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Fungal toxins are widespread in European wheat
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoNow for the compare: Organic wheat vs Conventional wheat.. and if you have organic wheat that is "clean" you know the field was adjunct to conventional wheat. Its ugly, but in some aspects conventional is more healthy then organic wheat. My brothers master-professor loved to point that out during field inspections and sampling.
- prepend 4y agoI can’t find the data to confirm my gossip, but I believe organic produce has more ecoli and food borne outbreaks than conventional. So while there may be health benefits for organic lettuce, for example, there’s higher risk of food borne illness.
- itsoktocry 4y ago>So while there may be health benefits for organic lettuce, for example, there’s higher risk of food borne illness It's a classic problem. At scale, industrial farming and everything that goes with it is net positive to society. It produces the best nutrition, on average. But on any individual level (be that geographic location, or you, the person), organic farming can have more nutritional benefits. It's the same as the COVID vaccine. For society as a whole, it's beneficial if everyone gets the vaccine. It produces better health outcomes, on average. But at the individual level, it might be better if you don't get the vaccine. Unfortunately, organic farming at scale has issues, and avoiding the vaccine at scale also has issues.
- evancox100 4y agoIt is highly unlikely for a person to be worse off by taking a vaccine for a prevalent disease. Like 1 in a million odds.
- itsoktocry 4y ago1 in a million is great for society, but pretty bad for that person, isn't it? Besides,you have absolutely know way of knowing what you assert. And I'd go a step further and say it's absurd to claim that injecting anything in your body is neutral or strictly positive. There are absolutely tradeoffs to medicine. Neither of these even account for the fact that a 1 in a million chance of adverse vaccine effects might dwarf the chance of long term harm from covid in a healthy person. So, again, on a personal level these things look different.
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- api 4y agoThe breed of wheat matters more than organic or not. There are some varieties with more protein and nutrients and less simple carb. If you want the ultimate for that get Einkorn or one of the other heirloom varieties that predates wheat being bred for raw bulk. Much higher protein and mineral content. More expensive though due to lower yield because that’s the trade off. Wheat is sold by weight not nutrient density and carb is weight.
- randomdata 4y ago> Wheat is sold by weight not nutrient density Not exactly. Weight is used as a price multiplier, but nutrient density is one of the factors that goes into establishing the per unit price. I grow wheat in a climate that struggles to produce high protein content and absolutely see a reduced price when my product doesn't meet the grade.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y agoIt irks me that Western diets feature so much wheat in everything (I'm gluten sensitive so avoid it as much as possible). What really grinds my gears is when traditional non-wheat products (e.g. onion bhajis, tortillas) are made using wheat instead. We should be moving away from monocultures in food, just as in software.
- bioemerl 4y agoBut corn tortillas are way worse than flower ones, I understand why they chose to switch.
- nostrebored 4y agoThis is entirely personal taste and ephemeral. Flour tortillas stay together a bit better if you’re not eating them immediately. But from a taste perspective, after you’ve had both a few times, it’s easy to appreciate why they complement different types of tacos.
- bamboozled 4y agoFully disagree
- lambic2 4y agoI really prefer the taste of corn tortillas over wheat tortillas, so it's subjective. My favorite by far is blue corn tortillas. Coincidentally blue corn is pretty impressive nutritionally: https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20070730/blue-corn-tortilla-packs-healthy-punch https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20070730/blue-corn-t...
- ElevenLathe 4y agoThis is a very wild statement. They are very very different. It's hard to understand how to even compare them. Are pancakes better than naan? Is congee better than grits?
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
- ovi256 4y agoThe article does not mention organic bread and wheat. I hear a lot of chatter from people in agribusiness that it's better to avoid buying it, as it does not receive fungicide treatment and is much more likely to be contaminated with fungal toxins. The safety network is not perfect and gaps occasionally occur, meaning batches of contaminated wheat are eaten.
- daneel_w 4y agoAre there any numbers on the spread of these toxins and blights in Asia and the Americas? Would be interesting to see a comparison between continents.
- yosito 4y agoThis is very interesting. Anecdotally, I never had a problem with wheat until I moved to Europe. I'd love to see a comparison of fungal toxins in American wheat compared to European wheat. Not that it's easy these days to be aware of where the wheat I'm eating was grown. Modern supply chains are incredibly complex.
- InCityDreams 4y ago>Modern supply chains are incredibly complex. Does Ukrainian wheat count as European, or not, (these days)?
- gambiting 4y agoI mean......what else could it possibly count as, if not European?
- hutzlibu 4y agoIf you ask Putin, it was always part within the natural borders of russia.
- gambiting 4y agoEven if that were true(and it's not), Ukraine would still be European, just like Moscow is European. Asia doesn't begin until Ural and Caucasus mountains.
- hutzlibu 4y ago"Asia doesn't begin until Ural and Caucasus mountains." Yes, in geological terms. But in political terms, Moscow is not european (anymore).
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- goda90 4y agoIs there any processing that can reduce mycotoxins in wheat? For corn/maize, which also faces lots of fungus issues, nixtamalization removes the mycotoxins almost entirely.
- danuker 4y agoI noticed some brands of flour fail to rise in my bread-making machine. I suppose this could be because of fungicides sprayed to avoid the fungus and toxins mentioned in the article. The fungicide might also be killing my yeast. I wonder what's worse from a health standpoint - fungal toxins, or anti-fungal toxins.
- Jensson 4y agoLivestock refuses to eat grain with fungal toxins and they throw up if you force feed them (hence the name vomitoxin), it is that bad. So I think fungal toxins are worse.
- danuker 4y agoOn the other hand: we have natural defenses against vomitoxins. We don't against synthetic fungicides, so the fungicides might affect us worse long-term.
- bglazer 4y agoWhat do you mean by defenses? Can humans metabolize vomitoxins but not fungicides? Are there proteins that take vomitoxins out of solution? Do you have evidence for this?
- SAI_Peregrinus 4y agoThey probably mean that we tend to vomit up foods containing them, while we don't do so with the fungicides.
- danuker 4y agoI am referring to the act of vomiting itself - a defense against the spoiled food in its entirety. I am hoping people would find fresher food as a consequence.
- hombre_fatal 4y agoWell, we aren’t even sure that vomitoxins at dietary levels impact human health outcomes, for one. That’s not a bad place to be for a so called toxin. It’s not even a problem for livestock until you force feed them nothing but wheat. But it turns out that’s exactly what the ag industry wants to do.
- modzu 4y agofear the vomitoxin, embrace the fungicide
- esel2k 4y agoTo add on the future development mentioned at the end of the article: I worked last year on a prediction model for the big cooperatives buying the crops from the farmers helping them to be better informed about risk (based on wheat type, soil type, tillage and weather conditions) of mycotoxins and to advice their farmers when to spray. So Agtech is still a very unpopular and under appreciated field and hope more engineers would embark on that journey. PS: Happy to add a link but didn’t want to create unnecessary advertising.
- mbustamanter 4y agoPlease do, I've been interested in this field for a long time (if you don't want to share it there is my contact info in my profile).
- twobitshifter 4y agoErgot is the most interesting mycotoxin producing fungi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergot I wonder if we’ll find out again that some of our wide-spread mental or general health problems are caused by a fungus.
- StreamBright 4y agoIt is kind of funny how stupid we are about the use of chemicals. I was just talking to a bio vineyard owner this weekend about why he choses no-chem approach. To my surprise he does that so that his grapes are more(!) resistant to sickness (especially fungus).
- lizardactivist 4y agoSo what's the solution, spray and quench the soil and ground water with more and more dangerous fungicides?
- linuxftw 4y agoThe article states that over 95% of samples were within established limits, so there's no need for any solution as there's not any problem, though the article advocates for new pesticides towards the end. But really, this article and its referred study are thinly veiled climate change propaganda: > Climate change is projected to cause earlier anthesis, coinciding with wetter, warmer weather, thus increasing the severity of FHB epidemics. It's very hard to sell Europeans pesticides, so if we scare them with climate change, they might change their tune. It's also ironic, considering how we heard all summer that the tough drought in Europe was also caused by climate change, it's all very convenient that climate change causes both wetter and drier conditions in the same region.
- randomdata 4y agoSame as we've always done? Sample loads as they come off the field. Downgrade as needed. It is not like this is something new.
- bigbillheck 4y agoThis is not, thankfully, news of ug99 making its way to Europe.
- blurbleblurble 4y agoA lot of unsubstantiated takes coming out in the comments on this one.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y agoHave you any evidence of that?
- snikeris 4y agoA much better grain + microbe combination: I've been fermenting oats for 1-2 days in a mixture of milk-kefir and water for the past few months. It tastes great with frozen berries and does good things for my gut.
- jollyllama 4y agoI wonder how many people think that they have various intolerances or sensitivities to different foods which are in fact caused by improperly cleaned, stored, or prepared foods like this which are actually responses to the contaminants.