Do Heritage Grains Promise Hope for the Gluten-Sensitive?

24 Jun, 2012

by Bonnie Tsui, via Pacific Standard Magazine

There is a growing movement of farmers, scientists, and foodies working to bring back heritage grains—especially those ancient varietals of wheat that were around long before grains were widely hybridized to boost yield and resist disease.

Among those who are growing and baking with these heirloom grains, there is a keen interest in einkorn, a nutty and nutritious species of ancient wheat that may be digestible by people with gluten allergies.

Eli Rogosa, the director of the Heritage Wheat Conservancy, has dedicated herself to preserving rare old wheat species and establishing them in a local and organic grain economy in the Northeast. On her farm in Massachusetts, she cultivates rare breeds of grains that come from seed banks all over the world but are hardy enough to thrive in a variety of different environmental conditions.

Einkorn is one of them. A diploid species with 14 chromosomes, einkorn has a different gluten structure than modern wheat (which has 42 chromosomes) and is easier to digest. Rogosa, in partnership with the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is testing to see if gluten-sensitive celiacs can tolerate the grain. Rogosa is also growing plants on site and organizing conferences with artisan bakers and crop specialists on the farming of heritage wheats in New England. (Ambitious readers can try baking a loaf of sprouted einkorn bread with Rogosa’s recipe. (PDF))

On the West Coast, Bob Klein is just as passionate about einkorn. Klein is the co-owner of Oakland, California’s Oliveto restaurant and founder of Community Grains, a company he hopes will help build a local California grain economy using whole organic heritage grains. “Einkorn is 10,000 years old,” he says—it was the first cultivated wheat. “We ended up making radically different grains through the Green Revolution”—post-1940.

Click here to read the rest of this article at Pacific Standard Magazine.