Regenerate the Soil and your Gut

There is a definite link between whole grains and gut health

There are a lot of terms to throw around when talking about how agriculture, local food, sustainability. I’ll do my best to be clear and concise, with links for more information.

How to feed a growing population, when most of the desirable farmland is already under intensive production? Locally grown, regeneratively farmed grains are a sustainable solution. Even in this age of gluten free and specialized diets, grain consumption and grain farming still make up a large portion of the world’s diet and farmland use. In 2017, 2.2 billion metric tons of grain were grown, according to Statista.com, with wheat being the third most common grain.  We have been consuming grain for well over 10,000 years. Archaeologists are starting to prove that wild grains were part of the Paleolithic diet (most likely a PLANT BASED DIET!) and barley flatbreads have been found in Jordan that date back 14,000 years.

Grains are an essential part of the local food chain, since farmers are the caretakers of arable land (land that is not boreal, desert, beach, rock or tundra), it’s vital that this land remains free from chemical fertilizers and not rely on constant mono-crop expansion for profit and thereby limit our choice of food. We want farmers who steward the land by crop rotation, cover cropping and animal grazing, regenerating the soil and increasing fertility. Stewarding over extracting.

Sustainable means agricultural practices that maintain/improve soil fertility while having a profitable yield and can be kept in rotation. I prefer the term “regenerative” over sustainable, as regenerative means that the soil is actually being improved and the farmer is creating a diverse eco-system on their farm through a combination of crop rotation, animal grazing and bio-diversity. (to learn more about this type of farming, I recommend: Gabe Brown’s “Dirt to Soil” and the podcast: Regenerative Agriculture by John Kempf as good starting points) Regeneratively farmed soil is capable of holding a multitude of microbial/fungi life and has greater water retention capacity, which is especially essential with irregular rainfall/prolonged drought in this age of climate instability. We don’t want urban sprawl reaching ever onwards, we don’t want vast mono crop-commodity farms that pollute our waterways and soils with petroleum based fertilizers and chemicals.

Although there is no way that consuming these chemicals can be good for you, (glyphosphate is an antibiotic among other things) there has been no proven link between chemicals such as glyphosphate and dietary/gluten issues. But, there are proven links between consuming fibre and a healthy gut biome. Scientists are also finding that gluten is most likely NOT the cause of dietary issues (celiacs excepted) and that the gluten content of wheat has not changed. There are no “new” proteins in modern wheat. All wheat breeding can do is combine and promote certain desired characteristics already found in wheat. It cannot create anything new. There is no commercially available GMO wheat, just a lot of glyphosphate spraying throughout growing season and at harvest on most commodity wheat. Farmers growing organic or regenerative grains don’t spray glyphospate; it interferes with the symbiotic relationship between the plant roots, soil fungi and of course is not allowed under organic standards.

And what about modern wheat and it’s evils? The scare of “dwarf” wheat and it’s supposed health consequences doesn’t bear up. The gene for “dwarf” wheat exists in older strains of wheat (they were taken from a Japanese landrace wheat) and the parents of modern dwarf wheat (Norin 10) are the landrace wheats: Fultz-Daruma and Turkey Red. Something to think about.

The nonsense that humans haven’t been eating wheat for long enough to evolve a suitable digestive system for it, gets a solid take down in “Neglected Cereals” by Frederich Longin and Thomas Miedaner, who state, “wheat has been a main source of carbohydrates since the Neolithic revolution about 10,000 years ago. Moreover we have been eating wild wheat forms before that, since these were growing predominantly in…the Fertile Crescent….The first wild grains, particularly emmer, barley and oat were already being found 23,000 years ago in Ohalo, a region of present-day Israel. Archaeologists have even found microparticles from wild forms of wheat, rye and barley in the teeth of Neandarthals, who lived about 45,000 years ago.”

Scientists studying our gut microbiome are beginning to understand and document the need for whole grains (you need to read this link! Dr. Andrew Ross, a friend and mentor is also a terrific writer) in our diet. The role that bran plays, is now seen as more than inert fibre. It is seen as micobiota accessible and important for maintaining healthy gut bacteria. According to Corrie Whisner of University of Arizona, our gut microbes break down bran (humans lack the enzyme to break down dietary fibre) and convert it into short chain fatty acids that “that are the primary fuel source for our intestinal cells, so it keeps our gut healthy” and once these SCFA pass into the blood, “they can lower our blood pressure, improve vascular function and lower our glucose spikes.” She also mentions that healthy non-celiac people on gluten-free diets have been found to have more pathogenic microbes in their biome and increased inflammation. Interesting….

So what’s behind this new wheat intolerance? FODMAPS, leaky gut , lack of fibre? I don’t know, but I am hoping that science can help and that the local grain movement keeps growing and getting people to eat better wheat and more wholegrains. For me, it makes sense that healthy soils grow healthy food. Food that needs to kept in it’s whole form. North Americans really fail at getting enough fibre in their diet and eating more whole grains is an easy way to do that and get all those minerals and nutrients we need. And by choosing regeneratively grown grains, you are supporting healthy soils and a healthy gut.

One of these posts, I’ll explore all the additives and preservatives found in commodity white flour and why that isn’t food.