Modern Processing Is The Problem, Not Grains

Advances in technology are often viewed with starry eyes and rose tinted glasses. Though Man is a master at manipulating the environment in many ways, from smelting steel to combusting gasoline in engines, this mastery falls short in at least one key area. A true master would manipulate their environment to make technology work for them in all ways, especially health. Farming technology has drastically changed how we produce food, and there is hardly a better example of this shift than grains. We are now incredibly good at producing wheat, the most consumed food, with minimal man hours, and then wheat based products like bread in record time, but might there be an overlooked cost? In order to understand the difference between traditional and modern grains, two concepts must be covered first.

Enzymes

There is a group of nutrients easily as important to our overall health and wellbeing as vitamins and minerals, but not nearly as appreciated or well understood by the general population. They are complex proteins whose function is to be a catalyst in nearly every biochemical process in our body. The chemical definition of a catalyst is a substance which speeds up a chemical reaction. This is relevant because time is very important to life. If it took your body 3 years to digest a steak, you wouldn’t be around long enough to complete that process. Your body’s ability to finish necessary reactions depends upon a crucial set of catalysts called Enzymes.

Enzymes depend on both vitamin and mineral stores. Vitamins are simply cofactors for enzymes, meaning they are needed for the enzyme to catalyze a reaction. Vitamin deficiencies can cause catastrophe as they inhibit the ability of enzymes to complete bodily processes. Most enzymes incorporate at least one mineral, like Magnesium, into their structure and without that mineral, the enzyme would be useless.

There are many enzymes which promote all types of reactions in the body, but the specific group relevant to this topic are the Digestive Enzymes. The first step of digestion, beginning in the mouth, is carried out by these enzymes. There are three main groups:

1. Proteases - Digest Protein
2. Lipases - Digest Lipids
3. Amylases - Digest Carbohydrates

The Pancreas is a real hero as it’s able to both produce and store these enzymes. However, the amount of enzymes needed for digestion is greater than the total production and storage capacity of the pancreas. The good news is that the pancreas is not the body’s only source of enzymes. Because the pancreas can’t carry the whole process of digestion on its back, Dietary Enzymes are required. But, if a diet is low in enzymes, this will overwork the pancreas, deplete its storage, and wear it out. Long term dietary enzyme deficiency leads to poor health, a shorter life, and a lack of the robust vitality found in traditional people.

Digestive enzymes are present in large amounts in plenty of raw foods, and even more so in raw fermented food. Enzymes have a mortal enemy though: Heat.

Excerpt from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon:

All enzymes are deactivated at a wet-heat temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit and a dry-heat temperature of about 150 degrees. It is one of those happy designs of nature that foods and liquids at 117 degrees can be touched without pain, but liquids over 118 degrees will burn. Thus, we have a built-in mechanism for determining whether or not the food we are eating still contains its enzyme content.

An abundance of enzymes in the diet is critical to the proper functioning of our body. A diet composed of too many cooked foods both enlarges the pancreas and shrinks many other glands and organs, such as the brain. Every meal should include at least one raw or fermented food, in order to facilitate digestion without taxing the pancreas too heavily.

Anti-Nutrients

Plants didn’t evolve with the idea that they should be good to eat. In fact, plants spend a great deal of energy thwarting overzealous grazers and other creatures that would gladly eat them into oblivion. Not as helpless as they may seem, plants protect their foliage, stems, seeds, roots, and to a lesser degree even their fruits, with natural insecticides and bitter toxins that make some plants unsafe for human consumption. Unless your species has evolved the physiologic means to neutralize them, a plant’s various hemagglutinins, enzyme inhibitors, cyanogens, anti-vitamins, carcinogens, neurotoxins, and allergens say, “Eat at your own risk.”

• Catherine Shanahan

Anti-Nutrient is a catch all term for any compound found in a food that causes harm to the eater. Some natural animal foods (not including processed dairy or other processed animal products) contain small amounts of anti-nutrients which are not very damaging. Plants, on the other hand, contain a whole array of anti-nutrients, some of them harmful enough to kill, even in small doses. Just eat a few raw castor beans and you’ll see what I mean (Do NOT do this!).

Excerpt from The Carnivore Diet by Shawn Baker:

In 1990, famed toxicology researcher Professor Bruce Ames investigated the use of pesticides in food production and compared manufactured pesticides to naturally occurring plant-chemical pesticides. Shockingly, Ames found that 99.9 percent of pesticides we consume by volume comes from plants themselves.

There are many different types of anti-nutrients found in plants, but since this is a series focused on grains, let’s discuss only those found in grains so that this doesn’t turn into a whole book. Here we go.

Protease Inhibitors, a type of enzyme inhibitor, lower the bioavailability of proteins by blocking the ability of enzymes to digest them. Grains contain only a small amount of usable protein (more on that below), and these protein blockers make the situation even worse.

Phytates are what we call a compound where Phytic Acid has bound to a mineral, usually Iron, Zinc, Calcium, Copper, or Magnesium. Grains like wheat, which are seeds, store the minerals they need for growth by binding them into very stable, undigestible, phytates. Not all the phytic acid in the seed is bound to minerals though, and any excess will actually bind to minerals present in your gut, thereby stripping you of bioavailable minerals eaten recently.

Oxalates are similar to phytates and are when Oxalic Acid attaches itself to a mineral. Calcium causes the most problems, since it is insoluble in blood, meaning it won’t break down and must be expelled from the body. These calcium oxalates are very sharp and abrasive, causing damage and often accumulating in soft tissue such as arteries, leading to arterial calcification, or kidneys, leading to stones. Kidney stones are almost entirely calcium oxalates, and their incidence is on the rise in the US, along with a steadily increasing consumption of grains and leafy greens, which both contain high levels of oxalates. Coincidence?

The nutrition label on many plants lists high levels of both protein and minerals, but that doesn’t mean your body can use them. They often come with enzyme inhibitors and the minerals are usually in the unusable form of phytates or oxalates. Protein and mineral deficiencies are bad, but they are nothing compared to the worst set of anti-nutrients.

Lectins

Lectins are a group of at least 100 proteins found in plants, including the infamous group known as Gluten, that bind to carbohydrates. They are a defense mechanism that plants have evolved in what you may call an evolutionary chemical arms race. Plants build new chemical weapons, such as a new lectin, and animals respond by building mechanisms to neutralize it, so they can continue to eat that plant. This process continues indefinitely in the interconnected, competitive dance of life. Major problems arise though when the animal is not capable of disarming the plant’s vast array of weapons.

Imagine the walls of our intestines as a brick wall. Each brick is held together by mortar, or each intestinal cell is held together by a Tight Junction. This wall is a crucial defense mechanism of our body, keeping toxins out of our bloodstream. It usually does a good job, unless lectins are present. Lectins bind to this wall and dissolve the mortar or tight junction, creating a small hole. This allows anything, toxic or not, to leak into the blood, totally bypassing the screening process that should occur. Then, other lectins can float into the blood, bind to healthy cells, and cause an immune response. Since the lectin is seen as a foreign invader, antibodies will attack the lectin, thereby destroying both the lectin and the previously healthy cell. This mechanism, degrading intestinal integrity and flooding the blood with toxins, appears to be a primary underlying cause of nearly all major auto-immune issues.

Gluten is a type of lectin which makes up most of the protein found in wheat. Our body does not contain the proper enzymes required to digest gluten fully, meaning most wheat protein is never used to build our body. There are two products which result from the partial digestion though. One is toxic, and the other activates our opioid receptors, illuminating the addictive qualities of wheat.

Leptin is a hormone used to regulate appetite and satiety. Without leptin, you wouldn’t know when you are hungry or full. Lectins bind to leptin receptors, throwing off your body’s ability to recognize when it’s full, causing you to eat more. Might this be why appetizers often include bread?

Saving the best for last, we come to the king of lectins, Wheat Germ Agglutinin (WGA). It is the most insidious lectin because, in addition to the deleterious effects listed above, it also mimics insulin. When insulin binds to an adipocyte (fat cell), it signals the cell to pull glucose from the bloodstream and store it (as fat), then insulin will decouple from the cell shortly after. When WGA binds to the insulin receptor of an adipocyte, it sends this same growth signal, but then doesn’t leave! If that wasn’t bad enough, WGA will bind to an insulin receptor in a muscle or the brain, blocking it from actual insulin, and then not allow that cell to pull glucose from the blood. As you can imagine, this starves and eventually kills the cell.

Overall, lectins are one of the primary causes of the modern obesity epidemic, and certainly play their part in other issues relating to Insulin Resistance like Diabetes and Alzheimer’s (more to come on insulin), as well as auto-immune disorders like Celiac and Crohn’s.

With an understanding of both enzymes and anti-nutrients, let’s compare traditional and modern grain preparation.

Traditional

The purpose of a seed is to grow into a new plant. To do this it must store nutrients in a way that is very stable, often for long stretches of time until the conditions are right for growth. These inactive or dormant seeds contain

• a large amount of starch, which stores energy that the seed will use to grow
• enzyme inhibitors, which stop any enzymes from beginning the germination (also called sprouting) process
• phytates and oxalates, which make the minerals unusable

Once enough water is present and the temperature is high enough though, these enzyme inhibitors become deactivated and something incredible happens.

Excerpt from Dis-Moi Comment Tu Cuisines by Claude Aubert

The sprouting of seeds is one of the most fascinating natural phenomena. From this minuscule appendage, a tiny part of the seed, is born the plant. That this sprout has exceptional nutritional value is thus not surprising. But even more remarkable is the ability of this sprout to produce a whole range of substances - principally vitamins and enzymes - that are completely absent, or present only in extremely small amounts, in the unsprouted seed. The seed becomes hardly recognizable and transforms itself into something new, which is less energetic but richer in nutrients.

Sprouted, or active, seeds are highly superior to dormant or inactive seeds for health. Enzymes like Phytase, which breaks apart Phytates and frees the previously bound minerals, and Amylase, which converts starch into amino acids and many different vitamins, go to work and actually increase in amount during this activation. The germination process also substantially degrades gluten, cutting it to about half of its initial levels.

Excerpt from Food Enzymes for Health and Longevity by Edward Howell, MD

Before the advent of factory farms, grain was partially germinated, but modern grain consists of dormant (resting) seeds… In former times grain was harvested and sheaved. The sheaves were put into shocks and gathered and built into stacks which stood in the field for several more weeks before threshing. During this period of weathering in the field the grain seeds were exposed to rain and dew which soaked into the sheaves. The grain could pick up this moisture and, with heat from the sun, conditions were ideal for favoring a degree of germination and enzyme multiplication in the grain. The modern combine harvester removes the grain from the stalk immediately after cutting and permits it to be hauled away to the granary. Hence, there is no weathering and consequent enzyme development, resulting in a mature but dormant seed.

The traditional people would receive these partially germinated seeds and then finish the process by soaking them until fully sprouted. Next, they would add a live culture to ferment the sprouted seeds. This fermentation would often last several days and

• lower the anti-nutrient content even further
• increase the nutrient content by producing more vitamins, amino acids, and other beneficial compounds
• add more enzymes
• cultivate a whole biome of beneficial microorganisms

These traditional, healthy grains were arguably the root reason humans were able to settle into large civilizations at all. However, modern bread is nutritionally as similar to traditional bread as chicken-flavored powder is to wild turkey.

Modern

While humans are adapted to handle some amount of anti-nutrients, even lectins, we can not maintain good health at the levels or forms that they appear in modern grains.

Modern grain production skips both crucial stages of traditional preparation, sprouting and fermenting. They instead use dormant seeds, making a product that is hard to digest, low in nutrients, filled with anti-nutrients, and “dead” (sterile, not filled with beneficial living organisms). Traditional wisdom advises not to consume seeds which haven’t been either sprouted or fermented, preferably both, so modern grains are definitely not Human Diet approved. These are not the only two reasons though.

Over the years, farmers have both selected as well as hybridized (cross-bred multiple species) grains to be higher in gluten content. This gives the wheat greater immunity to pests and produces a higher yield. In addition to the high levels of natural pesticides, most grains are now grown using many different insecticides of questionable safety, including the especially heinous synthetic pesticide Glyphosate.

Bromine is added to most flour to improve the consistency, even though it is a toxin which competes with Iodine in the body, greatly depressing the thyroid and leading to hypothyroidism.

Though dormant seeds are hard to digest, we are still able to acquire some nutrients from them with effort, until modern grain mills get to them. Industrial steel roller mills are able to extract nearly all nutrients from grains, producing white flour, a product that can sit on a shelf almost indefinitely. Organic (meaning containing Carbon), dead (not containing any living organisms), and lasts forever is a combo that is not edible!

To sum it all up: Seeds, which have been biologically manipulated through hybridization to include more natural pesticides such as gluten are

• grown with added synthetic pesticides such as Glyphosate that are highly toxic to humans
• not sprouted so they contain enzyme inhibitors, phytates and oxalates, and large amounts of lectins
• processed in a way that strips nearly all vitamins and minerals
• bleached and doped with additives like Bromine and preservatives
• fast-risen without a true fermentation process

This is modern “bread”.

Conclusion

We should not be surprised that the prevalence of intolerance to grains, especially gluten, is sharply increasing. By ignoring traditional wisdom and the mechanisms of life, we head down a path of worsening health.

There is a better way though. Use only heirloom grains, like Einkorn, Spelt, or Amaranth, which have already been sprouted. Check out Healthy Flour Company for plenty of sprouted whole grains that you can grind fresh, as well as sprouted flours, and even baking advice. Then, use a sourdough starter to ferment the grains. Use that dough to bake a healthy, traditional sourdough, just like your ancestors did for thousands of years.