I have a wheat sensitivity and become quite ill with any re-exposure. So, in the interest of science, I conducted my own little experiment: four ounces of einkorn bread on day one versus four ounces of modern organic whole wheat bread on day two. I braced myself for the worst, since my reactions have been rather unpleasant.
Beyond simply observing my physical reaction, I also performed fingerstick blood sugar tests after eating each type of bread. The differences were striking.
Blood sugar at the start: 84 mg/dl. Blood sugar after consuming einkorn bread: 110 mg/dl. This was more or less the expected response to eating some carbohydrate. Afterward, though, I felt no perceptible effects—no sleepiness, no nausea, no pain, no urge to pound something. In short, I felt fine. Whew!
The next day, I repeated the procedure, substituting four ounces of conventional organic whole wheat bread. Blood sugar at the start: again 84 mg/dl. Blood sugar after consuming conventional bread: 167 mg/dl. Moreover, I soon became nauseated, nearly losing my lunch. The queasy effect persisted for thirty-six hours, accompanied by stomach cramps that started almost immediately and lasted for many hours. Sleep that night was fitful, filled with vivid, unpleasant dreams. The next morning, I couldn’t think straight, nor could I understand the research papers I was trying to read, having to read and reread paragraphs four or five times; I finally gave up. Only a full day and a half later did I start feeling normal again.
I survived my little wheat experiment, but I was impressed with the difference in responses to ancient wheat and modern wheat in my whole wheat bread. Surely something odd was going on here.
My personal experience, of course, does not qualify as a clinical trial. But it raises some questions about the potential differences that span a distance of ten thousand years: ancient wheat that predates the changes introduced by human genetic intervention versus modern wheat. (Please don’t interpret my comments to mean that heirloom or traditional strains of wheat are healthy or benign: They have their own set of problems when unwitting humans consume them, something I shall discuss later.)
Multiply these alterations by the tens of thousands of hybridizations, mutagenesis, and other manipulations to which wheat has been subjected and you have the potential for dramatic shifts in genetically determined traits such as gluten structure. And note that the genetic modifications inflicted on wheat plants are essentially fatal, since the thousands of new wheat breeds were helpless when left to grow in the wild, relying on human assistance for survival.14
The new agriculture of increased wheat yield was initially met with skepticism in the Third World, with objections based mostly on the perennial “That’s not how we used to do it” variety. Dr. Borlaug, hero of wheat hybridization, answered critics of high-yield wheat by blaming explosive world population growth, making high-tech agriculture a “necessity.” The marvelously increased yields enjoyed in hunger-plagued India, Pakistan, China, Colombia, and other countries quickly quieted naysayers. Yields improved exponentially, turning shortages into surplus and making wheat products cheap and accessible.
Can you blame farmers for preferring high-yield semi-dwarf hybrid strains? After all, many small farmers struggle financially. If they can increase yield-per-acre up to tenfold, with a shorter growing season and easier harvest, why wouldn’t they?
DON’T BE A PEST
If you’re a farmer, encountering a pest feasting on your wheat field is a feared development. And there are many of them, from fungal rusts to wheat curl mites to sawflies. Farmers and agricultural geneticists therefore work to develop wheat strains that have better pest-resistant properties.
Wheat comes with its own built-in pest-resistant protein called wheat germ agglutinin. The greater the wheat germ agglutinin content in a stalk of wheat, the greater its ability to fend off a pest trying to feast on it. After all, the plant cannot run away, or claw or bite the invader. When an insect eats a part of the wheat plant, wheat germ agglutinin attacks its gastrointestinal tract, either killing the creature or impairing its ability to generate offspring.
Modern wheat strains have therefore been chosen for greater wheat germ agglutinin content.15 This peculiar protein is completely indigestible to humans: What goes in the mouth as a component of pretzels or crackers comes out unchanged in a bowel movement. As we shall discuss in the next chapter, in its course from mouth to toilet, however, wheat germ agglutinin acts as an exceptionally potent bowel toxin, essentially ripping apart the intestinal lining when given to experimental animals in pure form, less dramatically but still quite damagingly so when ingested as crust on pepperoni pizza. The small quantity that enters the bloodstream in humans amplifies inflammation and is hormonally disruptive. More on this to come.
The enrichment of wheat germ agglutinin is yet another illustration that what’s good for the farmer and crop is not necessarily good for the consumer who feasts on onion bagels and penne pasta.
In the future, the science of genetic modification (GM) has the potential to change wheat even further. No longer do scientists need to breed strains or expose seeds or embryos to toxic chemicals or gamma rays, cross their fingers, and hope for just the right mix of chromosomal change. Instead, single genes can be purposefully inserted or removed and strains bred for disease resistance, pesticide resistance, cold or drought tolerance, or any number of other genetically determined characteristics. In particular, new strains can be genetically tailored to be compatible with specific fertilizers or pesticides. This is a financially rewarding process for Big Agribusiness and seed and chemical producers such as Cargill, Monsanto, BASF, and ADM, since specific strains of seeds can be patent protected and thereby command a premium and boost sales of the compatible chemical treatments. While no strain of GM wheat is yet on store shelves, nearly all corn is genetically modified and, to a lesser degree, rice, cousins of our favorite grass-to-bash, wheat.
Genetic modification is built on the premise that a single gene can be inserted in just the right place without disrupting the genetic expression of other characteristics. While the concept seems sound, it doesn’t always work out that cleanly. In the first decade of genetic modification, no animal or safety testing was required for genetically modified plants, since the practice was considered no different from the assumed-to-be-benign practice of hybridizing two strains of grasses. Public pressure has, more recently, caused regulatory agencies, such as the food-regulating branch of the FDA, to require testing prior to a genetically modified product’s release into the market. Critics of genetic modification, however, have cited studies that identify potential problems with genetically modified crops. Test animals fed glyphosate-tolerant soybeans show alterations in liver, pancreatic, intestinal, and testicular tissue compared to animals fed conventional soybeans. The difference is believed to be due to unexpected DNA rearrangement near the gene insertion site, yielding altered proteins in food with potential toxic effects, as well as the inclusion of herbicides tied to the GM crop such as glyphosate or the Bt toxin pesticide coded into the GM crop, now ingested by humans as hamburger buns and gluten-free cookies.16
It took the introduction of gene modification to finally bring the notion of safety testing for genetically altered plants to light. Public outcry prompted the international agricultural community to develop guidelines, such as the 2003 Codex Alimentarius, a joint effort by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization, to decide what new genetically modified crops should be subjected to safety testing, what kinds of tests should be conducted, and what parameters should be measured.
But no such outcry was raised years earlier as farmers and geneticists carried out tens of thousands of hybridization and chemical mutagenesis experiments. There is no question that unexpected genetic rearrangements that might generate some desirable property, such as greater drought resistance or better dough properties, can be accompanied by changes in proteins that are not evident to the eye, nose, or tongue, but little effort has focused on these side phenomena. Hybridization and other efforts continue, breeding new “synthetic” wheat. While they fall short