychiatry. 1985 Jul;20(7):785-7. No abstract available.
PMID: 3839143 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

 

[mostlylurking]

Re: Grain Discussion

I almost never post anything. But this discussion hits too close to home. I am gluten sensitive and both my siblings are schizophrenic. Gluten is a killer and sensitivity to it is common, not rare. Take a look at the American diet. Wheat is served up at every meal. It is extremely difficult to avoid it. As little as a gram a week will cause serious damage to someone who is gluten sensitive.

The book Dangerous Grains was written within the past few years and is well documented. The new blood test for gluten sensitivity is accurate and shows that a MUCH larger percentage of the population has trouble with gluten sensitivity than was previously thought.

Here's a quote from www.amazon.com from the discussion about the book, Dangerous Grains:

LESS-FAMILIAR FACTS:
1. Humans have consumed grains during less than 0.5% of their history.
2. Gluten-related illnesses have newly occurred with "many aboriginal groups just recently introduced to a gluten-rich diet."
3. History: Stanislas Tanchou published findings over 150 years ago that imply that foods from grains cause cancer. Samuel Gee provided a highly-regarded description of classic celiac disease by 1888 and Willem Karel Dicke realized that wheat caused celiac symptoms by 1936. Incidence is 40 times that claimed a decade ago.
4. Schizophrenia incidence During WW-II substantially decreased among European populations suffering grain shortages. Ca 1969 F. Curtis Dohan et al reported that schizophrenia is frequently found in celiac disease and the reverse.
5. Genetic markers for gluten sensitivity or celiac disease occur in 43% of US population.
6. Genetic marker testing, especially if there is gluten-induced illness in relatives, is also advised for the asymptomatic because, "Those who do not feel ill in response to allergic substances in their environment are more likely to succumb to the harmful effects of these allergens."
7. Celiac disease waits for an average of 11 years before diagnosis and only 2.5% are ever diagnosed.
8. Malabsorption may not be permanent - villi, the millions of nutrient absorbers that line our small intestines, which can be flattened by disease, can be raised up again.
9. Depressive illness is the most common symptom of gluten intolerance
10. Rheumatoid arthritics (about half) show clear signs of gluten sensitivity.
11. AIDS death rate is increased by 20-fold when there is selenium deficiency which is commonly found in non-celiac, gluten-sensitive persons.
12. Significant bone loss occurs in 70% of persons with undetected celiac disease. Dairy products and calcium supplements may actually decrease bone density, while, for celiacs, a year on a gluten-free diet with proper supplementation can increase bone density.
13. Diabetes (IDDM) can be prevented by a gluten-free diet if genetic proneness is detected early.
14. Diet and nutrition's medicinal value is indicated in tens of thousands of studies.
BREAKING THE GLUTEN ADDICTION: There are certain peptides, or protein fragments, found in gluten (in grains) and in casein (in milk) that look and act just like the narcotic known as morphine. Hence, while a gluten-free diet is essential for management of celiac disease, only 50% are able to stick with it, even when they know their health risks.

 

[tropical]

Re: Grain Discussion

#21: ...

Yes.

If the whole earth environment with it's living ecosystems weren't so badly poluted by deadly substances, milk will be enaugh healthy as it was for thousend years previously (not an contaminated powder liquid as sometime today), and bread will be real bread, not an aditive friendly raw material creation ...

 

[tyto]

Re: Grain Discussion

I almost never post anything. But this discussion hits too close to home. I am gluten sensitive and both my siblings are schizophrenic. Gluten is a killer and sensitivity to it is common, not rare. Take a look at the American diet. Wheat is served up at every meal. It is extremely difficult to avoid it. As little as a gram a week will cause serious damage to someone who is gluten sensitive.

Mostlylurking, thank you for sharing your personal experience with gluten sensitivity and the dangers of wheat to health. I'm a big fan of cupcakes and pizza but I agree with you and Tolenio on this issue. And this issue is one part of the bigger issue of how certain facts are hidden, neglected or suppressed for various reasons. Which leads to unnecessary human suffering.

The Internet is a good thing. Flutrackers.com is a good thing.