SOURDOUGH vs GM……………..
Recently the Australian CSIRO announced that it is considering human trials for its genetically modified wheat. The wheat has been genetically modified to make it a low GI wheat, which means it wont cause blood sugar spikes when eaten.
As one gasps for air and mutters “WHAT?” to oneself, lets look at the thought trail which leads to this absolutely ridiculous “science” and massive waste of public money, not to mention the mind-boggling lack of awareness of the world outside the test-tube which so many modern researchers display.
The problem is diabetes. Presently the Industrialised nations are facing a new plague, not from microbes or the black death of old, but the white death of new. This is diabetes, which I refer to as the white death, which apart from being a parody of the Australian slang for factory white bread, is a disease which is largely caused by diet…a diet of “white” foods…all largely refined to whiteness: white flour, white rice and white sugar being the major culprits, and also largely a disease of white man`s culture, white man`s foods. This would appear harsh until one understands that for example the indigenous people of Australia and America (not-white)suffer severely from this condition, which disappears once they return to a pre-white-man`s diet. ( Reference: O’Dea K. Marked improvement in carbohydrate and lipid metabolism in diabetic Australian aborigines after temporary reversion to traditional lifestyle.Diabetes, 1984;33:596-603). But we suffer from it as well and the rates of diabetes, coupled with over-weight are spiralling out of control in the USA, Australia and Europe, but increasingly in China as well.
You don’t catch diabetes. It is a systemic disease which is definitely co-related to refined foods. It has other causes as well, but the major cause today is refined food. Diabetes was known and documented in antiquity, but was rare…until very recently.
These refined causative foods are well known, and a chart was constructed to show which foods have the greatest tendency to increase blood sugar levels. This is called a Glycemic index (GI). White refined wheat flour is high on the list, (in fact white bread is used as a (high) standard to measure other foods against), and because it is one of the commonest foods today, our scientists in their wisdom thought it a good idea to impact this tendency by breeding wheat which has a low GI. Instead of putting their efforts into reforming the industrial food system which creates these foods simply to value add to them and make money, todays solutions way too often tends towards the “bandaid” solution. The other side of GI reality is that the foods eaten in a traditional diet (one which many moderns have in fact reverted to), such as whole grains, legumes, vegetables, fruit and grass-fed meat/dairy, are all in the low GI range.
White wheat flour is very largely used to make white factory bread. Every new effort to reduce the factors which are supposedly causing pathologies in our advanced societies, from vitamin deficiencies to salt, is played out in bread production….bread is such a widely eaten food, that these additives from iodine to low salt to folate, are dumped in our bread in attempt to fix us up. Ive already ranted about the salt question. So again, bread has to be singled out to carry the new low GI wheat, what next?
Problem is, as many of you are aware, the way to reduce the GI in bread, is to make bread as it always was…by the sourdough method, or with a long fermentation which develops lactic bacteria. It is very clear that fermentation uses up the overt sugars/carbohydrates in any situation and transforms them. That bread is no longer fermented, means that the gross carbohydrate fraction is left-as-is…unaltered and able to cause blood sugar spikes, especially if its white. Fermenting is the ancient well proven way to increase digestibility of foods, and has numerous applications in food and eating, indeed most traditional food systems are based on it from beer to miso to tempeh to cheese and yes bread.
The first scientists to be aware of the low GI of genuine sourdough were amazed, but this awareness has not been sufficiently corresponded to other researchers, so we have the situation today where the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing with respect to food research. Even the whole idea of GI can be called into question, because of clear anomalies. To genetically modify wheat on this basis is at least shaky, at worst arrogant. Simply doing a “wiki” search on GI will point out that white rice eaters in Asia and potato eaters in Peru, hardly get diabetes, or are over-weight, but perhaps more importantly that foods vary in their GI rating depending on the method of processing, time of day they are eaten, and simply variations between people.. Pity those responsible for creating even the idea of a GM low GI wheat didn’t even read Wiki!!!...which shows how rarefied they must be, they certainly don’t appear to be on planet earth! (lizards?).One suspects it’s just the kids in the kitchen, unfortunately they are cooking the main meal.