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.
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 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.
I'm a chemist from fields far removed from this. That said, a "simple" color change like white to yellow can signal far greater chemical changes than you'd naturally assume. The problem being we don't truly see yellow and it can mean far more than a seemingly small change in other colors we experience directly. It could also mean nothing, but when it comes to food, an even minor seeming colour change in a chromatic domain we cannot perceive properly is something worth taking into account and pausing to invesitgate before switching. It's worth understsnding color is chemistry and even a small change means something has changed, sometimes in a will kill you way, other times in a means nothing way,(even if a lack of color change does not imply nothing changed, since we see nearly no colour in the space of things the EMS can display). So, without further testing and credible evidence explaining it being benign, that change in colour registers as alarming to me.
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.
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.
> 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.
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".
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.
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.
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!
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.
More likely GMOs or at least GMO related. Thanks to the rise of GMOs glyphosate has left everything drenched in it, including non-GMO crops. Wheat/cereals are particularly relevant because it's often used right before harvest as a desiccant, or as a 'pre-harvest herbicide' in jurisdictions where using it as a desiccant is outlawed.
Glyphosate wrecks the gut biome, and it seems reasonable to expect that the consequences of such could be attributed as some sort of sensitivity to something which correlates with the highest sources of direct concentration; in this case - gluten.
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
key points about wheat Gross (the Italian farmer) discovered in 1990 his attic:
+ It fared better during droughts, growing so tall that it overshadowed the weeds. It didn’t need fertilizer or herbicides.
+ It's height can be a liability. Heavy winds, rains and hail can make the tall stems flip over before the grain ripens, ruining harvests.
+ Working with the lab of Teofilo Vamerali, Perobelli determined that the grain was Triticum turgidum—literally “swollen wheat” in Latin. Known in English as “poulard wheat,” it had originally evolved in what today are Turkey, Egypt and other nearby Mediterranean countries. And searching agricultural references, Perobelli found that it had been grown in Italy, too, until farmers shifted toward higher-yield commercial varieties. That solved the mystery of the seed bag stashed away in the attic: It had survived because Grossi’s grandfather saved some of the heritage grains.
I know I tend to like some takeaway "summary" comments on HN, but this one just feels like snippets from an LLM reading the article. What's the thinking? The original text isn't particularly long or dense, and this isn't commentary.
It's hand curated verbatim extracts designed to encourage HN members to read the full article. The clickbait title does not provide accurate context for the article which details events from 1990.
Reasonable people may differ and your mileage may vary. What were your key takeaways from the article?
I left out the points about shortcomings of Bourlag's wheat and the value of genetic diversity in a population. But my focus was to encourage people to read an article I found significant.
On a side note I don't use AI to craft HN comments beyond sometimes using Grammarly to check them for basic errors.
What’s the thinking on pointing out everything that could maybe but probably not be “AI Slop”?
I wasn’t going to click on the click-bait headline without understanding the topic better, so the length of the original was unknown and irrelevant to me. The above comment tersely explains it enough to satisfy my prerequisite.
The comment, “slop” or not, was useful. When slop fills comments with junk and fake commentary, it’s far more annoying and detrimental than a basic summary. Slop-policing is exhausting to read - just downvote or flag trash instead of adding more noise that takes away from the actual content.
My, my, how low we have sunk. It used to be "I won't jump into the comment section without first reading the article", now it's "I won't read the article without first reading (and possibly engaging in) the comment section". Shame.
Also, how is this headline click-bait? If anything, it's anti-clickbait, dull, matter-of-factly, and not really that inviting.
A lot of submissions have comments about how the article is "AI slop" or that a comment comes from an LLM. What is the point of repeatedly pointing this out? One person's AI slop is another person's useful and intriguing submission. In this case someone points out a comment is LLM generated and it turns out it isn't. So what if it was? It was a useful comment either way, and your ability to correctly identify LLM generated content is not perfect, and is likely to become less accurate over time.
Well yes, the entire point of a link aggregator is to surface content of value to the readers so that necessitates passing judgement on it. It seems that most of us don't come here for slop so that receives negative responses. Everything working as intended I guess.
Friends of mine found some unknown seeds in a rental they'd just moved into and planted it. When they saw what sprouted they decided they should probably burn the evidence, slowly, one bud at a time.
Height is a solvable problem today. Chemical growth regulators make wheat shorter and prevent it from buckling and falling over. They aren't the most suspect chemicals, but not exactly above all suspicion neither...
Height is a solvable problem today. Chemical growth regulators
Or you do what Claudio Grossi did, and you mix the ancient grain with short growing grains that add stability. Sometimes the solution is simpler then just throwing chemicals at the problem.
This is a great practical approach, but when you harvest the crop you get a mix of higher crop and lower crop. It is more difficult to sell some mix than a pure crop with known properties. Technically, it would be possible to build a harvester with two cutters at different heights to separate the crops, but I've never seen one.
You forgot about the height. It will overshadow the smaller crop, and lack of sunlight on this smaller crop may simply not produce any ears as a result. Just a "balcony farmer" but that is what i have seen with most plants that are overshadowed by dense/taller plants.
A good story that touches on this is the Wizard and the Prophet, covering Norman Borlaug's efforts to crossbreed wheat that wasn't too tall, was resistant to blight, etc.
It seems like the genes that cause long stalks also have other benefits, otherwise they'd have been bred out a long time ago. At least that is what I figure.
- move slighly more of the plants energy into the seed
- prevent wind damage. (small farms bordered with trees was more typical historically)
On the historical side;
- The long stalks allow the crop to be bundled and dried without the seed touching the ground.
- It makes the stalks themselves useful as a building material in walls, roofs, isolation, bedding.
- It makes for a good grip as the seeds are pulled form the stalks with an historical thresher.
In short, we didn't start breeding grains to be short until modern post industrial farming techniques. Short grain does provide better yield on industrial mono-crop farming. But would have been seen as worse historically.
Problem with modern grains
1) gluten
2) weed killers/ pesticides
3) lack of nutritional value
My father and many other people in my family increased to neutral millets and started giving up wheat as much as they can.
Those problems are worth solving for or roll back to grossini seeds and use his creative technique to not let it withered by wind and let’s you have better nutritional value
Lodging is still a big problem even with modern varieties and growth regulators and even pre-modern wheat plants were probably shorter than they were originally.
These are all just unsubstantiated claims from someone promoting a product. The reason the entire world switched to dwarf varieties is that full height wheat falls over in heavy storms and this can lead to a loss of entire harvests and major famines.
This grain, while interesting, is far far less productive than modern varieties and less efficient to grow. It's valuable for genetic diversity and rediscovering it is wonderful and valuable, but it is more or less worthless for farmers as anything other than a novelty.
> but it is more or less worthless for farmers as anything other than a novelty
This is clearly not true, considering it has already been successful as a niche specialty product. So you're obviously wrong.
You could become right by weakening your claim. The wheat will remain a niche specialty product, and will not overtake other wheats in the mass market.
Specialty products made on a smaller scale can be plenty valuable and successful. They are not "novelty" products.
The article mentions other benefits, such as many Italian farmers lost their harvest in the drought of 2024, while many traditional grains fared better in the dry climate and could be harvested.
It's not really just a storm risk. The higher yeilding your wheat the higher risk of lodging, so growing tall wheat in poorer conditions is fine, but the higher the grain weight the higher the risk of lodging.
> 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.
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.
As the article clearly states it was the farmer himself who made the initial ID of the grain based on a bible passage he heard at church. It’s not a quote the Smithsonian added for the hell of it.
If a straightforward account of a story offends your sensibilities, rather than complaining, simply move on.
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.
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.
But what is the actual benefit of Urdinkel? Honestly it sounds a bit like a fad to me, along the lines of "older = better".
> 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.
So the second two but not the first is technically "wheat" along with Rye ?
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.
I'm a chemist from fields far removed from this. That said, a "simple" color change like white to yellow can signal far greater chemical changes than you'd naturally assume. The problem being we don't truly see yellow and it can mean far more than a seemingly small change in other colors we experience directly. It could also mean nothing, but when it comes to food, an even minor seeming colour change in a chromatic domain we cannot perceive properly is something worth taking into account and pausing to invesitgate before switching. It's worth understsnding color is chemistry and even a small change means something has changed, sometimes in a will kill you way, other times in a means nothing way,(even if a lack of color change does not imply nothing changed, since we see nearly no colour in the space of things the EMS can display). So, without further testing and credible evidence explaining it being benign, that change in colour registers as alarming to me.
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.
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.
> 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 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".
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.
>nasty stuff like vitamin A
Pardon?
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...
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.
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.
More likely GMOs or at least GMO related. Thanks to the rise of GMOs glyphosate has left everything drenched in it, including non-GMO crops. Wheat/cereals are particularly relevant because it's often used right before harvest as a desiccant, or as a 'pre-harvest herbicide' in jurisdictions where using it as a desiccant is outlawed.
Glyphosate wrecks the gut biome, and it seems reasonable to expect that the consequences of such could be attributed as some sort of sensitivity to something which correlates with the highest sources of direct concentration; in this case - gluten.
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.
Damn, I was hoping for Triffids
key points about wheat Gross (the Italian farmer) discovered in 1990 his attic:
+ It fared better during droughts, growing so tall that it overshadowed the weeds. It didn’t need fertilizer or herbicides.
+ It's height can be a liability. Heavy winds, rains and hail can make the tall stems flip over before the grain ripens, ruining harvests.
+ Working with the lab of Teofilo Vamerali, Perobelli determined that the grain was Triticum turgidum—literally “swollen wheat” in Latin. Known in English as “poulard wheat,” it had originally evolved in what today are Turkey, Egypt and other nearby Mediterranean countries. And searching agricultural references, Perobelli found that it had been grown in Italy, too, until farmers shifted toward higher-yield commercial varieties. That solved the mystery of the seed bag stashed away in the attic: It had survived because Grossi’s grandfather saved some of the heritage grains.
I know I tend to like some takeaway "summary" comments on HN, but this one just feels like snippets from an LLM reading the article. What's the thinking? The original text isn't particularly long or dense, and this isn't commentary.
It's hand curated verbatim extracts designed to encourage HN members to read the full article. The clickbait title does not provide accurate context for the article which details events from 1990.
Reasonable people may differ and your mileage may vary. What were your key takeaways from the article?
I left out the points about shortcomings of Bourlag's wheat and the value of genetic diversity in a population. But my focus was to encourage people to read an article I found significant.
On a side note I don't use AI to craft HN comments beyond sometimes using Grammarly to check them for basic errors.
I appreciated it. The article was too verbose in my view
Ironically that sounds like something an llm would say in a reply. Not saying you did or anything just kinda funny how it reads.
They sure are designed to sound like people
But no particular person.
Like that line in Barbie, ... actually not a life guard, my job is just "beach".
What’s the thinking on pointing out everything that could maybe but probably not be “AI Slop”?
I wasn’t going to click on the click-bait headline without understanding the topic better, so the length of the original was unknown and irrelevant to me. The above comment tersely explains it enough to satisfy my prerequisite.
The comment, “slop” or not, was useful. When slop fills comments with junk and fake commentary, it’s far more annoying and detrimental than a basic summary. Slop-policing is exhausting to read - just downvote or flag trash instead of adding more noise that takes away from the actual content.
My, my, how low we have sunk. It used to be "I won't jump into the comment section without first reading the article", now it's "I won't read the article without first reading (and possibly engaging in) the comment section". Shame.
Also, how is this headline click-bait? If anything, it's anti-clickbait, dull, matter-of-factly, and not really that inviting.
A lot of submissions have comments about how the article is "AI slop" or that a comment comes from an LLM. What is the point of repeatedly pointing this out? One person's AI slop is another person's useful and intriguing submission. In this case someone points out a comment is LLM generated and it turns out it isn't. So what if it was? It was a useful comment either way, and your ability to correctly identify LLM generated content is not perfect, and is likely to become less accurate over time.
Community is oriented around policing each others content (upvote downvote flag vouch). The behaviors spill over into the other lever (reply)
Well yes, the entire point of a link aggregator is to surface content of value to the readers so that necessitates passing judgement on it. It seems that most of us don't come here for slop so that receives negative responses. Everything working as intended I guess.
What do you mean “what’s the thinking?”
I think the meaning was "why did you write this?"
Friends of mine found some unknown seeds in a rental they'd just moved into and planted it. When they saw what sprouted they decided they should probably burn the evidence, slowly, one bud at a time.
Height is a solvable problem today. Chemical growth regulators make wheat shorter and prevent it from buckling and falling over. They aren't the most suspect chemicals, but not exactly above all suspicion neither...
Height is a solvable problem today. Chemical growth regulators
Or you do what Claudio Grossi did, and you mix the ancient grain with short growing grains that add stability. Sometimes the solution is simpler then just throwing chemicals at the problem.
This is a great practical approach, but when you harvest the crop you get a mix of higher crop and lower crop. It is more difficult to sell some mix than a pure crop with known properties. Technically, it would be possible to build a harvester with two cutters at different heights to separate the crops, but I've never seen one.
You forgot about the height. It will overshadow the smaller crop, and lack of sunlight on this smaller crop may simply not produce any ears as a result. Just a "balcony farmer" but that is what i have seen with most plants that are overshadowed by dense/taller plants.
A good story that touches on this is the Wizard and the Prophet, covering Norman Borlaug's efforts to crossbreed wheat that wasn't too tall, was resistant to blight, etc.
That reminds me, I never got back my copy of that book...
That’s true in generation 1, but breeding isn’t a single generation. You repeat things across generations until you find a stable mix.
You just raise the head.
You harvest the top crop, the one you want, cutting above the lower height, then go back through and make a second pass with the head lower.
You'll lose some of the lower crop, crushed under the wheels, but it was there as bonus anyway.
It seems like the genes that cause long stalks also have other benefits, otherwise they'd have been bred out a long time ago. At least that is what I figure.
Short grains are modern;
- allow modern machines to harvest it more easily
- move slighly more of the plants energy into the seed
- prevent wind damage. (small farms bordered with trees was more typical historically)
On the historical side;
- The long stalks allow the crop to be bundled and dried without the seed touching the ground.
- It makes the stalks themselves useful as a building material in walls, roofs, isolation, bedding.
- It makes for a good grip as the seeds are pulled form the stalks with an historical thresher.
In short, we didn't start breeding grains to be short until modern post industrial farming techniques. Short grain does provide better yield on industrial mono-crop farming. But would have been seen as worse historically.
Problem with modern grains 1) gluten 2) weed killers/ pesticides 3) lack of nutritional value
My father and many other people in my family increased to neutral millets and started giving up wheat as much as they can.
Those problems are worth solving for or roll back to grossini seeds and use his creative technique to not let it withered by wind and let’s you have better nutritional value
Old grains still have plenty of gluten, and aren't immune to weeds or pests and have more or less the same nutritional value.
Did older grains have more gluten? I might try to search them out just for that reason.
Probably less gluten, I believe high protein content is one of the things modern varieties have been bred for. It improves baking qualities.
Lodging is still a big problem even with modern varieties and growth regulators and even pre-modern wheat plants were probably shorter than they were originally.
They confer advantage over many weeds according to the article.
Tall wheat fields are a significant plot device in Klara and the Sun. Not to mention the various woody fibers involved in Wicker.
Yes, I spent an interesting week hanging out at the cinema!
various woody fibers, indeed, sir!
These are all just unsubstantiated claims from someone promoting a product. The reason the entire world switched to dwarf varieties is that full height wheat falls over in heavy storms and this can lead to a loss of entire harvests and major famines.
This grain, while interesting, is far far less productive than modern varieties and less efficient to grow. It's valuable for genetic diversity and rediscovering it is wonderful and valuable, but it is more or less worthless for farmers as anything other than a novelty.
> but it is more or less worthless for farmers as anything other than a novelty
This is clearly not true, considering it has already been successful as a niche specialty product. So you're obviously wrong.
You could become right by weakening your claim. The wheat will remain a niche specialty product, and will not overtake other wheats in the mass market.
Specialty products made on a smaller scale can be plenty valuable and successful. They are not "novelty" products.
The article mentions other benefits, such as many Italian farmers lost their harvest in the drought of 2024, while many traditional grains fared better in the dry climate and could be harvested.
It's not really just a storm risk. The higher yeilding your wheat the higher risk of lodging, so growing tall wheat in poorer conditions is fine, but the higher the grain weight the higher the risk of lodging.
> 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.
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.
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Fun exercise in this article: do an alt-f search for the word "ancient".
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As the article clearly states it was the farmer himself who made the initial ID of the grain based on a bible passage he heard at church. It’s not a quote the Smithsonian added for the hell of it.
If a straightforward account of a story offends your sensibilities, rather than complaining, simply move on.
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.