“If eating wheat was so bad for us, it’s hard to imagine that populations that ate it would have tolerated it for 10,000 years,” Sarah A. Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies lactase persistence, told me.
Sarah, turn on your brain. What about Game Theory? What if wheat is addictive and mankind did not enslave Wheat but wheat (and possible other crops) "enslaved" mankind?
There is evidence that wheat may not be as healthy for you as you think. Also, the wheat from 60 years ago has very little to do with our current wheat.
The reason we're eating wheat even though we're not made for it is because we could support larger populations on that versus hunting and gathering. Farming societies eventually won, even though hunters and gatherers were more healthy, because farming societies have a food surplus (which it can store), and can then afford to wage war and expand. If you look at skeletons from before and after farming, you see that hunter and gatherers were taller, had bigger brains than we have today, and were overall healthier.
There's zero scientific basis for the claim that height inherently has anything to do with health, such that taller people are healthier.
If that theory were correct, Asian people would be the least healthy on the planet. When in fact the people of eg Japan have been among the most healthy for thousands of years.
Caucasians - for example in Scandinavia - getting taller did not equate directly to being far healthier than their Japanese peers.
Height increases over time are driven by the type of diet consumed. The Japanese diet did not lead to height, however it did lead to health and longevity.
> Are the gluten haters correct that modern wheat varietals contain more gluten than past cultivars, making them more toxic? Unlikely, according to recent analysis by Donald D. Kasarda, a scientist with the United States Department of Agriculture. He analyzed records of protein content in wheat harvests going back nearly a century. It hasn’t changed.
Another study, this one from Canada supports this. "University of Saskatchewan researchers Ravi Chibbar and Pierre Hucl grew 37 varieties of wheat that date back to the 1860s and analyzed the nutrient composition in each sample. They found that the concentration of proteins, including gluten, is remarkably similar to that grown more than 150 years ago—dispelling the myth of “Frankenwheat,” the genetic modification of the grain’s protein structure by the agriculture industry in recent years."
As a plant breeder I can assure you the gluten content has certainly gone up! We call it a "Multi Trait Index" for baking quality, and we can show nearly every years released varieties increase in the MTI. What is the number one weighted factor of the baking quality MTI? Gluten percentage.
Also, this article is bunk, saying, "if people can maintain an enzyme to digest lactoes, we should be able to evolve an enzyme to break down gluten too. "Total hoggerty poggerty applesauce!" NYT, you are cut off!
Game theory tends to deal with vastly oversimplified models, so you should be very very wary of citing it to prove a point about how anything in reality actually works. You need to prove that your models' assumptions are true before you can conclude their results are true.
I read the WheatBelly book, which you cite. That is one of the most heavily cited book I've read about health. It was a bit extreme in how aggressive that book cited. I'd strongly encourage people to get the book from your local library and give it a read. (edited to add a thought) Wheat isn't a problem, even spoken of within the book. It's unsprouted wheat, which is currently the norm. We've sprouted wheat for most of human's civilization, minus the last 40 or so years.