Guest guest Posted September 30, 2004 Report Share Posted September 30, 2004 Fascinating! I'm on that list, but I don't watch it as closely as I watch the Price lists. I was just about to suggest that, of all species, perhaps only birds are able to digest grains satisfactorily? Grain messes up the rumen in ruminants, and it gives problems for a large proportion of us humans. What other critters eat grain freely, without undue deterioration of their health? Fungi? Other microorganisms? Insects...but we're not concerned with their health. Mice and suchlike...but we're not concerned with their health either...except when they're lab animals. On the other hand, we've eaten grains for quite a while, and cattle have enjoyed them, too. It seems that if we sprout and ferment seeds like wheat and soy before we eat them, then we can eat them regularly without it ruining our health. But if we eat them like candy, without turning off their protective mechanisms by means of sprouting and/or fermenting them first, then we're asking for trouble. --- In , " Sagehill " <sagehill@p...> wrote: > Hi , interesting article! > > It points out something that happened last summer on the pastured poultry > list, where someone said that both he and his father had a terrible time > digesting eggs from their chickens (cramps and bad gas), which were > supplemented with a layer feed. Neither one had trouble eating storebought > eggs, which distressed them. > > I suggested that they try a feed without soybeans, since so much of soy in > the US is GMO, and most layer feeds contain soy. They immediately switched > to a soyless brand and were able to eat their hens' eggs after a couple of > days. To me, it was proof positive that what you feed your food animals > also feeds you... > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > I just found something that says not all proteins get digested. > > http://www.non-gm-farmers.com/news_details.asp?ID=1353 > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 1, 2004 Report Share Posted October 1, 2004 >Hence, sweet corn and milky field corn is nutritious and (I believe) >fairly digestable. Mature, dried corn should be treated to maximize >nutrient extraction. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon or have I >just not correlated enough information? > > Geoffrey Tolle I agree totally ... I haven't read any specific studies, but green beans are a LOT different from dried beans ... dried kidney beans can be toxic if not treated right, but you can eat green beans right off the vine. Come to think of it, in the ruminant example, ruminants rarely eat matured seeds, because in nature the seeds tend to fall off the stalk as soon as they are matured (staying on the stalk was part of breeding grains to be harvestable). You know, it's also possible that ruminants don't actually digest whole grain completely either ... a lot of seeds pass right through their digestive tracts, come out the other end to sprout in a nice pile of manure. Commercial feed grains are hulled and cracked or rolled or ground so they can be digested. Heidi Jean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 1, 2004 Report Share Posted October 1, 2004 You're correct on this point. A lot of ruminants do not digest seeds very effectively. In fact, many seeds (including the Honey Locust and Avocado) have evolved to be digested then deposited on the ground with growth inhibitors deactivated and a bit pile of warm nutrients surrounding them. I have seen studies which have shown that an efficient way of planting some seeds in somewhat hostile environments can be to feed them to ruminants and let them do their thing in the field. It's a bit haphazard but it does replicate a natural seed distribution method. Perhaps only birds and insects are really any good at eating unprocessed grains. Geoffrey > You know, it's also possible that ruminants don't > actually digest whole grain completely either ... > a lot of seeds pass right through their digestive > tracts, come out the other end to sprout in a nice > pile of manure. Commercial feed grains are hulled > and cracked or rolled or ground so they can be digested > > Heidi Jean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 1, 2004 Report Share Posted October 1, 2004 > Actually cattle have not had grains much until recently. Not to be argumentive, but didn't Dr. Price or someone report that some tribes in Africa considered grain to be " cattle food " , not their first choice for feeding their people? I wonder where I saw that? > My > goats LOVE seed heads, and eat them when they can ... > but seed heads only occur during a short season, and when > they eat them they get a lot of chaff etc. coating the seed. Yes. I've been thinking about that. And isn't the substance we call fiber (including chaff) the stuff that the rumen bacteria actually benefit from the most? And if the normal rumen bacteria are kept healthy, then any bad stuff in the gluten/starch is kept under control. Perhaps the presence of the chaff and other " fiber " on the seedhead keeps the actual seed from being digested before it passes out of the animal. But if they eat grains that have been removed from the seedhead and had their chaff removed, then they actually have to deal with the grain and its gluten? > However, I agree on many of the grains and seeds ... > humans haven't had much trouble with, say, rice or > millet. Yes. I've wondered about that, too. Polished rice can be a problem. I wonder what proportion of the diet of rice-eating cultures and millet-eating cultures is actually made up of those grains? I'm wondering if cultures where large amounts of grains are consumed are the same cultures that have highly-developed, sophisticated medical traditions? > Wheat is an odd case though ... it seems to have > caused major problems for the Egyptians, Assyrians, > and Romans, mainly for a subset of folks with a certain > genotype, who promptly died off in those cultures. > But not the Arabs? I keep thinking of how they had the 7 years of feasting and 7 years of famine in Egypt, and they got through the famine with their stockpiled grain. Yes, the dried grains can keep for a long time, but I can imagine it was not entirely healthy for the people. Didn't ancient Egypt have a highly developed medical tradition? But the people in the land of Goshen, living with and taking care of the Pharoah's cattle, prospered. By the time Moses was born, they had a reputation for birthing their children quickly and easily, unlike the Egyptian women. > Northern Europeans didn't get wheat until very recently ... > in some cases, wheat wasn't eaten much until 50 or 100 > years ago. I didn't know that. What grains did they eat? Oats? Rye? Not very many grains? > Now that stock is going through the > same health issues that the early cultures went through > 3000 or so years ago. But again, it's only for folks with > a certain genotype ... folks with that genotype who react > to wheat and still eat it have a measurably shorter > lifespan (they die more of cancer, heart disease, and > depression, plus they are more infertile). For those folks, > " moderation " with wheat is not a good thing ... it's an > allergy style reaction, and as with folk who are allergic > to peanuts, it takes very little of the allergen to make a > big response. Unlike peanuts though, this response is > largely invisible and the person likely will not know it > is happening. > > For the folks who DON'T have that genotype, sprouting > and soaking and all will make wheat easier to digest, > though as far as I've read only a long sourdough ferment > makes the protein completely digestible. I also suspect > that the Mediterranean diet (wheat, olive oil, and wine > together) makes it more digestible too. > > > Heidi Jean I also wonder if the gluten contains the fungal contamination that Doug Kaufmann talks about? It sure seems like the more pure gluten you eat, the more likely you are to react. They did use treated corn GLUTEN meal to try to confer a fungal disease on the turf, which led to the discovery that corn gluten meal could be used as a herbicide. P.S. Sorry to keep bringing up the same old stuff...but it keeps coming to mind. ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 1, 2004 Report Share Posted October 1, 2004 >Perhaps only birds and insects are really any good at eating >unprocessed grains. > > Geoffrey Birds do well on seeds, but here is another tidbit: in " Life without Bread " Dr. Lutz did an experiment on chickens. Chickens, it seems, get athlerosclerosis .... and they get it more on a high-grain diet than on a high-meat/fat diet! Chickens are omnivores, not seed eaters specificially, and they do love meat, so they may be a special case. Also the grain they used was wheat, which in my book is a special case also. Since chickens typically aren't kept to " old age " the fact they get sick when they are older wouldn't affect their breeding much, but I'm wondering if they wouldn't be healthier if I fed mine more tallow ... Rats are an interesting case too ... they reliably get T1 diabetes from wheat or casein, esp. if it is introduced too early in the diet. Casein is REALLY interesting because obviously rat milk casein would not cause that problem, one would think (and no doubt the casein they use is not from raw milk!). Hydrolyzed casein isn't a problem though. Wild rats and mice do like grain, and they chew it thoroughly, but again they can't get it for most of the year. However, they have been living with humans so long, and they adapt so fast, that you would think they would have adapted to a wheat diet by now. Heidi Jean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 1, 2004 Report Share Posted October 1, 2004 : >Not to be argumentive, but didn't Dr. Price or someone report that >some tribes in Africa considered grain to be " cattle food " , not their >first choice for feeding their people? I wonder where I saw that? Yeah, and the Japanese feed them soy. But those by definition are not " wild " ruminants. Cattle do love grain, so do goats. I have heard it said that grains were considered " starvation food " by a number of cultures ... like acorn meal and the sub-bark of trees. > Yes. I've been thinking about that. And isn't the substance we call >fiber (including chaff) the stuff that the rumen bacteria actually >benefit from the most? And if the normal rumen bacteria are kept >healthy, then any bad stuff in the gluten/starch is kept under >control. Perhaps the presence of the chaff and other " fiber " on the >seedhead keeps the actual seed from being digested before it passes >out of the animal. But if they eat grains that have been removed >from the seedhead and had their chaff removed, then they actually >have to deal with the grain and its gluten? I'm not sure what-all the bran does ... if you ate whole wheat berries, uncooked, chances are you wouldn't digest them much at all, you would see them come out the other end. To keep horses and ruminants healthy, the manufacturers create something like pasta, extruded masses of stuff that digest slower, keeping the rumen bacteria more healthy, which works just as you say. All animal feeds use the fiber content though, AFAIK ... white flour is only for human consumption, it's too nutritionally empty to feed cattle. But even ground up, whole wheat seems to be far less damaging than white wheat flour, anectodally and in studies. It could be something like the lectins in gluten glom onto some sugar or byproduct in the bran that keeps them from attacking the villi, or that the damage is more spread out because the actual gluten doesn't come into contact with the intestine wall so quickly (eating lots of fat with the meal does something similar). > >Yes. I've wondered about that, too. Polished rice can be a >problem. I wonder what proportion of the diet of rice-eating >cultures and millet-eating cultures is actually made up of those >grains? I'm wondering if cultures where large amounts of grains are >consumed are the same cultures that have highly-developed, >sophisticated medical traditions? It really depends on the culture: Price found cultures that ate primarily grains and were quite healthy. Asia does not seem to get the " gluten related " type damage from eating mostly rice ... they DO get malnourished if there is not enough OTHER food to eat (and their " other " food tends to be really high in nutrients, like dried anchovies!). As far as my cursory knowledge goes though, the wheat-eating countries have the most degenerative diseases, except in some very isolated communities where they seem to be adapted to it (the island of Crete, for example). > >But not the Arabs? The Assyrians and Egyptians left lots of mummies, so they are the best studied! I don't know much about Arabs ... seems like they do a lot of herding and live a semi-nomadic life (or did) without the intense civilization of the others. The Egyptians were an odd case in that they had the Nile and got really, really into wheat farming. >I keep thinking of how they had the 7 years of feasting and 7 years >of famine in Egypt, and they got through the famine with their >stockpiled grain. Yes, the dried grains can keep for a long time, >but I can imagine it was not entirely healthy for the people. Didn't >ancient Egypt have a highly developed medical tradition? Right. And those rich pharohs weren't very healthy, even though one would assume they did get meat too. Significantly, you see the " narrow face " syndrome Price talked about ... look at Nefertiti and Tututkamen. Also lots of nasal infections. >But the people in the land of Goshen, living with and taking care of >the Pharoah's cattle, prospered. By the time Moses was born, they >had a reputation for birthing their children quickly and easily, >unlike the Egyptian women. Right. The skeletal remains show pretty much the same thing: humans got much less healthy when they started farming. Lost a lot of height too. >> Northern Europeans didn't get wheat until very recently ... >> in some cases, wheat wasn't eaten much until 50 or 100 >> years ago. > >I didn't know that. What grains did they eat? Oats? Rye? Not very >many grains? Depends where they lived. In Ireland, for example, they did start raising some wheat a couple hundred years ago ... but the peasants weren't allowed to eat it, it went to the lords and ladies who were the landowners. Peasants ate potatoes. Oats, barley and rye have been farmed for some time, but remember that the Romans regarded most of northern Europe as " barbarian " country and it seems they ate a lot of venison and wild foods. My grandad said they ate oats, lots of oats, mostly as oatmeal gruel, but they couldn't afford bread too often. They also raised goats and vegetables, but cows, he said " were for rich people " . In Finland they eat a lot of fish, but I read somewhere that since wheat doesn't grow there, they didn't get it at all until very recently, when imports became cheaper. Also there was a BIG revolution at the turn of the century, when mechanical harvesting came about. That made wheat, and corn, a whole lot cheaper, to the point where there was this huge surplus. A lot of the surplus was distilled, leading to exceedingly heavy drinking which ended up with prohibition. And people moved from the farm to the cities ... on the farm they did eat bread etc. but when you talk to some of the old guys, they'll say something like " yeah, for a long time all we had to eat was salt pork and collards " ... folks lived on what they could raise, and for a lot of folks that was a pig or two and vegies. Other folks did have grain fields and they stored the grain, but it was nothing like today where wheat and corn are cheap and easy. Vegies and pork were cheap and easy, and eggs and milk. > >I also wonder if the gluten contains the fungal contamination that >Doug Kaufmann talks about? It sure seems like the more pure gluten >you eat, the more likely you are to react. > >They did use treated corn GLUTEN meal to try to confer a fungal >disease on the turf, which led to the discovery that corn gluten meal >could be used as a herbicide. Hmm. Maybe the gluten came about as a defense against funguses? There may well be a connection ... wheat gluten seems to be uniquely toxic, and the reason wheat became popular is that it will grow in wet, cold climates ( " Winter wheat " ) and is high in protein. As far as the human reaction, humans do react badly to funguses. The research on gluten though, is usually with purified wheat gluten, or in some cases, with just peptide strings from wheat gluten. So even if there are other factors, it seems clear that the peptide strings alone are bad stuff. Which may be why the body creates antibodies to it (there are different schools of thought on this). Actually another example of " bad stuff " proteins is ricin ... really toxic stuff from castor beans it's now on the terrorist alert level. But it's a protein that leaks into the blood from the gut and causes quick death. > Heidi Jean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 1, 2004 Report Share Posted October 1, 2004 > >But not the Arabs? > > The Assyrians and Egyptians left lots of mummies, so they > are the best studied! I don't know much about Arabs ... seems > like they do a lot of herding and live a semi-nomadic life (or did) > without the intense civilization of the others. The Egyptians were > an odd case in that they had the Nile and got really, really into > wheat farming. > I remember reading that traditional Arabs enjoy camel milk as part of their diets and had perfect palates and teeth. > Significantly, you see > the " narrow face " syndrome Price talked about ... look at Nefertiti > and Tututkamen. Also lots of nasal infections. > In the case of royalty, I thought this had more to do with inbreeding? But skeletal abnormalities were seen among the richer merchants and nobility--those eating the refined wheat products--and probably lots of honey. > >> Northern Europeans didn't get wheat until very recently ... > >> in some cases, wheat wasn't eaten much until 50 or 100 > >> years ago. > > > >I didn't know that. What grains did they eat? Oats? Rye? Not very > >many grains? > > Depends where they lived. In Ireland, for example, they did start > raising some wheat a couple hundred years ago ... but the peasants > weren't allowed to eat it, it went to the lords and ladies who were > the landowners. Peasants ate potatoes. Oats, barley and rye have > been farmed for some time, but remember that the Romans > regarded most of northern Europe as " barbarian " country and it > seems they ate a lot of venison and wild foods. My grandad said > they ate oats, lots of oats, mostly as oatmeal gruel, but they couldn't > afford bread too often. They also raised goats and vegetables, > but cows, he said " were for rich people " . In Finland they eat a lot > of fish, but I read somewhere that since wheat doesn't grow there, > they didn't get it at all until very recently, when imports became > cheaper. I wonder what the Irish ate deeper in history? No potatoes. Surely alot of sea veggies and sea foods. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 1, 2004 Report Share Posted October 1, 2004 > Also there was a BIG revolution at the turn of the century, when > mechanical harvesting came about. That made wheat, and corn, > a whole lot cheaper, to the point where there was this huge > surplus. A lot of the surplus was distilled, leading to exceedingly > heavy drinking which ended up with prohibition. And people moved > from the farm to the cities ... on the farm they did eat bread etc. > but when you talk to some of the old guys, they'll say something > like " yeah, for a long time all we had to eat was salt pork and collards " ... > folks lived on what they could raise, and for a lot of folks that was > a pig or two and vegies. Other folks did have grain fields and they > stored the grain, but it was nothing like today where wheat and corn > are cheap and easy. Vegies and pork were cheap and easy, and > eggs and milk. Really interesting. Might be what we call " soul food " . They had a special soul food dinner one time at the cafeteria on campus. I don't think they used the traditional fats, though. I wish they had! Whenever they have Thai food, they do use coconut milk and that sort of thing. I'm not sure they use coconut oil, though! I've encouraged them to use it. > > > > >I also wonder if the gluten contains the fungal contamination that > >Doug Kaufmann talks about? It sure seems like the more pure gluten > >you eat, the more likely you are to react. > > > >They did use treated corn GLUTEN meal to try to confer a fungal > >disease on the turf, which led to the discovery that corn gluten meal > >could be used as a herbicide. > > Hmm. Maybe the gluten came about as a defense against funguses? > There may well be a connection ... wheat gluten seems to be > uniquely toxic, and the reason wheat became popular is that > it will grow in wet, cold climates ( " Winter wheat " ) and is high > in protein. > > As far as the human reaction, humans do react badly to funguses. > The research on gluten though, is usually with purified wheat > gluten, or in some cases, with just peptide strings from wheat > gluten. So even if there are other factors, it seems clear that > the peptide strings alone are bad stuff. Which may be why > the body creates antibodies to it (there are different schools > of thought on this). > You know, I'm about to decide that gluten, in and of itself, tends to be toxic for many of us--probably due to a combination of factors. And I'm thinking the fungal problem is the result, not the cause. Lots of times I read articles that indicate the microorganisms FOLLOW the damage, not cause it. Of course, it could be a " both-and " problem, not just " either-or " . Well, look at why people are getting turned on to kefir--it helps restore the healthy intestinal flora. You eat the food to get the microorganisms. So if you're eating lots of gluten, you're probably getting lots of fungal organisms, too. Interesting stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 3, 2004 Report Share Posted October 3, 2004 >I believe that they will also eat mice >if they're in the mood. > > Geoffrey Yeah, one found a dead one and was running around trying to keep it from the rest ... Heidi Jean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 9, 2004 Report Share Posted October 9, 2004 " To me, it was proof positive that what you feed your food animals also feeds you... " Yes....you are what you eat eats, too.... .....what is going on with all of this SOY....we can put " stuff " on mars.......but we can't, for the life of us, figure out that soy is no good for humans, the " authorities " can't be THAT stupid, like I said...look at all the technology we have, and they can't even figure THAT one out.....?!?!?!?! ...and gmo's....c'mon... :-( .....a little light should go off in everyones head...it's not about our health....it's about $$$$$$$$$$'s.....and LOT'S of it....screw our health.... -- Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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