So, bread prices are up! Please forgive me if I sound as though I have been living on the moon or on the planet just discovered which is said to be about 40,000 times larger than our earth. Like everyone else, I am still very much an earthman. I am only being cynical that the world has not come to an end simply because the price of bread is getting beyond the reach of many people and, if I am to be honest, I am somewhat secretly happy that many people would cut it off their diet.
That was what I did in 1977 after I bought a book at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) bookshop titled …NINETY DAYS TO A BETTER HEART. It was written by JOHN LOUGHRAN, as a case history of his health as a child, almost lifeless, weak, sick with heart and blood circulation problems , all attributed to white flour bread as a staple food, and, of how, within only 90 days, he got his health back when his mother changed his bread to whole corn, home ground and home baked bread.
From 1977, I sparingly ate white flour bread and switched over to whole wheat bread until about the mid 1980s when I learned wheat had been genetically modified and had become a worse enemy of health than white flour bread.
For white bread lovers, LOUGHRAN tells the story of how wheat becomes white flour and bread, of how nutritionally endowed whole wheat is, and how devitalised and nutritionally poisonous to body and health it becomes by the time “white” bread arrives on the dining table. And, according to him, population studies reveal that people exposed to ” white” flour bread for about 40 years develop cardiovascular (heart and blood vessel) problems such as enlarged heart, heart disease, blocked coronary (heart) arteries, palpitations, heart failure, heart attack, blockages and plague in the arteries, narrowing of the arteries, elevated blood cholesterol levels, venous insufficiency, organ disease, inflammation almost everywhere in the body, rapid aging etc.
Can this be true? I do not know if such studies have been carried out in Nigeria. But a simple rule of the thumb guess suggests that Loughran may be correct. When I was a child, white bread was not eaten by a majority of Nigerians everyday. It was possible it was in the homes of the elite. For families such as the one I grew up in, “white bread”, like “white” rice, was eaten once a week, on Sundays at best. In those days, heart attacks and hypertension and their likes were euro American diseases with no serious foothold in Nigeria. Today, however, these diseases are seen in persons as young as forty something. What has made the tables to turn upside down? One of the reasons is that more people today than before eat white flour foods several times in one day. A standard Nigerian breakfast is (white flour) , bread, margarine, egg, milk , tea and sugar , all foodless foods in several respects. Now, let us see what we miss in the diet when we eat “white” flour bread, but is abundant in whole wheat from which white flour is made
CHROMIUM
Since 1843, a scientific experiment has been going on in the United Kingdom on the observed reduction of minerals such as iron and zinc in wheat inorganically grown in the winter months. Named BROAD BALK, it seeks to determine the effects of artificial fertilizer and organic manure on wheat and its nutritional quality. The studies found nothing wrong with wheat and the soil but with pesticides and attempt to make wheat produce more carbohydrate stock per acre for an increasing population of developing countries. To worsen matters, the food industry could not keep the reduced nutrient values over long periods of time for transportation over the oceans and seas and storage in warehouses before conversion to wheat bread. For the nutrients, reduced as they had become, decayed and despoiled in the wheat. So, the food industry removed the nutrients by refining the wheat into white flour , which could keep for longer periods. The process of refining the wheat caused more nutrient losses. Some of the nutrients lost are CHROMIUM, LECITHIN, VITAMIN E, WHEAT GERM OIL and the B-COMPLEX VITAMINS, among others. Thus, avid bread eaters may become nutritionally deficient in these nutrients. To help them not be, the food industry adds artificial equivalents of these natural substances to white flour in the bakery. But this is an almost useless effort because artificial chemical structures cannot perform the functions of natural substances, nor will they be as readily bio available as the latter. Thus,the bread eater has been short changed in the struggle for money between the bread producer and the bread consumer.
CHROMIUM is a natural product MOTHER NATURE puts in all CARBOHYDRATE FOODS. Its function is to ease the flow of INSULIN from the blood stream into the CELL through the CELL MEMBRANE. Insulin is produced by the PANCREAS. When there is not enough chromium consumed with a carbohydrate meal, insulin may be stuck in the blood stream. Yet, insulin is the hormone that leads blood sugar into the cell where chromium, along with other substances, including coenzymes will burn it in energy “factories” known as MITOCHONDRIA. Let us remember the picture…insulin will literally hold blood sugar by the hand and lead it across the cell membrane into the cell, where insulin, along with other substances will burn it into energy, water and carbon dioxide.
• Insulin cannot cross the cell membrane on its own. So, literally speaking again, it would be held by the hand and ushered in by chromium.
• We are now talking of three friends working together in this business… CHROMIUM/INSULIN and BLOOD SUGAR working together.
• Where the food industry has deprived “white” bread of about 96percent of the chromium which naturally occurs in whole wheat for this purpose, what is the effect on the health of bread eaters?
• INSULIN and BLOOD SUGAR will get stuck in the blood stream. Inside blood vessels, INSULIN will act as a “fertilizer” for the growth of soft muscles of these vessels. Acting thus, the muscles will grow rapidly like mushrooms do in the fields when rain falls upon them. These soft muscles will grow downward, upward and side ways. The soft muscles will grow towards themselves. Doing so, they would NARROW the blood vessels which are now said to be MUSCLE BOUND. Not many people realise that “muscle bound” blood vessels are a cause of HYPERTENSION, which is difficult to manage or cure. How will these muscles be regressed.
¶ This is one of the reasons Alternative Medicine prescribes CHROMIUM in the form of chromium picolinate etc for hypertension as it is also for DIABETES ,to save whatever can still be saved.
• As the costs of importing this plant medicine was getting out of hand, local anti hypertensive whole plants have been offering support to challenged persons.
• The chromium story does not end here. Blood sugar hanging up in the blood stream portends DIABETES, which may cause blindness, damage peripheral nerves, the kidneys and other vital organs.
• May the excess sugar load not also be converted to CHOLESTEROL, under certain conditions of liver subnormalcy and create cardiovascular problems, including heart problems and strokes. It may. Cholesterol challenged persons face graver insults from statin drugs which may impair heart function. Their saving grace when they turn to Alternative Medicine are food supplements such as lecithin, vitamin E, B-Complex vitamins and chromium, nutrients which were removed from whole wheat in the process of converting it into “white” flour for “white” bread. That is why persons hooked on white flour foods need to know what they are up against and, every month, budget for their nutritional food supplements. The exposure to white flour is terribly widespread today. We consume it not only as “white” flour bread but also PASTA, NOODLES, SHARWAMA, MEAT PIES etc what goes for “white” flour foods goes , also, for FOREIGN RICE which is a carbohydrate load with too little chromium and B-Complex vitamins in it.
Let me digress a little. About 200 years ago, Japanese and other Asian populations suffered from a terrible nerve damaging disease which also destroyed the heart. It made the legs and the hands to swell and become paralysed. It also caused convulsions and ravaged the heart, sometimes killing the patient.The cause was first thought to be germs. It intermittently tormented even the emperor and killed his niece aged 31.
Millions may have died before a doctor discovered that chickens fed remnant food from a prison kitchen suffered from the disease ravaging prison inmates. When a doctor asked inmates to lift their arms and legs, they responded: Beri Beri(I can’t, I can’t). The disease called beri Beri was later known to be caused by “white” rice diet which is deficient in vitamin B1 or thiamine. Countries which suffered beriberi epidemic continue to pump “white” rice into Nigeria and Nigerians of 2022 continue to hate Nigerian rice which has vitamin B1and other nutrients. What a people!
WHEAT GERM OIL
The food industry also damaged “white ” flour by removing wheat germ oil from wheat. There is oil in every living thing as its “essential” component. Crude oil is the oil in trees, plants and leaves which died millions of years ago and are encrusted deep in the earth. There is oil in orange peel and even banana peel. There is oil in the human eye , brain, liver etc. The oil from plants is meant to replenish oil in the human body. That is why mother nature endows WHEAT with WHEAT GERM OIL in its core. But since this oil can go rancid easily if not consumed soon after wheat harvest, the food industry removes it from the plastic “white” flour.
Wheat germ oil is made of such components as VITAMIN E, OCTONASOL, B-COMPLEX vitamins (about 50 percent), OCTOCANOL, B-COMPLEX VITAMINS, such as unsaturated fatty acids such as LINOLEIC ACID and LINOLENIC ACID. Vitamin E is a blood thinner and important food for the muscles, heart, womb, the brain, the eyes, breasts, testes and practically all organs. Wheat germ oil produces energy, and had been demonstrated to reduce blood plasma cholesterol as well as help in the management and cure of fatty liver. The testes need vitamin E to not Shrink or atrophise. How many men consume enough vitamin E in Nigeria? Any wonder that testicular size grows smaller and sooner with age and sperm production reduces when young men are supposed to be in full bloom? When women who are seeking help for the infertility of their spouses ask me if the testes are not meant to be tangible and visible, I guess what they are talking about. When leg or arm muscles are weak, may we not think of vitamin E along with potassium, vitamin B1 (thiamine) and other B complex vitamins. Are these nutrients present in “white” flour bread? We know of many health problems, including cancers, caused by a deficiency of essential fatty acids (EFAs). Yet, mother nature gave them to us free of charge in and plentifully in organically grown natural wheat grains.
OCTOSANOL, a component of wheat germ oil, also found in some plants such as SUGAR CANE, consists of about 57 percent of another substance called POLICOSANOL. While OCTOSANOL has found uses in athletic performance and in diseases such as PARKINSONS, reduce “bad” cholesterol, improve the health of fat cells, it has been tried for “AMYOTROPHIC LATERAL SCLEROSIS”. This is a degenerative condition of the nerve system in which early signs may be twitches and cramping in arms and legs. The disease may degenerate into loss of motion in the limbs and in such other places as the respiratory system, resulting in death, as nerves and muscles are involved. POLICOSONOL is present in foods such as rice bran, green tea leaves, sorghurm grain, sugar cane and wheat bran, among other foods. It has been used in the treatment of leg pains, especially in intermittent claudication (pain in the ankles), to reduce excess cholesterol, improve blood circulation etc.
Thanks to LOUGHRAN. In his book NINETY DAYS TO A BETTER HEART he obliges a sub section he titled…YOU ARE AS OLD AS YOUR VEINS. Aren’t we really? when the food industry deprives us of these nutrients, pass them off as wastes for animal feed and , later, brings them back to our dining tables after it became clear that we are prepared to pay for them, doesn’t this make our veins to age faster?
LECITHIN
Wheat is not done with nutrients for humanity. Although LECITHIN is more abundant in soyabeans, it occurs , also in wheat, to dissolve or emulsify potential fats in wheat in the blood stream. But, like other nutrients, lecithin is taken out in “white flour”, leaving “white” flour consumers prone to high blood cholesterol, fatty liver, heart and circulation problem challenges, including blood clots and plagues, and stroke. Lecithin, combined with Curcumin, makes the latter more effective as an anti-inflammatory. Dilauroyl phosphotidyl choline, one of the components of lecithin, is cited as good for liver health. Choline and inositol, other components, work for brain health. Lecithin is important for cell signalling in immune function, otherwise the body may misrecognise its own parts as it’s enemies and open fire on them, as occurs in immune system disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and Lyme disease.
We can go on and on. I guess you would like to know why, as I loathe “white” bread and white flour foods, I do not eat wheat bread, since all these nutrients are supposed to be intact inside it.
WHOLE WHEAT BREAD
Up till the late 1970s, I turned to wheat bread because of the known hazards of white flour bread. I jettisoned whole wheat bread from the early 1980s because of information that it had been genetically modified for bigger harvests per acre. Scientists say the GM wheat will help to end the problems of COELIAC DISEASE. This is a digestive condition in which GLUTEN on glutein rich foods damage the small intestine of predisposed persons. Gluten is found in such foods as wheat, barley, rye among others. They say the modification of natural wheat would make it not only resistant to environmental hazards such as diseases and pesticides but would, also, make it yield about four times more per acre. On top of all this, they say, GM wheat would come with a balm of Gilead for coeliac disease sufferers.
But the opponents of GM wheat say what has happened is a part of a Euro American plot to give poor nations political independence with one hand and take it away with another. To take it away, the argument goes, seeds are modified and given to poor nations. This would lure these nations to abandon their natural seeds. GM seeds hardly are able to self-reproduce after two generations. So, the poor nations would continue to depend on the producers of GM seeds for their agricultural needs and feeding, which is loss of Independence in real terms.
Where I have problems with GM wheat is in the way it is reported to damage the digestive system it is said to protect against GLUTEN, a Hallmark of which is COELIAC disease.
Many people eat whole wheat foods without bothering to find out if they are good for them. Some proteins in wheat called gliadins damage the intestine of about 1 in 100 persons causing coeliac disease and even cancer. Scientists are trying genetic modification of wheat to make eating it trouble free. So far, genetic engineering is reported to disable 25 genes which cause the troubles. And with evidence that the disabled genes are rebounding more, a bigger scientific war is being waged on wheat to make it edible at all costs. In other words, man is fighting nature, creating a new genetic structure and code in wheat which must inevitably produce a new structure and code in the human body. As I am well aware that whatever is false must inevitably collapse, I have educated my pallate that ORE ENU, OTA INU (the pallate’s friend is the enemy of the intestine, and that ONA OFUN, ONA ORUN (the gateway to the throat is the gateway to heaven and to hell). These are great words of wisdom in Yoruba culture. May I also add that IFURA L’OOGUN AGBA (caution is the voodoo of the elderly). Thus, if you ask me for my opinion on rising bread prices, I would say: THANK GOODNESS…LET THEM GO BEYOND REACH!
