Presenter: Bob Quinn

Format: MP4 Video file download
Includes: Audio & Slides

For thousands of years wheat has been known as "the staff of life? and was the foundation of some of the greatest civilizations known to man, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Europeans and now the North Americans. However, this has changed suddenly over the past seventy years and today we have up to 20% of the U.S. population who can no longer tolerate eating wheat and another 20% who occasionally dabble with wheat-free/gluten-free diets. The staff of life is broken. What has happened to cause these serious problems and what can be done to mend the staff of life and restore wheat to the center of a healthy diet as was the case for so many thousands of years? This presentation will explore where we have gone wrong with our wheat starting with modern industrial production systems on the farm and increasing efficiency in processing at both the mill and the bakery. In addition, wheat plant breeders are changing wheat to be more suitable for these modern industrialized systems. All of these changes have been in the name of high production and low cost so that we can be assured of abundant cheap food. We now see that this cheap food has a very high cost. The price is not paid at the checkout counter. Many are already demonstrating what can be done to reverse the damage done. The presentation will be focused more on solutions than the problem.