It's been a trend in Denmark for many years to find and grow old seeds. I'm not sure if they ship overseas, but I'm sure if you ask them nicely there is a good chance.
Unfortunately the article does not identify precisely the "miracle" wheat.
"Triticum turgidum" is ambiguous, because this wheat species has many different subspecies, with very different characteristics.
There are 2 important subspecies of "Triticum turgidum", emmer wheat, which was 1 of the 3 cereals domesticated at the beginning of the Neolithic (barley, einkorn wheat and emmer wheat), and durum wheat (a.k.a. pasta wheat or macaroni wheat), which was produced from emmer wheat by a genetic mutation, several thousand years after domestication.
From the article, it is not clear if the discussed wheat is just some cultivar of emmer wheat or it belongs to a more exotic subspecies of "Triticum turgidum".
Any references from the Bible are unlikely to describe anything else but some variety of emmer wheat.
While most wheat-based food is nowadays produced from either hexaploid bread wheat or tetraploid durum wheat, there are on the market various niche products made from spelt wheat, emmer wheat or einkorn wheat (though the product labels frequently confuse the hexaploid spelt wheat with the tetraploid emmer wheat).
Many farmers here in Switzerland grow urdinkel - ancient spelt. In the USA most farmers grew it also until around the 1920s but then a new wheat came out that was easier to process. Spelt has thicker hulls and wears down the mill faster so the mills switched to the new wheat and the farmers all had to switch too.
Based on the name I think ur (ancient) Dinkel (spelt) is even older than regular spelt but I'm not sure. All I know is that it makes great crackers but terrible pasta and ok bread but not great.
The straws are longer, which is why they cannot be fertilized with nitrogen. Unlike other spelt varieties, it was never crossed with wheat. It was also not bred for dough stability, which is why it must be baked in a special way, for example, using a water roux. The glutenin-to-gliadin ratio is different, resulting in a highly extensible but weaker gluten network.
It is really different from usual spelt, which was crossed with wheat and has shorter straws.
Edit: maybe this is interesting to some so I'll write a short paragraph about older varieties. There is also Einkorn and Emmer. Einkorn is considered the ultimate ancestor of all modern wheat varieties. It has been grown 10k years ago and is diploid with only two chromosome sets. Then there is Emmer, which is also ancient and appeared shortly after Einkorn. It is tetraploid and yields two corns per spikelet. If you want to eat like an Egyptian Pharao you can eat bread made out of Emmer ;-)
Rye is entirely different. It is very hardy and frost resistant and can't be baked without sourdough because of the amylase.
No, Einkorn is not the ancestor of all cultivated wheat varieties, unless you extend the history of wheat a very long time before domestication, when that becomes somewhat true, because the wild ancestor of emmer wheat was produced by genome duplication from a wild ancestor of einkorn wheat.
At the start of the Neolithic, besides barley, 2 species of wheat were domesticated separately and they evolved through domestication into einkorn wheat and emmer wheat.
Einkorn wheat has always remained a minor crop, while either barley or emmer was the major crop, depending on soil and climate. For instance in the early Ancient Greece barley was the most important, while in the early Roman Republic emmer was the more important. Later, emmer ("far" in Latin) was mostly replaced by durum wheat ("triticum" in Latin), and even later durum wheat was mostly replaced by the hexaploid bread wheat ("siligo" in Latin).
Besides the original emmer and einkorn, other wheat subspecies have appeared many thousands of years later after domestication, either through mutations, like the tetraploid durum wheat (pasta wheat) or through hybridization, like the hexaploid bread wheat (and also the hexaploid spelt wheat).
They elongate too quickly so the walls of the straws are weaker if given too much nitrogen at the wrong time. They fall over easily. You want them to grow more slowly with stronger straws.
They would grow even higher with fertilizer and then fall over in a storm. Well it increases the chance or percentage lost to that, it always happens to some degree even with modern varieties.
Which is funny enough, one of the main attributes Borlaug used in the green revolution: crossing Japanese dwarf wheat with modern bread wheat varieties to make the resulting wheat shorter.
In the article it describes the crops as more drought resistant etc.
As in all things commercialized, the tempting easy path weakens in the long term. Mono crops are easier to grow and then the soil gets depleted beyond all recognition. White bread probably outsells whole wheat in America but it is basically devoid of nutritional value.
“Old” means things were scarce because people had to work by hand and oxen. So a failed crop meant a dead family.
Spelt, Einkorn and Emmer are all from the Genus Triticum, which is called wheat. Rye is secale and not called wheat. They are all from the tribe Triticeae. Barley also belongs to the same tribe.
I tried both Emmer and Einkorn, but don't remember anything special about the end result. One of the flours/doughs was pretty yellow, but that's about it. It was a while ago and I only tried about a kg of each so my memory is fuzzy.
Here in the far northeast of Portugal, too. Also, lots of rye, buckwheat, and all sorts of crazy cultivars of other stuff - they grow lettuce here that bolts a meter tall without any loss of flavour, and jersey walking sticks, yellow (on the inside too) watermelons with huge seeds - all sorts - because they still grow the same village/family seed stocks their medieval ancestors did, and a lot of stuff is hyper-adapted to the local climate.
Also larger things like figs and grapes - only after you spend a few years here do you learn that dona olema has one particular fig tree that tastes like melon, and senor rodrigo has a grape vine that makes gigantic (billiard ball sized) ridiculously sweet grapes. This knowledge doesn’t travel to the next valley over, even. Oh, and then you find another vine, the same, climbing a tree in a forest that was a vineyard 70 years ago.
Kinda amazes me how much genetic diversity for crop cultivars there still is, smack under our noses, across Europe.
I think there is also good evidence that dough in general which is given 24 hrs to rest - like what was traditional pre-industrial - is much better digestible for most people then the additive-loaded dough which only needs hours to minutes, which is a stark time -> quality tradeoff.
Terrible pasta? I solely buy spelt (dinkel) pasta of I can choose.
Maybe you mean it gets more sticky if you cook it too long? But al dente I think it's amazing. It has a nutty taste that works very well with tomatoes if you ask me.
This reminds me of the Urzeitcode phenomenon: the idea that dormant or forgotten seeds can produce unexpectedly unusual plant characteristics when exposed to different conditions.
> It also had more arginine, an amino acid that children need to grow.
My kingdom for even a tiny bit of scientific literacy amongst people who are reporting on science.
Not only is this absurd ("children" need all amino acids to grow...as does anyone else), arginine isn’t even one of the essential amino acids. Your body makes it unless something is seriously wrong.
Hopefully it's just my lazy reading/thinking, but this part of the article feels like scientism to me. Picking out some random micronutrients this strain has more of, praising that it has less gluten. It's just using "science" to justify whatever they already wanted to do.
Arginine is a "conditionally essential" amino-acid, i.e. there are circumstances when the internal production is insufficient, so it must exist in food.
The need for arginine may exist during some illnesses and not for children in general, but for very young babies, especially for those born prematurely.
Not my area of expertise, but my understanding is that this is an extremely limited claim (i.e. unborn babies / neonatal supplementation, or children with genetic defects), and not something you can even remotely generalize to "children" as a whole. The way we teach this in biochem 101 is "arginine is conditionally essential", with the "conditional" being "periods of stress or sickness".
In any case, I seriously doubt the author is talking about this, given the imprecision of the language. Also, eating this wheat specifically for arginine supplementation is goofy gym-science. Arginine is trivial to supplement.
More like: we all need arginine, but our body makes it, so we don't need to supplement it. Wikipedia writes this:
Preterm infants are unable to synthesize arginine internally, making the amino acid nutritionally essential for them. Most healthy people do not need to supplement with arginine because it is a component of all protein-containing foods and can be synthesized in the body from glutamine via citrulline.
Don't worry too much. If you follow basic food recommendations, even those given out 60 years ago, your child can grow up fine. Even if you only follow it just half the time. Basically, all those articles have to be taken with a grain of salt. What kills you is: smoking, drinking, tanning, long periods of only junk food. And those seem to affect you mainly after age 25. Children are remarkably sturdy.
Gluten allergies are relatively rare and extreme. People with Celiac have a major, sometimes life threatening reaction to gluten.
People who do not have Celiac and say they are gluten sensitive usually are not. They are either experiencing a nocebo effect or have gas from other components of wheat rather than gluten. Actual non Celiac reactions to gluten are minor if they exist at all. So when someone says they are gluten sensitive it is overwhelmingly likely they either have Celiac and even a very very tiny amount of gluten will cause them horrible consequences, or they are incorrect and they are not sensitive to gluten at all.
More on the "other components" issue -- a lot of people have issues with some of the fermentable carbohydrates (e.g. fructans) in wheat, which also happen to be present in the other gluten-containing grains. "Have gas" is a bit of an understatement. For some people this can lead to cramps, vomiting, and other fairly severe digestive problems.
So people on the low-FODMAPs diet end up using "gluten free" as a convenient shorthand for "doesn't contain these particular grains".
The "relatively rare" in numbers: so far, it's been assumed that about 1% of the population is celiac.
Italy recently started screening kids nation wide. Initial results are showing that of 4.4% of kids are affected. [1]
Celiac disease is massively under-diagnosed and GPs knowledge about the disease is limited. Also, celiac disease might cause issues which are not directly gut related: one might end up with a B12 or iron deficiency, one might get migraines, fatigue, gluten induced ataxia and many many more.
Probably also caused by other aspects of American wheat (many "sensitive" people notice they can eat bread in Europe just fine), such as higher glyphosate content, fortification with nasty stuff like vitamin A, possibly others.
I remember reading something about it on BBC, how over processed American Wheat ( or food in general ) leads to those symptoms and they can eat European products and bread just fine.
To be fair, the people with psychogenic gluten intolerance have massively increased the availability and variety of gluten-free foods for people with real Celiac disease. They seem to be doing more good than harm on balance.
20 years ago I was "that guy" who went "uhm, actually, you almost certainly don't have celiac". Alas, my efforts did not stop the trend, and today the nocebo effect for gluten has become a multi-billion dollar racket.
And you know, the life of celiacs has improved a lot since then. Thanks to gluten sensitive people I, as a person with celiacs, can find some gluten free food in shops and even gluten free restaraunts in many big cities. Standard restaurants are not an option for me due to high chance of cross-contamination. I'm very thankful for this trend!
There are already things like gluten free wheat starch if you want wheat without gluten, but you still have to work around not having the gluten. Like the article alluded to, it is needed for breads to rise.
From what I understand, most "ancient" grains had far less gluten; it's the modern variants that have caused the widespread gluten issues we see today.
For celiac there's not much evidence that the difference would change whether someone develops it, and once they do develop it even minuscule amounts are very bad for them.
American Red wheat is, as far as I know, the "hardest" wheat on the planet - breadmakers use it to "fortify" flours from Europe that do not have enough gluten (... forming amino acids).
Whilst having a high amount of gluten forming amino acids might sound good in prinicple, in fact breads do not rise as well when too much is present (the gluten is too strong, fighting the expansion of the dough from the leavening agent).
Cakes require flours to have less gluten forming amino acids again.
I'm not sure about pastry though, a bottom pastry for a pie I would guess needs to be quite strong, but I have no idea if there is an upper limit.
The point here is, flours can be as strong as they like, but too much is actually bad for breadmakers - meaning - gluten levels in the diet aren't changing that much.
Edit: I forgot to mention, some parts of China have a pure gluten dish - where they hydrate the gluten forming amino acids, then "wash" the starch out, leaving only the gluten, which they then cook and eat - so 100% Gluten
In one of the pictures they show "barley coffee". During the communism, in some countries of Eastern Europe you could only find in the stores this type of coffee, as the real one required hard currency to import.
Planting 600 acres of a single genetically identical grass and blasting them with insecticide and herbicide... kinda already does as much damage one could possibly try to do.
> All of the wheat types Grossi had previously seen grew only one such ear. But the tall wheat grew a full seven ears, always in the same pattern: a long one with six shorties bunched up around it like little fingers. Even the kernels themselves were bigger than those of average wheat. And unlike the typical pale-yellow wheat kernels, they came in a rainbow of colors—yellow, black, red, white and even green, sometimes all on the same stem. Grossi, a grain farmer his whole life, had never seen anything like it. “I thought it was a freak of nature,” he says. He couldn’t find a mention of it in agricultural books.
Thanks for sharing the story about this ancient wheat but I recall reading about this highly productive type of grains not in agriculture books but in holy books.
Fun facts, this type of miracle grain is mentioned in Abrahamic religions holy books namely Bible (Old Testament) and Quran.
In Surah Al-Baqarah (2:261), "The example of those who spend their wealth in the cause of Allah is that of a grain that sprouts into seven ears, each bearing one hundred grains. And Allah multiplies ˹the reward even more˺ to whoever He wills. For Allah is All-Bountiful, All-Knowing."
In the Book of Genesis (Genesis 41:5), "He fell asleep again and had a second dream: Seven heads of grain, healthy and good, were growing on a single stalk."
This exact multiplication of deeds described in the Quran demonstrates the 700-to-1 ratio represents the actual biological maximum yield for that specific ancient wheat variety under optimal conditions.
All this while I thought the description is metaphorical allegory, but it seems originated from real grains of wheat phenomenon.
The scriptures specifically mentioned "sanabila" a type of grain with multiple ears branching out from a single stalk unlike rice paddy that's grow ears differently.
Another fun facts, in Arabic the word "sabil" meaning providing freely flowing water to travellers, and sanabila share the same root word, most probably derived from this very verse, because charity in Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic is sadaqa.
Please note the only Quran in Chapter of Al- Baqarah (Female Cow) mentioned the analogy of multiplications for doing good deeds [1].
The other verses, one verse inside Bible in Chapter Genesis and two verses inside Quran in Chapter Yusuf (Joseph) refer to Egypt Pharaoh's or King's dream, respectively. This led to the introduction of the brilliant economic policy that saved Egypt kingdom from the severe famine that effect other sorrounding kingdoms at the time as per Yusuf's advice based on the correct interpretation of the King's dream [2],[3],[4]. Yusuf later become one of the appointed ministers of Egypt from the very humble beginning of a slave boy, and brought along other Jews to start migrating to Egypt.
Apparently Quran is more accurate since during prophet Yusuf time Egyptian rulers are called King not Pharaoh yet. Only later stage of Egyption Kingdom during Musa (Moses) time, Quran correctly refer to Pharaoh (meaning owner or king of great house) not King.
Thanks, I probably skipped the subsequent paragraphs while browsing and reading due to multiple ads intersperse in between the articles. Anyway great finding of the ancient wheat species, and the mention of this miracle seven grains ears in Quran are more profound with several occurances in different contexts and analogies.
Is it? It seems to describe exactly what happened: a farmer finds a sack of grain in his attic left by his great grandfather and plants them for the hell of it. Interesting things result.
I actually could not use the full article's title at submission time as it was too long, so I shortened it to its current version, not sure if mods used the full article's title at some point.
Hey the-golden-one, I downvoted you because your comment didn't make any sense to me. Other commenters point out that you were responding to an earlier title. Sorry! Time has passed, and I am no longer able to unvote.
The damage by the "progress" is multifold and pervasive. GM foods, with a goal of high yields, lost all nutritional value and gave the world insipid food and killed the natural foods forever. Supply chains and food regulations meant extreme processing of already killed food. What's left is bacteria-less, nutrition-less, sugary pulp that digests easily, increasing the consumption and economy.
If I think of any food and taste from the 70's, I feel suffocated now. It's disgusting to see all processed, sugar-loaded, gene-modified, beautiful foods in the stores.
The economy planners gave you cars, roads, food stores, supply chains and took away your time to grow your own food. You are just forced to take 5x amount of food in your car and consume it like biological pump with inputs and outputs. You became fat and ill and the economy tells you to believe it as a norm and call it growth. They even show in TV how all this is normal so that you don't feel bad about it.
You are turned into a country full of workers with everything streamlined to make you focus on the work. Your short working years are good enough. It has machinery to dump you in nursing home and not let your younger family care for you. Small kids? You got care centers. Don't waste your time in caring for others or yourself. Just get into the commute circus.
> GM foods, with a goal of high yields, lost all nutritional value
sounds like unmitigated total bullshit.
If GM grains have zero "nutritional value" then why do tests show otherwise and why do people not die when they spend a year eating GM grain ?
Ag scientists measure nutritional value for all crops, GM and not GM, - how is possible they haven't noticed "zero nutritional value" results for GM grains?
This literally has nothing to do with GM corn V non GM corn nutrition levels.
Living V dying is a spectrum with various grades of malnutrition in between - is there _any_ actual evidence of less nutrition from 100 tonne of GM grain v 100 tonne of the same grain sans the GM mod that increases weed killer resistance?
Recall the claim above is that GM grains have zero ( 0 , nada , nothing ) nutritional value.
It's been a trend in Denmark for many years to find and grow old seeds. I'm not sure if they ship overseas, but I'm sure if you ask them nicely there is a good chance.
Aurion, a mill with a web shop: https://www.aurion.dk/
Kornetshus, a knowledge center on seeds: https://kornetshus.dk/
Both are highly recommended.
Unfortunately the article does not identify precisely the "miracle" wheat.
"Triticum turgidum" is ambiguous, because this wheat species has many different subspecies, with very different characteristics.
There are 2 important subspecies of "Triticum turgidum", emmer wheat, which was 1 of the 3 cereals domesticated at the beginning of the Neolithic (barley, einkorn wheat and emmer wheat), and durum wheat (a.k.a. pasta wheat or macaroni wheat), which was produced from emmer wheat by a genetic mutation, several thousand years after domestication.
From the article, it is not clear if the discussed wheat is just some cultivar of emmer wheat or it belongs to a more exotic subspecies of "Triticum turgidum".
Any references from the Bible are unlikely to describe anything else but some variety of emmer wheat.
While most wheat-based food is nowadays produced from either hexaploid bread wheat or tetraploid durum wheat, there are on the market various niche products made from spelt wheat, emmer wheat or einkorn wheat (though the product labels frequently confuse the hexaploid spelt wheat with the tetraploid emmer wheat).
Many farmers here in Switzerland grow urdinkel - ancient spelt. In the USA most farmers grew it also until around the 1920s but then a new wheat came out that was easier to process. Spelt has thicker hulls and wears down the mill faster so the mills switched to the new wheat and the farmers all had to switch too.
Based on the name I think ur (ancient) Dinkel (spelt) is even older than regular spelt but I'm not sure. All I know is that it makes great crackers but terrible pasta and ok bread but not great.
The straws are longer, which is why they cannot be fertilized with nitrogen. Unlike other spelt varieties, it was never crossed with wheat. It was also not bred for dough stability, which is why it must be baked in a special way, for example, using a water roux. The glutenin-to-gliadin ratio is different, resulting in a highly extensible but weaker gluten network.
It is really different from usual spelt, which was crossed with wheat and has shorter straws.
Edit: maybe this is interesting to some so I'll write a short paragraph about older varieties. There is also Einkorn and Emmer. Einkorn is considered the ultimate ancestor of all modern wheat varieties. It has been grown 10k years ago and is diploid with only two chromosome sets. Then there is Emmer, which is also ancient and appeared shortly after Einkorn. It is tetraploid and yields two corns per spikelet. If you want to eat like an Egyptian Pharao you can eat bread made out of Emmer ;-)
Rye is entirely different. It is very hardy and frost resistant and can't be baked without sourdough because of the amylase.
No, Einkorn is not the ancestor of all cultivated wheat varieties, unless you extend the history of wheat a very long time before domestication, when that becomes somewhat true, because the wild ancestor of emmer wheat was produced by genome duplication from a wild ancestor of einkorn wheat.
At the start of the Neolithic, besides barley, 2 species of wheat were domesticated separately and they evolved through domestication into einkorn wheat and emmer wheat.
Einkorn wheat has always remained a minor crop, while either barley or emmer was the major crop, depending on soil and climate. For instance in the early Ancient Greece barley was the most important, while in the early Roman Republic emmer was the more important. Later, emmer ("far" in Latin) was mostly replaced by durum wheat ("triticum" in Latin), and even later durum wheat was mostly replaced by the hexaploid bread wheat ("siligo" in Latin).
Besides the original emmer and einkorn, other wheat subspecies have appeared many thousands of years later after domestication, either through mutations, like the tetraploid durum wheat (pasta wheat) or through hybridization, like the hexaploid bread wheat (and also the hexaploid spelt wheat).
> The straws are longer, which is why they cannot be fertilized with nitrogen.
Why is that? I thought nitrogen is taken in through the roots, then distributed as other ground-based nutrition, regardless of the height.
They elongate too quickly so the walls of the straws are weaker if given too much nitrogen at the wrong time. They fall over easily. You want them to grow more slowly with stronger straws.
I think because they collapse under their own weight?
They would grow even higher with fertilizer and then fall over in a storm. Well it increases the chance or percentage lost to that, it always happens to some degree even with modern varieties.
Which is funny enough, one of the main attributes Borlaug used in the green revolution: crossing Japanese dwarf wheat with modern bread wheat varieties to make the resulting wheat shorter.
But what is the actual benefit of Urdinkel? Honestly it sounds a bit like a fad to me, along the lines of "older = better".
They just described the structure of the thing.
In the article it describes the crops as more drought resistant etc.
As in all things commercialized, the tempting easy path weakens in the long term. Mono crops are easier to grow and then the soil gets depleted beyond all recognition. White bread probably outsells whole wheat in America but it is basically devoid of nutritional value.
“Old” means things were scarce because people had to work by hand and oxen. So a failed crop meant a dead family.
So the second two but not the first is technically "wheat" along with Rye ?
Spelt, Einkorn and Emmer are all from the Genus Triticum, which is called wheat. Rye is secale and not called wheat. They are all from the tribe Triticeae. Barley also belongs to the same tribe.
Oat however is from the tribe Aveneae.
I tried both Emmer and Einkorn, but don't remember anything special about the end result. One of the flours/doughs was pretty yellow, but that's about it. It was a while ago and I only tried about a kg of each so my memory is fuzzy.
Here in the far northeast of Portugal, too. Also, lots of rye, buckwheat, and all sorts of crazy cultivars of other stuff - they grow lettuce here that bolts a meter tall without any loss of flavour, and jersey walking sticks, yellow (on the inside too) watermelons with huge seeds - all sorts - because they still grow the same village/family seed stocks their medieval ancestors did, and a lot of stuff is hyper-adapted to the local climate.
Also larger things like figs and grapes - only after you spend a few years here do you learn that dona olema has one particular fig tree that tastes like melon, and senor rodrigo has a grape vine that makes gigantic (billiard ball sized) ridiculously sweet grapes. This knowledge doesn’t travel to the next valley over, even. Oh, and then you find another vine, the same, climbing a tree in a forest that was a vineyard 70 years ago.
Kinda amazes me how much genetic diversity for crop cultivars there still is, smack under our noses, across Europe.
Gigantic grapes sound awesome, so did a quick check. Assuming 5–6 cm in diameter, this appears to far exceed the size of any known grape variety.
Funny that I grew up in rural north portugal and never heard of any of this bs
I personally like spelt in bread. It provides a lot of aroma, especially for doughs that are overnight-leavened in low temperature.
I think there is also good evidence that dough in general which is given 24 hrs to rest - like what was traditional pre-industrial - is much better digestible for most people then the additive-loaded dough which only needs hours to minutes, which is a stark time -> quality tradeoff.
Terrible pasta? I solely buy spelt (dinkel) pasta of I can choose.
Maybe you mean it gets more sticky if you cook it too long? But al dente I think it's amazing. It has a nutty taste that works very well with tomatoes if you ask me.
Dinkelpasta..is...a..acquired taste.. lol
Maybe you had full grain pasta? That is indeed... questionable, doesn't matter if spelt or wheat.
raw spelt is fantastic in beer. Malted spelt is indistinguishable.
Before circa middle 20th century all wheat was very tall. This minor fact somehow significantly changes picture of the past for me.
This reminds me of the Urzeitcode phenomenon: the idea that dormant or forgotten seeds can produce unexpectedly unusual plant characteristics when exposed to different conditions.
The best time to think about your great-grandfather is when you're 3yo and he's still alive.
The second best time is when you recover his stash of seeds.
> It also had more arginine, an amino acid that children need to grow.
My kingdom for even a tiny bit of scientific literacy amongst people who are reporting on science.
Not only is this absurd ("children" need all amino acids to grow...as does anyone else), arginine isn’t even one of the essential amino acids. Your body makes it unless something is seriously wrong.
Hopefully it's just my lazy reading/thinking, but this part of the article feels like scientism to me. Picking out some random micronutrients this strain has more of, praising that it has less gluten. It's just using "science" to justify whatever they already wanted to do.
I was waiting for them to explain what any of the real benefits were.
Arginine is a "conditionally essential" amino-acid, i.e. there are circumstances when the internal production is insufficient, so it must exist in food.
The need for arginine may exist during some illnesses and not for children in general, but for very young babies, especially for those born prematurely.
The times when internal production is insufficient are basically neonatal and diseases. Humans, in general, do not need to supplement arginine.
i don't have a PhD like you, but aren't some amino acids essential in young mammals and conditionally essential in adult mammals?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07533...
Not my area of expertise, but my understanding is that this is an extremely limited claim (i.e. unborn babies / neonatal supplementation, or children with genetic defects), and not something you can even remotely generalize to "children" as a whole. The way we teach this in biochem 101 is "arginine is conditionally essential", with the "conditional" being "periods of stress or sickness".
In any case, I seriously doubt the author is talking about this, given the imprecision of the language. Also, eating this wheat specifically for arginine supplementation is goofy gym-science. Arginine is trivial to supplement.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03783...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/...
So what you are saying is they forgot the word "small" in "arginine is an amino acid small children need to grow".
More like: we all need arginine, but our body makes it, so we don't need to supplement it. Wikipedia writes this:
Preterm infants are unable to synthesize arginine internally, making the amino acid nutritionally essential for them. Most healthy people do not need to supplement with arginine because it is a component of all protein-containing foods and can be synthesized in the body from glutamine via citrulline.
I have no idea if he is right about what he claimed, but can small really stand in for prematurely born or carrying relevant rare genetic mutation?
https://www.biochemical-pathways.org/metabolic-pathways.pdf
Your body is one hell of a lab.
Thanks for explaining this, reading this in the article made me concerned as a parent.
Don't worry too much. If you follow basic food recommendations, even those given out 60 years ago, your child can grow up fine. Even if you only follow it just half the time. Basically, all those articles have to be taken with a grain of salt. What kills you is: smoking, drinking, tanning, long periods of only junk food. And those seem to affect you mainly after age 25. Children are remarkably sturdy.
This is interesting for people with gluten allergies, maybe there is a way they could one day consume the ancient wheat.
Gluten allergies are relatively rare and extreme. People with Celiac have a major, sometimes life threatening reaction to gluten.
People who do not have Celiac and say they are gluten sensitive usually are not. They are either experiencing a nocebo effect or have gas from other components of wheat rather than gluten. Actual non Celiac reactions to gluten are minor if they exist at all. So when someone says they are gluten sensitive it is overwhelmingly likely they either have Celiac and even a very very tiny amount of gluten will cause them horrible consequences, or they are incorrect and they are not sensitive to gluten at all.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27523634/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29102613/
More on the "other components" issue -- a lot of people have issues with some of the fermentable carbohydrates (e.g. fructans) in wheat, which also happen to be present in the other gluten-containing grains. "Have gas" is a bit of an understatement. For some people this can lead to cramps, vomiting, and other fairly severe digestive problems.
So people on the low-FODMAPs diet end up using "gluten free" as a convenient shorthand for "doesn't contain these particular grains".
The "relatively rare" in numbers: so far, it's been assumed that about 1% of the population is celiac.
Italy recently started screening kids nation wide. Initial results are showing that of 4.4% of kids are affected. [1]
Celiac disease is massively under-diagnosed and GPs knowledge about the disease is limited. Also, celiac disease might cause issues which are not directly gut related: one might end up with a B12 or iron deficiency, one might get migraines, fatigue, gluten induced ataxia and many many more.
[1] https://celiac.org/2025/09/24/how-research-is-shaping-italys...
Celiac has a very high incidence in northern Spain as well - they attribute it to having a very similar Celtic genetic profile as the Irish.
Probably also caused by other aspects of American wheat (many "sensitive" people notice they can eat bread in Europe just fine), such as higher glyphosate content, fortification with nasty stuff like vitamin A, possibly others.
>nasty stuff like vitamin A
Pardon?
I remember reading something about it on BBC, how over processed American Wheat ( or food in general ) leads to those symptoms and they can eat European products and bread just fine.
To be fair, the people with psychogenic gluten intolerance have massively increased the availability and variety of gluten-free foods for people with real Celiac disease. They seem to be doing more good than harm on balance.
20 years ago I was "that guy" who went "uhm, actually, you almost certainly don't have celiac". Alas, my efforts did not stop the trend, and today the nocebo effect for gluten has become a multi-billion dollar racket.
And you know, the life of celiacs has improved a lot since then. Thanks to gluten sensitive people I, as a person with celiacs, can find some gluten free food in shops and even gluten free restaraunts in many big cities. Standard restaurants are not an option for me due to high chance of cross-contamination. I'm very thankful for this trend!
These studies are far less certain than you are. Also, gluten sensitivity is not just gas.
Not really. Still has gluten - just less.
There are already things like gluten free wheat starch if you want wheat without gluten, but you still have to work around not having the gluten. Like the article alluded to, it is needed for breads to rise.
That day could be today: https://www.molinograssi.it/en/retail-line/miracolo-line/
This still contains gluten. It can't be consumed by celiacs.
There are US-based sellers of ancient wheat (both berries and milled flour) as well.
Here's one that I learned about via their YouTube channel
https://mtranchrescue.com/products/7-s-true-whole-wheat-flou...
From what I understand, most "ancient" grains had far less gluten; it's the modern variants that have caused the widespread gluten issues we see today.
That's obviously an oversimplification.
What gluten issues do you have in mind here?
Vague digestion issues, maybe that has an effect.
For celiac there's not much evidence that the difference would change whether someone develops it, and once they do develop it even minuscule amounts are very bad for them.
American Red wheat is, as far as I know, the "hardest" wheat on the planet - breadmakers use it to "fortify" flours from Europe that do not have enough gluten (... forming amino acids).
Whilst having a high amount of gluten forming amino acids might sound good in prinicple, in fact breads do not rise as well when too much is present (the gluten is too strong, fighting the expansion of the dough from the leavening agent).
Cakes require flours to have less gluten forming amino acids again.
I'm not sure about pastry though, a bottom pastry for a pie I would guess needs to be quite strong, but I have no idea if there is an upper limit.
The point here is, flours can be as strong as they like, but too much is actually bad for breadmakers - meaning - gluten levels in the diet aren't changing that much.
Edit: I forgot to mention, some parts of China have a pure gluten dish - where they hydrate the gluten forming amino acids, then "wash" the starch out, leaving only the gluten, which they then cook and eat - so 100% Gluten
Seitan is a pretty common food among plant-based eaters.
In one of the pictures they show "barley coffee". During the communism, in some countries of Eastern Europe you could only find in the stores this type of coffee, as the real one required hard currency to import.
oh the "berley coffee", I'm Vietnamese and these stories was taught in school back then.
Damn, I was hoping for Triffids
Wouldn't this cause ecosystem issues if seeds from 100 years ago get planted in the same area?
Planting 600 acres of a single genetically identical grass and blasting them with insecticide and herbicide... kinda already does as much damage one could possibly try to do.
A slighly taller variety of grass hardly matters.
No these require human cultivation to survive.
Fun exercise in this article: do an alt-f search for the word "ancient".
> All of the wheat types Grossi had previously seen grew only one such ear. But the tall wheat grew a full seven ears, always in the same pattern: a long one with six shorties bunched up around it like little fingers. Even the kernels themselves were bigger than those of average wheat. And unlike the typical pale-yellow wheat kernels, they came in a rainbow of colors—yellow, black, red, white and even green, sometimes all on the same stem. Grossi, a grain farmer his whole life, had never seen anything like it. “I thought it was a freak of nature,” he says. He couldn’t find a mention of it in agricultural books.
Thanks for sharing the story about this ancient wheat but I recall reading about this highly productive type of grains not in agriculture books but in holy books.
Fun facts, this type of miracle grain is mentioned in Abrahamic religions holy books namely Bible (Old Testament) and Quran.
In Surah Al-Baqarah (2:261), "The example of those who spend their wealth in the cause of Allah is that of a grain that sprouts into seven ears, each bearing one hundred grains. And Allah multiplies ˹the reward even more˺ to whoever He wills. For Allah is All-Bountiful, All-Knowing."
In the Book of Genesis (Genesis 41:5), "He fell asleep again and had a second dream: Seven heads of grain, healthy and good, were growing on a single stalk."
This exact multiplication of deeds described in the Quran demonstrates the 700-to-1 ratio represents the actual biological maximum yield for that specific ancient wheat variety under optimal conditions.
All this while I thought the description is metaphorical allegory, but it seems originated from real grains of wheat phenomenon.
The scriptures specifically mentioned "sanabila" a type of grain with multiple ears branching out from a single stalk unlike rice paddy that's grow ears differently.
Another fun facts, in Arabic the word "sabil" meaning providing freely flowing water to travellers, and sanabila share the same root word, most probably derived from this very verse, because charity in Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic is sadaqa.
Please note the only Quran in Chapter of Al- Baqarah (Female Cow) mentioned the analogy of multiplications for doing good deeds [1].
The other verses, one verse inside Bible in Chapter Genesis and two verses inside Quran in Chapter Yusuf (Joseph) refer to Egypt Pharaoh's or King's dream, respectively. This led to the introduction of the brilliant economic policy that saved Egypt kingdom from the severe famine that effect other sorrounding kingdoms at the time as per Yusuf's advice based on the correct interpretation of the King's dream [2],[3],[4]. Yusuf later become one of the appointed ministers of Egypt from the very humble beginning of a slave boy, and brought along other Jews to start migrating to Egypt.
Apparently Quran is more accurate since during prophet Yusuf time Egyptian rulers are called King not Pharaoh yet. Only later stage of Egyption Kingdom during Musa (Moses) time, Quran correctly refer to Pharaoh (meaning owner or king of great house) not King.
[1] Quran, Al-Baqarah 2:261:
https://quran.com/en/al-baqarah/261
[2] Bible, Genesis 41:5:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2041%3A...
[3] Quran, Yusuf, 12:43:
https://quran.com/en/yusuf/43
[4] Quran, Yusuf, 12:46:
https://quran.com/en/yusuf/46
you didn't read past the second paragraph then?
Thanks, I probably skipped the subsequent paragraphs while browsing and reading due to multiple ads intersperse in between the articles. Anyway great finding of the ancient wheat species, and the mention of this miracle seven grains ears in Quran are more profound with several occurances in different contexts and analogies.
I think I saw this movie... :-P
Yes I was thinking either Jack and the Beanstalk or Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Clickbait title
Is it? It seems to describe exactly what happened: a farmer finds a sack of grain in his attic left by his great grandfather and plants them for the hell of it. Interesting things result.
You're likely basing this on the (better) updated title.. the original included "almost biblical" in the title. Shame mods didn't document the change.
I actually could not use the full article's title at submission time as it was too long, so I shortened it to its current version, not sure if mods used the full article's title at some point.
Ah thanks, I didn't see that original title.
The "almost Biblical" line comes from the fact that - before he knew what variety it was - he read about a similar wheat mentioned in the Bible.
That phrase is actually in the article.
Sure does. And his grandfather surely wasn't in the bible or even 2000 years close to it.. so.. that's one hell of a use of almost.
"Black Plague almost annihilated FIFA 2026 final" is closer historical range than this usage.
Description of ancient grains, meanwhile, reach back into Egyptian and other empires that precede the bible.
Hey the-golden-one, I downvoted you because your comment didn't make any sense to me. Other commenters point out that you were responding to an earlier title. Sorry! Time has passed, and I am no longer able to unvote.
This is pretty classy.
It is a pretty terrible title, but the article is interesting
I also found it interesting, and the title pretty much describe what happened? I don’t see the problem
did they copy the Times of India? https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/science/discovery/italia...
The damage by the "progress" is multifold and pervasive. GM foods, with a goal of high yields, lost all nutritional value and gave the world insipid food and killed the natural foods forever. Supply chains and food regulations meant extreme processing of already killed food. What's left is bacteria-less, nutrition-less, sugary pulp that digests easily, increasing the consumption and economy.
If I think of any food and taste from the 70's, I feel suffocated now. It's disgusting to see all processed, sugar-loaded, gene-modified, beautiful foods in the stores.
The economy planners gave you cars, roads, food stores, supply chains and took away your time to grow your own food. You are just forced to take 5x amount of food in your car and consume it like biological pump with inputs and outputs. You became fat and ill and the economy tells you to believe it as a norm and call it growth. They even show in TV how all this is normal so that you don't feel bad about it.
You are turned into a country full of workers with everything streamlined to make you focus on the work. Your short working years are good enough. It has machinery to dump you in nursing home and not let your younger family care for you. Small kids? You got care centers. Don't waste your time in caring for others or yourself. Just get into the commute circus.
To be completely honest
> GM foods, with a goal of high yields, lost all nutritional value
sounds like unmitigated total bullshit.
If GM grains have zero "nutritional value" then why do tests show otherwise and why do people not die when they spend a year eating GM grain ?
Ag scientists measure nutritional value for all crops, GM and not GM, - how is possible they haven't noticed "zero nutritional value" results for GM grains?
https://www.incitecpivotfertilisers.com.au/resources/agronom...
Further:
~ Assessment of the nutritional values of genetically modified wheat, corn, and tomato crops (2008) - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18781763/ etc.Consider the possibility that there are nutritional values that are NOT being measured. We should accept that science is not… omniscient.
Okay, I've considered that.
Again, why do people on exclusive GM grain diets not die due to zero nutritional value then?
There’s people that die on a Twinkie diet. Here’s more food for thought.
Living or dying is a bit coarse a metric, don’t you think?
Talk sense, please.
> There’s people that die on a Twinkie diet.
This literally has nothing to do with GM corn V non GM corn nutrition levels.
Living V dying is a spectrum with various grades of malnutrition in between - is there _any_ actual evidence of less nutrition from 100 tonne of GM grain v 100 tonne of the same grain sans the GM mod that increases weed killer resistance?
Recall the claim above is that GM grains have zero ( 0 , nada , nothing ) nutritional value.