Today’s wheat has been crossbred and tinkered with in many ways. According to nutritionist Natasha Longo,

The wheat products sold to you today are nothing like the wheat products of our grandmother’s age, very different from the wheat of the early 20th Century, and completely transformed from the wheat of the Bible and earlier.

Those words or something similar, which were spoken millennia ago, probably are more prophetic than anyone realizes. Today’s wheat consumption exemplifies that it was a primary food crop throughout recorded history and a key dietary staple. However, in the last hundred years or so, wheat has been made gastronomically toxic to many who eat it due to scientific tinkering.

[E]ven 100% whole wheat products are based on modern wheat strains created by irradiation of wheat seeds and embryos with chemicals, gamma rays, and high-dose X-rays to induce mutations.

Those mutations resulted in wheat stalks, which originally were about four feet tall, shrinking down to our present-day two feet tall plants with “over-generous” size grain heads, thus producing what food scientists think is better food through genetic modification of plants.

Natasha Longo’s excellent dissertation “Why 80 Percent of People Worldwide Will Soon Stop Eating Wheat” along with its apparent health-producing problems appears here. Ms. Longo does an excellent job of fulfilling all the requisites of journalism, i.e., answering most of the who, what, where, when, and why questions.

As a natural nutritionist, retired, this writer thinks everyone ought to know what’s going on with food science techniques that, undoubtedly, are not providing nutrient-rich, but allergy-prone foods. Many folks are aware of GMO food, its problems, and why they ought to avoid consuming it, given results from many animal studies.

Several issues concerning wheat need to be addressed. One, in particular, is giving children wheat-based snacks, i.e., cookies, pretzels, small finger-size ‘goodies’ that can be harmful to digestive processes and toddlers’ intestinal tracts, which are not fully developed or in the process of becoming food-oriented much before two years of age, thus setting up a child for ‘food problems’.

What needs to be pointed out, this writer thinks, is this: Giving infants and toddlers grains in any form to eat before children are able to chew grains and their flours well enough to provide saliva to ensalivate them, is not considered digestive-tract-friendly eating. Phytic acid in wheat is problematic for the gut, so that adds another dimension in addition to gluten problems, agricultural chemicals like glyphosate in GMO farming, and food processing chemicals, additives, and preservatives. The Weston A. Price Foundation provides an excellent primer on phytic acid and phytates here.

According to an article in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, [1] humans are eating about 15 pounds of gluten per year, a 25 percent increase since the 1970s. In the chart on page 1157, it’s quite apparent how dramatically proteins in wheat have increased between 1925 and 1938, from 12.49% to 18.78% — probably something Nature wasn’t intending, but resulted from crossbreeding. Now, here’s a question: If that’s what happened from crossbreeding wheat, what is going on with, and from, genetically modified crops with their transgenic and cisgenic modifications, plus all the glyphosate spraying in the growing fields? This website differentiates between transgenic and cisgenic modifications

As a side bar to wheat issues, let’s consider that numerous independent scientists have produced verifiable animal testing that demonstrates digestive problems, plus inducing cancerous tumors, in lab animals fed GMO feed. Here are just a few: 2007 Suppressed report shows cancer link to GM potatoes

Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini’s two-year study of rats feed GMO corn

See the rat tumor photograph

Damning New Study Demonstrates Harm to Animals Raised on GMO Feed Scientists say new study shows pig health hurt by GMO feed

Getting back to wheat, since the average slice of bread contains about 1.8 grams of gluten or 1800 mg, we need to realize that intestinal distress can occur quickly, since 50 to 100 mg of gluten per day can trigger celiac-diagnosed-patients, who are in remission, into intestinal distress. [2] However, many gluten-free foods are made with GMO ingredients like soy, corn, cornstarch, beet sugar, and chemical processing, manufacturing, and preservative additives that can interact—or even trigger distress—within an already celiac-compromised, gluten-intolerant gut.

Furthermore, there’s a wheat product called “vital gluten,” which is powdered gluten that is added to many foods, especially by professional bakeries and bakers.

The closest grain to the original wheat Nature gave us is the “heirloom” wheat-like grain, spelt, which does contain gluten, but is more soluble than the gluten in wheat. That may be a defining factor for why spelt may work for some folks who are gluten sensitive, but needs to be considered very seriously. If one is gluten intolerant, it is best to be safe than sorry!

The upshot or take-away information from this article is this: Wheat ought to be considered a dietary problem for anyone with any type of disease—including obesity—from digestive disorders to inflammatory diseases to allergies, especially young children who are on the autism spectrum disorder or have experienced any allergic reactions to vaccines, which can precipitate gut problems, digestive or intestinal distress.

And today, scientists and physicians from Wake Forest University, New York, and Venezuela, reported findings that not only confirm the presence of intestinal disease in children with autism and intestinal symptoms, but also indicate that this disease may be novel. [viii] Using sophisticated laboratory methods Dr. Steve Walker and his colleagues endorsed Wakefield’s original findings by showing molecular changes in the children’s intestinal tissues that were highly distinctive and clearly abnormal. [3, 4]

As a nutritionist who matriculated in natural nutrition and did research in prenatal and infant nutrition, this writer believes it is imperative that non-organically-grown food can be regarded as unsuspecting ‘bioweapons’ capable of causing more disease and harm than we realize.

For readers interested in more information about digestive diseases in the U.S., please see IbdCrohns for a book you may want to have in your health library:

Everhart, J. E. (Ed.). (1994). Digestive diseases in the United States: Epidemiology and impact. (NIH Publication No. 94-1447). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Notes:

[1] http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf305122s

[2] Ibid. P.1158.

[3] http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/new-published-study-verifies-andrew-wakefields-research-on-autism-again/

[4] viii Walker S., Fortunado J, Krigsman A., Gonzalez L. Identification of Unique Gene Expression Profile in Children with Regressive Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Ileocolitis