The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.45 Whole Grain Mindset: Give those old wheat varieties a chance!

Episode Date: April 9, 2015

Monica Spiller has devoted much of her life to promoting the health benefits of a whole grain diet, with a specific focus on whole grain wheat bread.  In 2000, she founded a non-profit organization called The Whole Grain Connection, which aims to help farmers and gardeners access, test and grow heirloom varieties of wheat. Why? In this interview, Monica explains why modern, commercial wheat varieties kind of suck if you're interested in nutrition and taste, and why a rediscovery of older varieties of wheat could be so good for food security. Monica also provides some advice on getting started with producing wheat and other grains on your farm or in the garden. She says it's easy to do, and no space is too small.  Monica also co-authored a book on this subject, with her husband Gene. It's called What's With Fiber? I was inspired to contact Monica after reading this article about her at a cool site called Lucky Peach.  

In 1995, Canadian philosopher John Rolston Saul wrote a great book called The Doubter's Companion, a dictionary of aggressive common sense. If you haven't read it, I recommend you pick up a hard copy and stick it beside your bed or make it at your bathroom reader. It's a great piece of satire. Here's an excerpt from The Dictionary. This is an entry for White Bread. Here's an excerpt from The Dictionary. This is an entry for White Bread. White bread is the sophisticated product of a civilization taken to its logical conclusion. Essential goods originally, limited by their use in daily life, have been continually refined until all utility has been removed. Utility is vulgar. In this particular case, nutrition and fiber were the principal enemies of progress.

With the disappearance of utility, what remains is form, the highest quality of high civilizations. And whenever form presides, it replaces ordinary content with logic and artifice. The North American loaf may be tasteless, but remains eternally fresh thanks to the efficient use of chemicals. This episode of the Ruminant Podcast, we're talking about wheat, folks, and whole grain bread, and why some of those old-fashioned wheat varieties might be worth a second chance. The ruminant podcast is a show for farmers and gardeners and wonders what good farming looks like. You can find it on iTunes or many other podcast apps or right at its home website, theruminant.ca. Okay, let's do a show. Okay, let's do a show.

Hi everybody. So here's where I'm at. In recent episodes, I've been asking you to phone my Skype number or email me with a cool idea you'd like to share with other listeners about your farm or your garden. Some insight you've gained that you think your colleagues might want to hear about. And guess what? I've started to get some ideas rolling in and I'm thrilled about it. I got a Skype call the other day that I'm going to be following up on very soon. I got an email from a guy who was having trouble with the Skype number, so he just emailed me his idea and I'm going to be following up with him pretty soon. So stay tuned for that. But on that note, what I think I'm going to start doing, because I'm trying to keep the episode length down for the main interviews,

is I'm going to start releasing short episodes in between the main interviews that feature some of your ideas. I hope you like them and I hope you'll consider submitting. To do so, you can email me, editor at theruminant.ca. You can phone my Skype number and leave a voicemail. You can phone my Skype number. It's an American number, 310-734-8426. And when you get the voicemail, you can record your idea. Or hell, you know what? If you just want to phone me, you can use my main line, 250-767-6636. That's my main cell. You can phone me, and we'll set up a time to have a short interview over the phone. It'd be fun.

As for the main topic this week, as I just said, we're talking about wheat with this lady. I'm Monica Spiller, and I founded the Whole Grain Connection in 2000, Whole Grain Connection in 2000, and it was based on the idea, on my question, that why on earth do we not eat our grains in the whole form, knowing that whole grains are the healthful form for wheat, for rice, for barley, for whatever. This is the basis for our diet. And from those questions, from that question, came the founding of the whole grain connection.

Folks, Monica Speller is a fascinating woman, and she gave me a great interview. She's played a big role in bringing back some traditional wheats, and she makes a really good case for why we should be growing these traditional wheats and why we really, really, really as a society need to embrace whole grains and specifically whole grain breads. I hope you enjoy the interview, and I'll talk to you at the end. Monica Spiller, thanks a lot for coming on the Ruminant podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm delighted. Monica, you've been thinking about and eating whole grains and good bread for just about as long as you can remember. Can you talk about the very early part of your life when you first got interested in whole grains

and what got you thinking about the importance of whole grains in your diet? grains and what got you thinking about the importance of whole grains in your diet? That's quite a tricky question for me because I was always interested in whole grains. I looked at an encyclopedia as a child and found a page on healthy eating or healthy foods and there were the whole grains. My acute interest was stirred in the 1970s when I met my husband. He had studied nutrition deeply as a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, and he was employed to look into liquid diets and the missing component in those liquid diets for special diseases was dietary fiber. And in the 1970s, dietary fiber was almost an unknown substance. We'd heard of roughage by then in the diet, but we hadn't heard of dietary fiber.

And there were very few people who had studied it, and among those few people who had really given it a great deal of thought were two physicians, Dr. Hugh Trowell and Dennis Burkett, famous in their own right in their work in Africa. They'd been working in Africa for 30 years as physicians, and what they noticed was that the native population did not suffer from diseases such as diabetes. They certainly were not obese.

They didn't seem to have the heart attacks that white men had and certainly didn't have constipation and digestive diseases that white men had. But when the same native people went to live in the cities where white men's food was available, they began to suffer from exactly those diseases. And so these two physicians made the observation that the difference between the two diets, the one a whole food diet, a whole plant food diet, and on the other in the city, a refined grain diet base,

they realized that the difference was part of the plant material that was being ingested. And they suggested that that different material, that material that was lacking in the cities could be designated as dietary fiber. Anyway, this story was brought to my attention when they came to visit the company where I was working with my husband. They came to the company and gave us a talk, a very colorful talk about this very subject. And I must say, I turned around at that point and said, why on earth do we not eat our grains whole?

What's gone wrong? And from that time on, I also was an observer and sometimes a participant in the studies and research that my husband took part in, along with, I should say, probably hundreds of other scientists. During that time, until 2006 when he passed away, I was completely exposed to all the research that was going on that revealed how important it is for us to be eating the whole plant, especially in terms of the grains, which are at the base of our diet. And we have at the moment an epidemic in the U.S., in the Western world, in fact, of diabetes and increasingly obese people who are likely to become diabetic.

And the main cause is the base of the diet being refined flour, refined sugars, and that's it. That's the problem that we have in Western society. And so it's a difficult topic for many people because refined flowers are so ubiquitous. They're everywhere. They sure are, Monica. So can I ask you to be a little bit more specific? Can you talk about what's specifically wrong with refined flowers in the context of the different parts of, for example, a wheat seed

and what's missing when we when we create refined flowers yes the refining process involves wetting the grain so that the bran which is the outside coating it's a very thin coating on the outside of the seed. When the grain is wet, then that slips off fairly easily in the first stage of the refining process. And then the next stage in the process is to remove the germ, which is the part of the grain where the sprout occurs, where the germination occurs. And that is rich in oils, very rich in vitamin E, which is protective, an antioxidant. It's essential for good reproduction. And also in the germ, there are a tremendous number of B vitamins.

there are a tremendous number of B vitamins. And the B vitamins are essential for the germinating seed to utilize the starch that's stored in the middle of the grain, which is the endosperm. So in the refining process, they start by removing the bran which is the dietary fiber part and then they cut off the germ part which is a source of B vitamins and vitamin E and

essential oils. And then they're left with the white inside of the grain, which is the endosperm. And that passes to the final stages of the flower production process. And it is ground into a fine flour. And the fine flour that is produced is refined flour, and it's only 76% or thereabouts of the original grain, and it is essentially the endosperm.

and it is essentially the endosperm. So that part of the grain is mostly made up from a small amount of protein, gluten, and starch, which is a carbohydrate. And that's it but if we ingest those the protein and the and the starch alone without the benefit of the b vitamins that are underneath the the bran and in the germ, we do not have the factors that are necessary to complete the assimilation of the starch into the body so that it produces energy properly. eat the B vitamins alongside that starch, we only partly use that starch for energy, and the other part goes to fat. So that's really interesting, because I think a lot of people, you know, I think when they think of the refining process for various foods, they think of simply a bunch of good

nutrition being stripped out but you're suggesting it goes further than that that the stuff we do end up eating because it's not coming in combination with these these other components that have been sifted out it actually affects the way that the remaining starches are absorbed and used in the body and and you're suggesting that it ends up being used to our in a more detrimental way in the body, and you're suggesting that it ends up being used in a more detrimental way in the body. Do I have that right? You do have that right, yes.

Okay, so speaking of refinement, as I understand, you've suggested that the year 1880 marked a major turn in the wrong direction in terms of our culture's embrace of refined flowers. What happened back then? What happened back then that you kind of created this, what in your view was a step in the wrong direction? Well, it was a turning point, and it was a turning point that resulted from the introduction it was the base of their diet. And until about 1870, the kind of wheat that was attempted in that region, in that vast region, failed. in that vast region, failed. And it wasn't until varieties from Russia, to be in a broad sense,

from a similar climate in Russia, were brought by immigrants, the Mennonites particularly in the U.S. Anyway, this successful style of wheat, hard red, was a very good bread maker, is a very good bread maker, and it was milled with stones. It was milled with stones, and because it's so hard, the bran breaks up into tiny pieces. And when you mill whole grains, it's obvious. You can see the bran. It's in a different texture to the white flour from the center, from the endosperm of the grain. The temptation to separate out most of the endosperm has been with us forever. You know, the mix in the flour is evident, and bakers and millers forever have sifted out the brand, but not 100% successfully,

which is a very good thing for us and for our health. But the attempt to do this with to sift out the brand from hard red wheat flour that had been produced by a stone milling process was not completely successful. So the bread that was produced was dark in color. Add to that observation the fact that there are white brand wheat varieties. wheat varieties. And before 1870, it was that white grain that was the popular grain. So the breads that people were used to, whole grain or partly sifted, were white, or at least creamy white. And so here was this introduction into the central part of the U.S., fast area of wheat that was very successful and potentially a huge market, much bigger than the market that could be served from California wheat, which was the Vogue before that, and the wheat from New

York, which was the Vogue before it was a Vogue in California. The thing is, people wanted white bread. And so when the central plains were faced with a wheat that would always produce a dark bread, even if it was sifted, they were alarmed at the fact that they wouldn't be able to sell their grain. alarmed at the fact that they wouldn't be able to sell their grain. So they worked very hard to remove the bran from this mix. And the process that they came up with was the roller milling process that I've actually just described.

And that is a very thorough process. It's not a sifting. It's a removal of the bran, a removal of the germ, so that the white flour is the only thing that's left. And certainly it makes a white, white bread, a white, white lofty bread, because those hard red wheats are very good bread makers. It actually makes a loftier bread than the white brand wheat varieties that people were used to. So the drama was tremendous to actually have a white, white bread that was very lofty. And this process was enormously popular. So, Monica, you know, in your summary, you referenced a few times that a lot of the push to switch to roller mills and to create whiter, airier breads

came from demand for that. And I have to assume you've spent a lot of time thinking about why that demand existed so long ago. Just why culturally we seem to prefer the lighter, whiter, airier breads. I mean, is it just the lightness and flavor or is there something deeper than that culturally like what what's your take on on why why that demand has has has has existed for so long that brought about technologies like or at least contributed to bringing about technologies like the roller mill well i think people people have um always revered purity.

That's one aspect. cooks and bakers have always tried to please their masters, and their masters in most cases have been rich people. And so the baker always has been trying to produce something exotic, something different, something fancy, something glamorous. And usually the glamorous and the fancy is something that's immediately appealing. And so I think white breads through the ages have been immediately appealing, immediately very delicate in flavor, immediately very sweet, or immediately daintily colored, and so on. Right, okay. So Monica, let's now, let's get a little closer to the present now. In the earlier days, as I understand of your interest in bread baking baking you focused a lot

on on the yeasts and because you were you were doing a lot of work with sourdoughs um but it was it was some time as i understand in the early 90s when your your attention turned much more to to the to the wheat can you talk a bit about about that time and first of all do i have that right and and if so can you can you tell me about this focus that began on wheat in the early 90s? Yes. In the 1980s, just to go back to the decade before, I thought, well, possibly one of the reasons we don't have whole grains, at that point this was my thinking, one of the reasons may be we've forgotten how to make a good whole grain bread. And so having studied somewhat the relevant subjects, I looked into the leavening system for bread and, of course, became fascinated

and interested in the sourdough system and learned some more about that. We certainly need the sourdough system to bring out the best of the nutritional value of the whole grains. So from my perspective, the acidity that's produced in a sourdough system, for instance, allows for the good release of the minerals. Phytic acid is worried about by some people in whole grains. It's present in all seeds, and it does, within the grain, it holds up the good minerals, the iron, the zinc, the calcium, and the magnesium. And the effect of the sourdough is to release those minerals. but then in the 1990s I said wait a minute

the main ingredient in bread of course is wheat and my question then was what was the kind of wheat that was being grown before 1880 before the Plain States had taken on all this hard red wheat. What was the kind of wheat that the stone millers were using? And to cut a long story short, I began to grow some of the varieties. Fortunately, I found two educational farms who would let me grow these out.

What I realized was that these varieties were tall and the plants were large. And the plants were large, and they had been grown not only for whole grain milling, but they'd also been grown under organic circumstances in that era. And therefore, I said, wait a minute. for old-fashioned varieties could be grown now by organic farmers looking for a cover crop of grain in their rotations. And instead of turning it under, they would be able to harvest it and sell it as an unusual specialty crop. And that idea grew into the start of the Whole Grain Connection as a non-profit, part of which was to provide farmer quantities Okay, so... so okay so so monica i want to talk about the whole grain connection in just a moment but i just want you to reiterate something for me you spent much of the 90s researching these these older traditional varieties and learning as much as you could about the differences between them can you just clarify though like what what it is about the modern commercial wheats that make them less suitable for whole grain baking?

And in other words, why some of these traditional varieties are so desirable in your mind? Yes. Modern wheat has been bred primarily ever since 1900 or 1880, it's been bred primarily for roller milling. So all over the country, even in areas where the white wheat was the better wheat to grow, the breeders have bred varieties that would have this milling and baking character of hard red that will grow anywhere, you know, that will grow in California or would grow in New York State or whatever. So modern wheat has been bred for the purpose of white flour milling

and the production of white flour for white bread making. white bread making, added to which now, since the 1950s, it's also been bred to be short so that it can maximize the yield potential resulting from conventional agriculture. agriculture. So, you know, we've had a century and more of breeding that has been aiming for those characteristics rather than for whole grain stone milling characteristics. And we run the risk. I mean, it doesn't mean that modern wheat is inappropriate for organic agriculture. It doesn't mean that modern wheat is necessarily unsuitable for whole grain milling. It just means that the characteristics that would make it good for organic or good for whole grains have not been accentuated. So things like flavor have not been concerned, any concern at all. And the flavor of whole grains is primarily in the bran and the germ.

So no care has been taken on the flavor of modern wheat. No care has been taken of the fact that a tall wheat would be much better for organic agriculture because it would shade out the weeds. What else? Those are just two characteristics, and probably you can think of others, that have been neglected. So it's not that modern wheat is bad in some way, it's that it's not been produced or developed for the whole grain organic situation. Right. Okay, that makes total sense. Thank you for that clarification. Okay, so then in 2000, all of this research and focus you've made culminates in you starting a non-profit organization called the Whole Grain Connection, the main focus of which is the whole grain catalog. So can you talk a little bit about the organization and its mission and how it operates?

Yes. The main focus is not the catalog, actually. The catalog is only part of it. The main focus is simply to increase the availability and appeal of whole grains. the availability and appeal of whole grains. So a good deal of the work that I do is just that. That's what I'm doing in this phone conversation now, aiming to increase the appeal of whole grains. With regard to the catalog, the catalog of wheat varieties, the catalog is an important, it has become an important part of what is happening with the whole grain connection.

Eventually, 12 varieties were selected. The catalog has a selection of different types of wheat so that people can become accustomed to different characteristics. The result of having that catalog has meant that farmers who were organic in their efforts and wanted to grow a specialty wheat have seen this as a means to do that. I discovered actually that there is a lot of interest from farmers to grow specialty wheat and to grow something outside the commodity system. outside the commodity system. Well, Monica, this organic farmer that you're talking to is certainly interested, and so I was hoping we could talk a little bit about my own interest in growing wheat. So I was thrilled just for that reason to find out about the whole grain connection, and I'm just hoping to get a little bit of advice from you.

But I need to set the context first. To start, it'll be a very small amount of land, very, very small. I mean, I'm a veggie grower primarily, but I'd like to, this year I have plans to grow about 400 row feet or bed feet of wheat in a little field off to the side in my production. And to start, my goal is simply to grow enough to put in the pantry and get started in making my own whole grain breads. But down the line, if this goes well, and if I figure out a way to do this efficiently, the notion that I could grow enough perhaps to supply a local bakery is really appealing to me. So first of all, on such a tiny amount of land, would you encourage me to do this? Or is it a little silly when we're talking about a few hundred bed feet? No, it's not silly at all.

It's a sensible thing to do. I think any farmer who has not been used to growing wheat needs to learn how the plant behaves and whether the variety that they've decided on for their location is in fact appropriate. There's a tremendous range of variety of wheat simply because each variety has its own special location. It's been produced to be prolific in a particular location. So the first thing to do is to choose varieties that would be appropriate for your region and for your particular soil. And then plant a small amount, an amount that you can handle from start to finish by hand.

And that's what you're doing with a few rows you would learn to plant it in rows just in regular vegetable beds that's that's where I started in vegetable beds with five rows running along the bed. In other words, the rows are about eight inches apart and dropping the seed into furrows made with a hoe every two or three inches and then covering it again with a hoe. And then choosing, of course, when to plant that's also appropriate for your region. You would choose fall planting if your natural precipitation is in the wintertime, for instance. So, Monica, we've established that it's not silly for me to consider starting out with just a few hundred row feet, and you've briefly described, you know, how to go about

planting. So, I guess I'll just, I'll ask this question. Is it relatively easy to grow wheat? I'll ask this question. Is it relatively easy to grow wheat? It's very easy to grow wheat. It's extraordinarily easy to grow wheat. I mean, it just grows, provided you've made the right choice of variety. What I should have done or what I would like to do is describe the process of dealing with wheat by hand. You plant it by hand, as I've just described. Harvesting is with a sickle, a small serrated sickle of the kind that's used by rice growers in the Orient. And the heads are harvested when the grain is really ripe.

And you know it's ripe when it's rock hard. You crunch a grain and it's really hard. It's as hard as the grain was when it was planted. Anyway, it can be harvested with this serrated sickle by collecting heads into a bag, preferably a bag that's cotton or canvas. I would avoid burlap since that is likely to give an odor to the grain. I would collect the heads into a bag, into a canvas bag or a cotton bag, and half fill it, close the top, and then in order to extract the grain to do the threshing, I would lay the bag half filled on a firm surface and scooch.

on a firm surface and scooch. In other words, wear tennis shoes or running shoes and rub the grain back and forth, rub the heads back and forth in order to release the grain. That mixture can then be winnowed in the wind, but you can have more control if you have a fan set on a table, blowing sideways, and a bucket or some container on a chair or on the ground beneath the table, not actually beneath the table, below the fan stream,

and pour the mixture past the stream of the fan so that the heavy grain lands in the bucket and the chaff is blown sideways onto a tarp. You can repeat this and eventually you have nice clean grain ready for dinner. If you're a farmer, you would do the small strips and do everything by hand. Decide whether or not that's what you want to grow. And then, presuming there's a lot of seed of the kind that you grew, then I would go straight up to five acres or some such amount, and use a planter for the planting and a combine harvester for the harvesting.

Right. Okay. Can you help me figure out then, I mean, at least in a rough sense, like how to choose the varieties that I want to try growing? the varieties that I want to try growing? One idea that I wanted to convey earlier was that my goal with respect to selecting varieties for California was to select varieties that could be grown without irrigation. Right. And I did that on purpose because, number one, water's short in California, but also it's economical.

It costs money to irrigate, and wheat is a basic grain. It's a basic food. We can't afford to produce wheat that's expensive. That's one of the things that's, you know, a contradiction that's happened lately. But my original goal was to realize, or rather my original realization was that wheat is a basic food, you should not be producing it extravagantly because it's impossible to recoup the costs. So in your case, if you have easy irrigation, that's fine, but it does cost money to irrigate, you know, in terms of labor or water source or whatever. So I would aim not to irrigate, in which case I'd need to know your rainfall. Right, okay. I'm just trying to look that up

right now so I can give you something accurate. Just give me one moment here. Just give me one moment here. And it all falls in wintertime, I suppose. Quite a bit, yeah, as snow in the winter. Okay, so we're looking at an average of around 230 millimeters per year. Okay, so that's 23 centimeters, right? Yeah. 23 centimeters, divide that by two, so it's about 12 inches in my language. Yeah, no, I'm just...

So it's not very much. Yeah, we're looking at between... It may be that the only way you can grow is in the summer. Sorry. Well, the way I see it is you have two choices. One is to plant in the fall something that can withstand your winter and use all the available precipitation. Or you can plant in the spring and irrigate.

Okay. So the type of wheat that I've come to realize is tremendously versatile and useful is spelt. versatile and useful is spelt. And I think you're yet another example of where spelt might be a good idea. You would plant it in the fall. And in British Columbia, I don't think you have the severe winters that you get in northern Canada, central Canada, right? It's correct, although we do get periods of cold in my valley down to minus 20 Celsius, which is somewhere around, I think spelt actually is also, does have the reputation of being cold tolerant, you know, the most cold tolerant of all the wheats. I would choose spelt to plant in the fall and not irrigate,

or possibly to irrigate a little just to finish it off. Okay. Choosing the variety for your location is absolutely key to success. So I would go for spelt. The disadvantage with spelt, well, let's give you a big advantage of spelt, is that it's an excellent bread maker. It's just as good, if not better, than hard red wheat. So bakers will know how to use it right away. That's not the case with some of the varieties that I've been growing, for instance.

Right. So spelt is great for that. The other side of that is that spelt has been developed. It hasn't been completely dormant in the world of breeding. And some spelt varieties have been bred for super high yield and for animal feed. And that that's been bred for such goals isn't necessarily going to still be good for bread making. So you do need to go for the landrace varieties that have been traditional in some region in Europe for bread making. Okay. for bread making. Okay. And so you'd go for a land-raised variety rather than one that's just as a precaution.

It may be, as I said before, some of the modern ones are fine, but you need to check that out. So I would go for spelt. The advantage is that it would be great for bread making, but the disadvantage is that it would be great for bread making. But the disadvantage is a small one. When it's harvested, it does not thresh out of the husk. In other words, when you put it in the bag and scooch it,

what happens is the head breaks up into spikelets, or I should call the head a spike and then you would recognize that the spikelets are the little pieces that make up the spike and in each of those spikelets there is the grain and it sits there unless you give it another effort

to remove the grain from those spikelets. And it sounds outrageous that you would have to do that, but you should probably remember that rice and oats and barley all have varieties that need to be removed from the spikelets or from the hull. Right, okay. So there are machines around that are made for dehusking rice or dehusking oats or de-husking oats or de-husking barley. But a rice de-huller is what I've used successfully. So that equipment is sort of specialized

and not very frequently available here in the U.S. But I think it's a difficulty that's easily surmounted and the result is a very you can grow a very hardy grain

and produce something that makes a very good bread ok well listen this probably is a good place to stop, at least for now. I think if I'm successful in producing some wheat, I wouldn't mind having you back on to talk about some advice you have for baking good whole grain bread, so maybe we can do that in the future. Uh-huh, sounds good.

Well, Monica Spiller, thank you very much for joining me on the podcast. Thank you again for the opportunity. I love to talk about this and tell people. Thank you. So that's it, folks. I hope you enjoyed that. And one more time, I'll announce that I've decided to separate out the contributions that I'm starting to get from you with tips or advice for your colleagues that I can share to get from you with tips or advice for your colleagues that I can share on this podcast, I've decided to take those and make them into separate little micro episodes

that will be released in between my main interviews. So I've already got about three built up. Thanks to those who have submitted. I'm going to be in touch and hopefully I'll get more. So how do you do that? Write me an email, editor at theruminant.ca. You can call my Skype number and record a message. That's at 310-734-8426. Or, hell, just give me a call, and we'll arrange a time to have a short talk. 250-767-6636.

I'd love to hear from you. And now I gotta go. Oh my god, I'm so far behind on the farm. Happy farming, everybody. Because why would we live in a place that don't want us A place that is trying to bleed us dry We could be happy with life in the country with salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands i've been doing a lot of thinking some real soul searching and here's my final resolve i don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong so we'll run right out into the wilds and braces we'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees and live life like it was meant to be Do do do do do do Do do do do do do