constant state of flux

I followed the ‘Eat right For your Blood Type’ diet about 8 or 9 years ago, but it didn’t agree with me (I am blood type A+ which means eating lots of grains). Even though I suffered when I was on it, I have been very interested in the theory behind the diet for a long time. I am interested in the idea of the hunter-gatherer migration out of Africa and the subsequent developments of animal domestication and agriculture that followed, along with the various blood typing around the world.

It seems natural that people in differing parts of the planet should have differing diets according to their habitat; for instance, where I live in the Alps, the winters are long and very cold, the summers brief and the springs and autumns are lush and extended. It only makes sense therefore that the people that originally settled here would have survived on domesticated animal products (dairy and meat) to which the deep valleys afford ample grazing and limited vegetables and fruits (mainly apples) they were able to cultivate in the summer. There is no real space (both time and habitat-wise) for crops like wheat.

So what about the story of grain? Well it is a complex one. The earliest evidence of agriculture appears in Egypt around 6000 B.C. and it spread to all temperate areas of the world capable of sustaining crops. Supposedly, our physiologies adapted to the change too, creating new blood types along the way. After countless hybridization, more ‘modern’ tasting crops were developed and great civilisations were then able to grow up around them.

But these grains only became highly nourishing because of a complex set of preparation methods that release the nutrients.

Something a simple as a hay-rick, used in pre-industrialized times in Europe and America for wheat, carefully constructed out in the fields the way it was, promoted the perfect conditions to allow the grain to sprout when coming into contact with rain and sunshine. After this initial weathering, grains were left to further ferment or sour after threshing for anything up to a week or longer before final cooking.

The reasons for this? Grains are the seed of a new plant and contain in their coatings phytic acid, which delays the onset of germination. Phytic acid also inhibits the absorption of minerals into the germ. In order for the seed to germinate, the phytic acid must first be weathered away so that the germ maybe exposed to heat and damp. Humans over time found ways to degrade the phytic acid by providing the perfect germination conditions, which then releases the nutrients from the germ. But when consumed in the un-fermented state, phytic acid continues to block mineral absorption in the human gut and reeks havoc with the digestion process.

Here in the Alps, buckwheat was consumed as a winter staple and the people prepared the grain in a very specific and laborious way, learnt over time to a tried-and-tested method which involved fermenting in the fields, souring with whey, congealing in pots and cooking very slowly. Watered down, it would be made into a kind of gruel rather than bread or pancakes.

In the history of food, gruel and porridge came before bread. For cereals unsuitable for bread making, such as oats, corn or millet, this remains the principle way of consuming these grains….Braga one of the most ancient sour gruels that we know of, is prepared with a thick porridge of cooked millet that is then diluted and fermented.

- Claude Aubert, Les Ailments Fermentees Traditionnels.

This is all such a long, long way away from our modern convenience processing methods of harvesting, threshing, baking and eating. No wonder flour nowadays blocks so many minerals from our bodies resulting in rampant tooth decay and degenerative diseases. No, we do not need grains, nuts or seeds which have been ‘un’ prepared in this way. It seems that in the struggle to profit from agriculture in a mass produced world the ‘complete treatment’ of the grain has been entirely overlooked. When commercial bakeries first came to these isolated Alpine valleys in the late 1800′s the local people’s health started to decline as a direct result.

In short: if you cannot prepare grains in a time-honored way, according to local custom, then consume them only very occasionally; in addition, all other nuts and seeds should also be sprouted.

So, yes, great civilisations have grown up on grains, huge concentrations of people could not have been nourished in any other way, but grains are not to be scoffed at, literally, they must be afforded all the respect and care we can give them in this world overtaken by fast food outlets and profits over people’s health.

I would have been fine eating for my blood type – it has been ‘proven’ that A’s were indeed the first European agriculturalists – if only Peter d’Adamo had gone one step further and actually looked at the traditional diets from Europe and realised that grains were prepared in a very, very different way from the way they are prepared today, I think I may have fared better on his diet.

Maybe I should write to him. In the mean time, I am looking into buying a flour/grain mill to use at home and will sprout the wheat before milling, then ferment it before cooking – I can take a hint.