This is great!  I'm eager to hear of a commercially-available ground Einkorn wheat flour.  I don't have the means or know-how to mill my own flour but I'd really like to try baking with Einkorn.

Pasta is one non-Primal carb I do not miss at all.

-why try to simulate neolithic foods with paleolithic-type ingredients?

-why try to eat pasta at all?

-is it really that hard to give up?

Pasta dates back 4,000 years and has a lower glycemic index than bread, so I don't think it is such a bad thing.

Here is  Einkorn flour:
http://www.growseed.org/einkorn.html

Expensive, but may be worth it.  I'd love to know if anyone gets it and has success baking with it.

-4000 yrs is nothing for human evolution and nutrition

-a snickers bar has a lower GI than pasta
-but I wouldn't eat a snickers bar either
-if something is bad, relative to something else that's "not so bad"....why eat it at all???

Interesting recent discovery:


Bread was around 30,000 years ago -study

LONDON (Reuters Life!) – Starch grains found on 30,000-year-old grinding stones suggest that prehistoric man may have dined on an early form of flat bread, contrary to his popular image as primarily a meat-eater.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal on Monday, indicate that Palaeolithic Europeans ground down plant roots similar to potatoes to make flour, which was later whisked into dough

[edited]

The researchers said their findings throw mankind's first known use of flour back some 10,000 years, the previously oldest evidence having been found in Israel on 20,000 year-old grinding stones.

The findings may also upset fans of the Paleolithic diet, which follows earlier research that assumes early humans ate a meat-centered diet.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101018/india_nm/india522760

Einkorn is becoming popular all across the US.  Jovial Pasta is a great product and an easy way to try einkorn.

I have been able to secure a supply of whole organic einkorn wheat berries and make them available for sale on the einkorn blog.  

This einkorn really is fun to cook with too.

Regarding 300,000years ago eating grains.

You need to read the following article, which shows that startling papers are easier to publish. Also Medical establishment is not very good at catching analytical errors.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/

Evidence of grains on seeds doesn't imply that humans were eating grains. It does mean that they were using some grains. It could be for colors for painting. It could also be that sometimes they were starving and ate it.

Just getting some thing published in a journal doesn't automatically mean that the abstract says what the paper says or the paper reports things factually, or the paper uses the evidence correctly, or the paper does the analysis correctly. There are so many ways of getting the desired results, and the peer review only works to throw out unpopular ideas. Eating wheat is not unpopular.

I came across Jovial in WF a few weeks ago. I am not wheat sensitive, so I can't comment on the that difference, but I will say it is the best whole wheat past I have ever tried- hands down not even close.

Thanks Anand for pointing out the lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science Atlantic article!

Hmmm....sounds interesting. But I worry - just because we don't feel outward symptoms doesn't mean harm us not being done.

Now, I sound like a hypocrite since I like my tequila and wine, but Einkorn won't give you a buzz. ;)

I agree - stone age man probably had a very hard time collecting seeds and "grain". Add to that the grinding and the rest of the preparation and I very much doubt that is was anything like a staple. Grains may be a means of survival when nothing better can be obtained.

To "Anonymous" who said: "...[Jovial] is the best whole wheat pasta I have ever tried - hands down..." I wonder how you'd say this compares to Dreamfields pasta.  I realize we're not exactly comparing apples to apples, but still some sort of practical comparison would be useful.

@Anand Srivastava  

So basically, we shouldn't believe anything we read on this board?

Hi, Bonnie--

Judging from my single einkorn baking experience and from what GrowSeed.org's Eli Rogosa tells me, you can bake perfectly fine bread with einkorn. It will not rise like conventional wheat flour, rising only a little.

However, I am not trying to paint einkorn as a problem-free grain. It is just an interesting indulgence and part of a fascinating broader conversation about this thing called "wheat.
"

My girlfriend and I tried Jovial pasta last week, and the taste and texture were similar to regular whole wheat pasta, so we plan to substitute it in our recipes.

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Since no one has yet posted their baking-with-Einkorn results in detail, I will! Complete with step-by-step photos of my bread-baking experience. I think it's delicious!
http://www.illinoislori.blogspot.com/2012/12/honest-food-trying-ancient-wheat.html

You forgot agave syrup, which a lot of people are using as an "all natural" low-glycemic replacement for HFCS. In fact, it contains more fructose than HFCS.

One manufacturer's products include “low glycemic monosacharide.” Gosh, I wonder what that is.

It would be a service, if you (or someone) posted a "fructose" content list which includes all the common fruits and berries. I eat a lot of berries and have wondered if that is such a good idea. A list would help us define "good calories" regarding these possible fructose bombs.

Thanks for the visuals and labels on fructose...I am very aware of fructose contents and fruit -- especially since I have experience with fruit and gout attacks that may or may not be supported in literature.  I will only add that every time you purchase a product DO NOT ASSUME CONTENTS ARE THE SAME as when you last purchased.  For example, Classico pasta sauces which I used as base for soups and stews (all LC) has started adding sugar.  CostCo Kirkland brand marinated artichoke hearts (again LC) started out using olive oil, now uses cannola oil. My experience as label-reading shopper is food producers are now adding sugars including fructose to just about everything because the buying public perceives sugar to be tastier...even the rotisserie chickens most grocery delis have now...be careful if you very LC to whether the spice rub has sugar in it.

What don't you find it in?

Finding it hard to believe that an apple wouldn't have some other redeeming value that counteracts or balances the fructose content: soluble fiber, fiber, vitamins, minerals, etc.  Hopefully this is not an indictment of all fresh fruits?

It's all very well to measure fructose content, but it is meaningless unless we know what intake levels have to be before they become problematic.

In my own case, when I went "paleo" a couple of years ago, I swore off sugar, grain, and processed foods.  I lost 15 lbs over six months without trying.  Now this was before I heard about the fructose issue, and I was eating fruit like I never had before in my life, 3 to 4 pieces a day, and the sweet ones, too:  apples, bananas, grapes, dates, etc.  Surely I was ingesting more fructose than I had been before with a blob of ketchup here, steak sauce there...

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what you show as A.1. Steak Sauce is actually their marinade. Real A.1. Steak Sauce (at least my bottle) contains no HFCS, but does have 2g sugar per serving. Thank you for spending the time you do on this blog; you, along with some others, have given me the intellectual and scientific basis I needed to change my diet. The improvements, physical and mental, have been astounding.

The fructose info is interesting, but I agree with GK. We really need to know what is considered a safe level before condemning all fructose sources.

Fruits do have certain health benefits, some more than others, especially berries. There is also the possibility that by becoming super fructose-phobic and avoiding all fruits/berries,  that one could decrease their chances of heart disease, just to succumb to cancer instead.

Perkdoug, I have found that the web site "nutrition data" has a breakdown of sugars for things. Go to nutritiondata.com and type in the food you are interested in. Choose the right food and quantity and then go down to the section on carbohydrate and click the see more details. When I did that for dates, 1 medjool has about 7.6 grams of fructose (eek!). Like many folks I am cutting down on my fructose consumption so use this table a lot.

How about the king of HFCS--Soft drinks and candy.

As someone else asked, "what don't you find it in?"

Fructose can be found in many vegetables too.  One sweet onion has 6.69 grams, a half head of cabbage has 6.58 grams, a head of lettuce has 5 grams, a cup of chopped red peppers has 3.37 grams, a medium sized cucumber has 2.62 grams.  In fact nutritiondata.com lists 138 vegetables which have some amount of fructose in them (albeit many having very small amounts.)

So, if one's goal is to avoid all sources of fructose and still maintain any semblance of good health, well good luck.

@Nameless: Well put!

I think tossing fruit is a bit of the baby out with the bathwater.Fruit has the most wonderful spectrum of bright tastes and flavors of any food we have on the planet. "Healthy" vegetables encompassed the bitter, the flat, and the algae like part of the flavor spectrum. Me, is meet and nice in small to medium quantities but when eaten in low-carb volumes, it just becomes something you shovel in to make hunger go way.

Fruit is a wonderful gift. Adding a little sugar and heating some berries produces this wonderful sauce you can pour over pancakes or creps (if my diabetes let me have crepes). Some fat, flour, and salt makes a wonderful crust that you wrap around sliced and spiced fruit. Cold cherries crunch between your teeth dribble juice around your tongue while you roll the stone around your mouth cleaning off the last of the fruit meat. Peaches with ginger, peach blackberry, blueberry pie. Sliced and cored apples cooked in red-hot cinnamon sauce on the stove and then chilled before serving on Christmas Eve. On a hot August day, wandering through an orchard and dodging Yellowjackets when picking a beautifully ripe peach off the tree.  Pulling a crisp apple out of winter store in November and tasting what will become cider.

On a more practical level, I also need to make the decision on how much fruit versus how much bulk  laxative? If I eat one piece every days, I'm looking 8+ tablespoons of Metamucil.  bleck.  I'd rather starve myself in  other areas to make room for the delightful sweetness of fruit.

Who said throw fruit out?

I believe you are reading things that aren't there.

I disagree.  without giving a threshold of "bad", your presentation implies that all fructose at any level is bad.  I read some comments as expressing fear or doubt that they were eating too much fruit.  others like me what to know the threshold of bad.

just between you and me, I'd give up living before I gave up fruit.  no joke.  the flavours of fruit are that important to me.  I've already lost enough food ground with diabetes, I'm not giving up any more.

According to Dr. Richard Bernstein, fruit does not have to be a part of a healthy diet. Here is what he says in his book, Diabetes Solution:

"Although eliminating fruit and fruit juices from the diet can initially be a big sacrifice for many of my patients, they usually get use to this rapidly, and they appreciate the effect upon blood sugar control. I haven't eaten fruit in almost forty years and I haven't suffered in any respect. Some people fear that they will lose important nutrients by eliminating fruit, but that shouldn't be a worry. Nutrients found in fruits are also present in the vegetables you can safely eat."

Dr. Bernstein has had T1DM for about 50 years and advocates a very low carb diet to help normalize blood sugars. http://www.diabetes-book.com/

Because of blood sugar problems I have eliminated all sources of HFCS and have greatly limited my fruits. I find I can eat a few berries or a bite or two of other fruits without raising my blood glucose, but I mostly stick with colorful low carb veges.

Dr: Davis -- "Who said throw fruit out? I believe you are reading things that aren't there."

Yet you start this post with a photo of an apple. Although perhaps it wasn't  your intention, it certainly implies that fruit is bad.

National estimates of dietary fructose intake increased from 1977 to 2004 in the United States.
high-fructose corn syrup percentage of sweeteners increased from 16% in 1978 to 42% in 1998
Since 1978, mean daily intakes of added and total fructose increased in all gender and age groups, whereas naturally occurring fructose intake decreased or remained constant.
If you can't get the full text at least read the abstract. The full text has some interesting charts presenting the data more clearly.
It isn't eating naturally sourced fructose from whole fruit driving increased obesity. Increases in fruit consumption are dwarfed by greater increases in total daily energy and carbohydrate intakes.

RE: Comment by Nameless (“Yet you start this post with a photo of an apple. Although perhaps it wasn't your intention, it certainly implies that fruit is bad”)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The good doctor is merely demonstrating in effective graphic terms that
too much of a good thing is not good. The numbers (ie gms of fructose)
are important guidelines. There’s no point in getting your nuts in wringer over it!

Bernstein developed Diabetes at age 12. He was born in 1934, so at age 75, he has been diabetic for 63 years. No diabetic complications. Normal blood sugar for all!!

I think its more helpful to express sugar content (and fructose if known) as a percentage rather than an amount per (varying) serve.  It makes it easier to compare apples to apples (scuse pun).  I've prepared a few listings of various food groups (several hundred items in each) on this basis at www.howmuchsugar.com if you are interested.

Some people suffer from fructose malabsorption. One source states that it is found in approximately 30-40% of the population of Central Europe. If one has that condition, then it would be prudent to avoid all fructose, even the fructose found in fruit. I love the taste of fruit, but it is destroying my health due to malabsorption issues. Fortunately, we know that some cultures lived very healthy lives without eating fruit (e.g. Eskimos).

I don't get it. What am I not seeing?

How much high fructose corn syrup is in a serving of the BBQ sauce? How much in a serving of the steak marinade?

You state such figures for a serving of apple (1 medium), and for a serving of honey (2 Tablespoons).

I had to give up fruit to prevent further beta cell damage (above 140 apparently for pre-diabetics, and maybe everyone, I don't know). Fruit and many veggies are toxic to people with glucose intolerance. I had to give up veggies for now, until I can find one that I can tolerate. Cabbage was too hard on my blood sugar. I am slowly trying to figure out what I can eat and how to minimize the glycemic impact. Unfortunately, I might have to damage my beta cells to find out what works. The system told me I was fine, even though I told them I had sugar problems. I gave up on doctors 10 years ago, since they were useless. I finally bought a meter and started testing, and the truth is painful.

In addition, since I have been involved with cardiac CT for now nearly 24 years, the PLC also affords me an opportunity to develop a CT coronary angiography training program for cardiologists and radiologists (www.cardiaccta.us). Together, these new efforts are merely an extension of my interests in prevention, patient care, and teaching.

I dunno, just take the orange wedge out completely and shift the diary rec's to full fat instead of low fat and it would be a pretty good plan!  I notice that they recommend both eggs and beef in the protein section!!!

Hard to justify all those subsidies if you don't recommend eating the product you subsidize.

Pharmacology depends on an unhealthy diet as well.

Now excuse me while I polish my tin foil hat some more.

Saw this and thought of you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDYKHduoQ00  Woman 'can't stop eating' cornstarch [NBC: 6-03-2011]

The idea that we should get nutritional advice from the Department of Agriculture should tell everyone the purpose behind the advice is nothing but promoting the increased sell of agricultural products. Now there was a time when that might have been acceptable - say around the 1700's or so - but with the devolution of farming in the US and the bastardization of foods and farmin and farm animals alike - it is akin to buying in big on the eve of the Market Collapse of 1929.

The clue to perpetuating sickness is to oversimplify, never provide details, supply conflicting information incessantly and encourage people to trust the "experts" - most of which haven't a nickels worth of common sense left in their brain account or haven't done a nickels worth of research on a topic.

"The USDA should stay out of the business of offering nutritional advice. They are very bad at it. "

I love it!  I wrote about this today too.  I do think the plate is an improvement over the pyramid.  But I did some tweaking and made my own plate that I like a lot better: http://knitfitter.blogspot.com/2011/06/new-usda-nutrition-plate-and-my.html

"It looks to me like the USDA has not only failed to keep up with the evolution of nutritional thought, but has regressed to something close to advising Americans to go out and buy stocks on the eve of the 1929 depression. "

I agree, this is like the fox guarding the hen house.  There's no way the government should be allowed to advise us on what to eat since the agricultural business segment has such a powerful lobby.   I actually liked this plate, only because it was far better than the food pyramid, which mistakenly emphasized more carbs and less fat.  At least now they have shifted the direction to fewer carbs and more fat.  I think of it as the lesser of evils - so the MyPlate isn't right but it's better than the food pyramid.  I wrote a post on it at http://cravingsugar.net/the-new-food-pyramid-myplate-usda-says-eat-less-carbs-more-fat.php.

I agree that the USDA is bad at it, and that there are powerful interests influencing the message.  For instance, when the last food "pyramid" was unveiled,  advice to avoid sugar that was originally included had been taken out, thanks to the sugar lobby.

On the other hand, there are some well-meaning people involved, trying to get a message out.  They may be misguided in some ways, but not everyone promoting this is corrupt.  With the current obesity epidemic, there's a lot of genuine public health interest in getting a good "message" out about nutrition.  Having worked somewhat in that field, I know the impulse in an earnest one.  

Here's what Pee Wee Herman would call the "Big But": your readers, who can converse intelligently about AGEs and sdLDL are a world apart from *most Americans,* who first must get their hand out of the potato chip bag and their lips off the 64oz value-sized Dr. Pepper.  The USDA, whatever its faults, is trying convey a message that can be understood, and a goal that can be achieved.  

I think messages like "eat a rainbow," "eat your colors," or "fill half your plate with vegetables" are better slogans - partly because I don't think grains and dairy are necessary*, and that improperly prepared grains and all gluten grains are problematic (I take a more nuanced position than Dr. Davis).  But I do think part of the reason the USDA's "plate" is so dumbed-down is that complex messages just don't work in public health.  

(*Though I do feel dairy's necessary for me!)

P.S.  I love how butter and fortified margarine used to be their own food group!

Was wondering if anyone had looked at the effect on farming if everyone switched from wheat and grains? Obviously the effect on the processors, Nabisco, Kellogg's would be disastrous which is why it probably won't happen, but would there be enough, beef, pork, chicken, egg, diary, production to go round?  Could wheat fields be switched over to cattle or rearing or should they produce bio-fuel instead? Arguably we all eat too much so we could just dump the grains portion and maintain existing meat/fish/dairy. But our diet has been somewhat determined by being able to produce enough food for a booming population on a small planet. "Food for thought" anyway.

Hi Paul Lee,
Maybe  global protein needs could be met 100% by converting the grain fields over to growing substrate feed stocks for poultry or iguana meat.  A diet of always only  protein  would  not be  great,  so you need to figure out what  you intend to complete human  nutritional needs with.  Cereal grains are just so convenient  for energy calories that most nations rely on them; they don't need refrigeration,  transport easily and have long storage.

Agribusiness has undoubtedly increased yield and thereby enhanced accessibility and reduced price. But I fear they have also created a house of cards that, in many ways, many be unsustainable or will yield unintended effects.

The painfully familiar food recalls from E. coli or Salmonella contamination that result from factory farming and other mass production practices will inevitably catalyze a return to organic, old-fashioned farming methods with higher prices, a concentration on necessary foods and not "luxury" junk foods.

That sounds like a good thing to me.

Paul raises a crucial point: How do we make the switch to a world without modern high-yield wheat without a cataclysmic shift in economics? I don't know. But it will be much like the gradual shift from mass produced eggs to free-range, organic eggs, just on a much larger scale. It will be a process that won't occur next Tuesday, but hopefully over the next 50+ years. In the meantime, tens of millions of people will unknowingly suffer from consumption of this thing being sold to use called "wheat."

Interesting stuff, and Might-o'chondri-AL, I try and get at least 50% of total calories from fat. Without wanting to drift OT,  I don't know whether you have seen this news in the States there has been major problems with German grown (organic) vegatables (cucumbers, tomato's etc) with E.coli (Spanish veg was blamed at first). Literally thousands of tons of veg are being dumped. Salad is certainly off the menu in Europe this week!

"The painfully familiar food recalls from E. coli or Salmonella contamination that result from factory farming and other mass production practices will inevitably catalyze a return to organic, old-fashioned farming methods with higher prices, a concentration on necessary foods and not “luxury” junk foods."

I am loving this! I hope this becomes the reality-- sooner the better.

It's bad that the government is wrong, but the media multiplies it many times over by parroting these guidelines to public. For example, the US News Diet Rankings:

http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/best-overall-diets

Some of my comments on my blog:

http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/best-overall-diets

My advice: The USDA should stay out of the business of offering nutritional advice. They are very bad at it. They also have too many hidden motives to be a reliable source of unbiased information.

I don't think they will stop offering advice since so many people seek guidance.
Your advice should be:  Ignore the nutritional advace offered by the USDA.  It is very bad advice because they have too many hidden motives to be a reliable source of unbiased information.  Seek nutritional advice from more reliable sources.

Unfortunately, how do we know which sources are reliable?  Vegetarianism makes sense.  What do they have to say?

I think the grain section should be dumped entirely and fruit section should a sliver at best or there should be some mention that those with blood sugar issues may want to greatly reduce ALL fruit.  I find that the tolerance to fruit is highly individual.  Since I lowcarb and my fasting sugars are usually mid 80s unless I've had an unusually large late night meal in which case it can be mid 90s -- I was shocked to see what the allegedly lower sugar fruits such as raspberries and blackberries (both high fiber too) are really doing to my sugar since I started self testing.  I am beginning to think that with my genetics and age, even the so-called healthy berries can be the devil.

I am 5'2.5" and weighed 107.5 this morning.  I'm in my late 40s and only medication is armour/cytomel for hypothyroid.  Both parents and only sibling are type 2s -- dad was a slender type 2.  Ex: This morning fasting sugar was 86.  I had a black coffee and skipped breakfast and went on a long brisk walk (1.25 hour) in the heat.  At brunch at 1:00PM consisting of 3 soft boiled pastured eggs; a few ounces (2 or so) of leftover grassfed ribeye; 6 olives (I sweated a lot outside and needed more salt despite salting eggs and steak-- I eat no processed food except canned sardines and find I need extra salt sweating in hot sun or I get extremely weak, very low blood pressure etc); and now for the grand mistake -- 1 cup of mixed blackberries/raspberries.  I took my sugar 15 minutes later and it was 128; 15 minutes later; 138; 15 minutes later 123; 15 minutes later 118 etc

I have eaten similar to the above meal minus fruit but adding large amounts of raw freshly shelled hazelnuts and my blood sugar will not spike anywhere near 138 despite adding several hundred more calories.  I've even checked numerous hours later to see if there is a late spike and while the highest point does take longer with large meal containing big amounts of nuts (slow digestion) and no spike -- a slow steady rise generally never going over 115 and coming back down over the next few hours.  

So fruit sugars can be the devil for some of us and given the diabetes epidemic -- I think the fruit wedge should be much much smaller or come with a caveat.  Or better yet, given the disasterous history of government dietary recommendations, perhaps the government should stay out of our kitchens entirely.