The leaf this week is inspired by a new article comparing the nutritional value of spelt vs. common wheat. Spelt is an “ancient” crop that is still grown and popular because of supposed nutritional superiority over modern wheat.
Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is a genetic hexaploid with six sets of chromosomes. Humans in comparison are diploids with just one pair. Wheat apparently evolved by convergence of threedistinct diploid grasses that left a chromosome set from each species. This probably happened in the Eastern Mediterranean region within the last 20,000years. First came merger of two species to produce a tetraploid (Triticum dicoccoides); hexaploid wheat then arose naturally in another interspecies crossing. Startingabout 10,000 years ago, human selected these cereals for cultivation, the tetraploids giving rise to cultivated duram and emmer wheats and the hexaploids giving spelt and common wheat.
Humans ate little wheat before the agricultural revolution, and some say that we are not physiologically adapted to eat it. My own view is that evolution can cause rapid population changes since it happens largely by SELECTION of those who survive best. For example, if those better adapted to eat wheat produce just 5%more offspring than the others, then after 70 generations (~2000 years) the wheat eaters will predominate around 30-fold.
Spelt is hulled and needs mechanical threshing while modern wheat sheds its hull spontaneously. But is relict spelt more nutritious? The study mentioned earlier compared refined flours of 89 accessions of spelt (T. aestivum subspecies spelta) against 10cultivars of modern T. aestivum, and found no difference between the wheat and spelt. However, the study did mention that spelt and other relict wheats may contain agriculturally beneficial genes to use in wheat breeding
What this means for wheat eaters is that spelt may not be worth the higher prices it commands.
As for thewheat-intolerant? Find somethings else to eat and stay away from all wheats,both ancient and modern.
Further reading
▶ Huertas-García AB et al (2023).Genetic Variability for Grain Components Related to Nutritional Quality inSpelt and Common Wheat. J. agricultural and food chemistry, 71(28),10598–10606. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jafc.3c02365
▶ Rahman S et al (2020).Current Progress in Understanding and Recovering the Wheat Genes Lost inEvolution and Domestication. Intl. J. molecular sciences, 21(16),5836. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms21165836
