Mad about science: wheat

By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist

A simple grain is responsible for sustaining the tremendous population of humankind — as true today as it was nearly 12,000 years ago. It’s also the source of aggravation for more than a few of us looking for our next meal at the grocery store. Why on Earth do sheets of seaweed have wheat as a listed ingredient?

The history of wheat is a long one. You could argue that wheat is the foundation of all human civilization, first appearing as a cultivated crop around 10,000 B.C.E. in the Levant, which is the geographic area comprising modern-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian territories and Syria.

Wheat is a grass, though we primarily eat the seeds, in various forms. Wheat is often ground into flour to act as the body for things like bread, cakes, tortillas and virtually anything made of dough. Wheat’s ability to act as a binder in dough is thanks to a couple of different genetic features. It is a carbohydrate, which gives ground wheat a starchiness that allows it to stick together. 

Farmland. Golden wheat field under blue sky.

Carbohydrates, often shorthanded as “carbs” in nutritional science and pseudoscience industries, are starches and sugars composed of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon atoms.

Gluten is another feature of wheat that makes it a great binder and is one of the most important traits wheat possesses as a core food for humans. Gluten is a protein that is unique to grasses — particularly wheat, rye and barley. Between the carbohydrates and gluten, wheat makes for a great foundation for a meal.

That is, unless you suffer from celiac disease or non-celiac gluten intolerance. 

Celiac disease is a genetic autoimmune disease that causes an intense reaction to gluten proteins as they pass through the intestine. Immune cells violently attack the gluten protein while also attacking the intestinal villi, which are small extensions of the gut that increase the surface area for nutrient absorption during digestion. 

The autoimmune reaction of celiac disease can vary from asymptomatic to severe, with stomach cramping, diarrhea, undigested food, blood in the stool and a heightened risk of colon cancer likely in part from increased intestinal swelling. A skin rash from exposure to gluten has also been observed in some people, often appearing around the belly and the joints of the arms and legs.

Those of us with celiac disease should not eat any wheat. Fortunately, this is a relatively easy remedy in most of the United States, where countless gluten-free alternatives exist. 

A common issue I’ve experienced is a social, rather than physiological, one. When eating with or around others who don’t have celiac disease, others will often feel guilty about eating products with wheat around me, such as donuts or sandwiches. I’ve always thought this is silly — eat whatever you want to eat, and I’ll do the same.

Wheat’s uses extend far beyond a bowl of cereal or loaf of bread. Wheat is a plant, and the grass portion of the plant can be used for countless, surprising, things. Wheat can be pulverized and pulped into paper just like rice plants and trees. Wheat — as well as hemp — can also be formed into a type of concrete that engineers and architects are currently exploring as an eco-friendly alternative to the silica-based concrete we frequently use already. 

Wheat and hemp have also been pressed into bales and sealed to create insulation panels for homes — a function that wheat and other grasses have served for thousands of years in barns and coops. 

Wheat is also being explored as an alternative to plastics to create disposable trash bags that will decompose with fewer ramifications than their petroleum counterparts.

Unless you have a few acres of wheat you grow every year, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there is just one type of wheat that serves every purpose we need. Wheat, like every other plant and animal on Earth, comes in many flavors — both figuratively and literally.

 Numerous breeds of wheat exist, with each one growing in preferred locations, such as hard red winter wheat, which grows well throughout the southern midwest of the United States. Some breeds are better adapted to colder climates and shorter growing seasons, while others prefer more temperate climates. 

Einkorn is another species of wheat first domesticated in Anatolia (a.k.a., contemporary Turkey), and though it has been touted as being a gluten-free form of wheat, it actually does possess the gluten protein. Emmer is another species of wheat, and quite possibly the earliest form domesticated by humans, as it has been found in numerous neolithic archeological sites. It fell out of favor in the Bronze Age, around 3000 B.C.E., for barley — another relative of wheat and source of gluten.

After all of this information, you may find yourself wandering the aisles of the grocery store and see some buzzwords plastered across your favorite bread. All-purpose wheat flour, stone-ground wheat, whole wheat — does this actually mean anything?

Yes and no. Bread, as ubiquitous as it is in the human diet, is still subject to marketing, just like anything else. If your intention is to use the bread as a vehicle for something else, you probably won’t know the difference between all-purpose wheat and whole wheat.

All-purpose flour is created by grinding only the endosperm of wheat — this is, a white portion that encapsulates the germ of the kernel. You can imagine the three parts of a wheat kernel to be like a chicken egg: the bran is the outer membrane, the endosperm is the egg white and the germ is the yolk. 

Whole wheat is when the entire kernel is ground and the bran, endosperm and germ are all ground up into flour. 

How this impacts the texture and taste of the flour is something you’d have to tell me, because I can’t eat it.

Stay curious, 7B.