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  • From: Mark Nagel <activism98201@verizon.net>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] the oil we eat/ the myth of America feeding the world/
  • Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:09:11 -0500 (CDT)

Pat,

To nitpick your nitpick... :-)

The author is stating the literal with regards to "unprocessed," while you
qualify it by saying "wheat berries."

Techincally the author is correct, as wheat as it's found in the field is
encased in hulls and is not consumable in such form by humans. Wheat berries
is what you get from the de-hulling process. NOTE: I don't know about
sprouting wheat with hulls; I would suspect that it's possible as how else
would wheat propagate in nature?

You are correct, however, on the point about the author's error about protien
extraction; but only if we are talking about "processed" (de-hulled) wheat,
otherwise HE is correct.

To perhaps further muddy things, there are hulless varieties of some grains,
though I do not know whether there's a wheat variety. If there is, then the
argument can be, in the case of that variety anyway, reversed back to Pat's
corner :-)

NOTE: If anyone has any info on the de-hulling process for wheat let me know.


-Mark Nagel
Everett, WA


=====================
From: Pat Meadows <pat@meadows.pair.com>
Date: Sun Jun 18 14:08:37 CDT 2006
To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] the oil we eat/ the myth of America feeding
the world/

On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 09:58:23 -0600, you wrote:

>
>http://www.harpers.org/TheOilWeEat.html is a must read, folks.

Very interesting, thanks.

However, I'll be petty about it, because I disagree with him
on a few points.

This statement is erroneous: 'Likewise, you can’t eat
unprocessed wheat.' You most certainly can, and I often
have.

Wheat kernels (wheat berries), unprocessed, can be cooked
(boiled) and eaten like rice, and they are very nice. If
you're willing to grind them just a little, you can have
cracked wheat that cooks faster. But even the whole wheat
kernels are eminently edible. You could sprout them too, if
you want to, and eat the sprouted wheat grass. But let's
say that sprouting is 'processing' them. You can still eat
the whole wheat kernels; the only processing required is
threshing them and cooking them.

I think the following statement is inaccurate too:

'Still, these livestock do something we can’t. They convert
grain’s carbohydrates to high-quality protein.'

We can certainly get the protein we need from grains, if we
also eat complementary proteins (legumes being the obvious
choice, dairy products another good choice, and there are
others). We are then 'converting grain's carbohydrates to
high quality protein'.

[snip]




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