Felicia: All right, y'all. We are back. We are back, I guess we can say, for another season of the Grains and Grit Unsifted podcast. So this is the podcast that I started several months ago, and then life got in the way, and I had to stop recording these episodes. But we are now back. So I guess we can say this is now season two. So if you're not familiar, hi, my name is Felicia, and I teach you all about real whole grains from a biblical perspective, teaching how to be milling your own grains. Baking that ⁓ bread with that wheat, so on and so forth. I do a lot of myth busting and I predominantly teach right here on YouTube. But I wanted to start this podcast to basically expand even more. And ultimately, so this is unedited unedited, you get me, all of me, then whatever pops out of my mouth. So that may be terrifying for some. But ⁓ I hopefully that this podcast overall is just for those of you who may want to dive in deeper. ⁓ who, you know, because YouTube does have to be really edited. And sometimes I also just like to listen to things. And so a podcast is great because this is all audio. I know if you're what you can watch this on YouTube, but you can also just listen to it as well. No visuals, it's not a recipe, nothing like that. Welcome back. And in this episode, I had another one that we were gonna kick off this season with, but something else popped up in my feed and we need to address it. Now. So the last week or so, you may have been seeing a video floating around the YouTube. And it is basically that mid that the title is Medieval Bread Was a Superfood and Why Our Modern Bread is Killing Us. And this has received like over a million views. This is actually a new YouTube channel, even. They've only been around for a few months. And then this video just really, really took off, which, as a YouTuber, that is awesome. that that happened. But there are some things in this video that that we just need to we need to address. Now, whenever I first watched it, I I actually watched it because I had people emailing it to me, messaging it to me. I mean, many people were sharing this video with me. And so finally I was like, all right, I I need to watch it. I really just I really just thought it was one of those like course, you know, the difference with bread back then. But then I realized, well, you know what's gonna happen. They're probably really going, they're gonna mess up somewhere. Okay. They're going to twist things when we get to the modern era. And I don't say this, I I don't believe this person had any sort of malicious intent of like trying to kill your bread. It's just, I think they're probably just going by the common, shall I say, propaganda that's going around about bread these days, about our modern bread. And so while they had some excellent points in this video, once again, ⁓ there was a lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And so let's let's address this. I only whenever I watch this, I forgot to to finish what I was saying earlier. So when I watched it, like that evening, I just pulled out my phone and I did a quick, like two and a half minute short that I posted here on YouTube. I also posted it as a reel on Instagram. If you don't follow me there, it's grains and grits. I'm pretty consistent around social media. And ⁓ so I posted it there just running through things very quick. But there are just and then I started getting comments. I'm like, we just we need to unpack this a bit further. So let's do that. So if you haven't watched the video, basically it's a video talking about now his channel is, and I'm assuming it's a he because it was a male voice. Ha it could be AI, not sure. But it's ⁓ medieval way. And so it's looks like it's a channel about the medieval time period, which is awesome. And then they happen to do this one about bread. And if you haven't noticed, I've I've started noticing, like if you bread is almost as heated of a discussion as like vaccines. Vaccines is like the ultimate heated discussion. Like I probably had people just unsubscribe for me just by saying the word vaccine. The unsubscribes. Like just saying the word. But ⁓ it's almost at you you just get very passionate people on both sides. I am one of them, obviously, but I am passionate because I'm really passionate about truth. And so they were just posting this video about the medieval bread ⁓ of their time. And they had again they had a lot of good points. So first of all, let's just go with the points that were absolutely true. Absolutely true that back in the medieval time period, the dark ages, That people were milling their own grains. There was no none of our modern wheat varieties. Obviously, none of our mechanized huge rolling mills that came out in the industrial revolution. So obviously, back then they were using stones to grind their flour. Obviously, back then there would be some more of our ancient grains that we know of based on the time period, maybe some heritage, probably some heritage grains as well. So our ancient grains. We know as far as wheat goes is typically our emmer, our eincorn, our spelt, our rye, ⁓ co Corson would be another one. So those type of ancient grains is what they had. I would also point out that most likely, depending on where they were, they were very regional varieties because all that they knew was this was wheat. Okay. And whether you were in Great Britain, in Spain, in France, in Russia, no matter where you were, ⁓ you just grew wheat. So they probably didn't have a name for it. It was just wheat for them. And that's what they were growing, whatever, whatever they were growing. And they would grind that up via a stone mill and they would predominantly consume it whole. That is absolutely true. And consuming freshly milled whole grain is really, really beneficial for you. It contains out of 40, it contains 40 out of 44 essential nutrients, all of that fiber. ⁓ the gluten to fiber ratio is on point because that is how God designed it to be. All of these things, absolutely true, I believe. ⁓ I definitely agree with him. And back then they were eating real food. They did not have processed food like we do nowadays. This is all kind of a duh. So absolutely agree with what he said is that their bread was real bread that was freshly milled and consumed whole grain. In fact, we know throughout history. Only the wealthy could really afford white flour because they had the servants that could and would sift the wheat to br to ⁓ take out that bran to get that lighter flour. They were also wealthy enough to afford losing about 20% of their food. Because if you sift out the bran, that's food that goes somewhere else. And poor people, we ain't gonna throw stuff out, y'all. We ain't throwing stuff out. We ain't not throwing stuff out. And so, yes, that was that was typically common. He he very much spoke about the peasants. And how they were hardy, that it was they were able to do all this manual labor. Absolutely agree. For thousands of years, bread, wheat, some sort of grain has been the staff of life for humanity. It's only been in the past like hundred years that we jacked it all up. Okay. That we as humans thought we could do better than what God did. And we've just messed it up once again. Shocker. So that's what he was saying. Where he got into points that were misleading. or just false. I do not believe that he is trying to, you know, there's some sort of propaganda behind this. Just going by the common research out put common things that people are talking about out there. And what he did that I see many, many people do, including like wheat belly, grain brain, is they they weave in and out, they call, they associate modern wheat with white flour. Okay. So any modern wheat that you consume, they immediately attach The disadvantages that we get with white flour to modern wheat. So people believe that our modern wheat is what is a problem and we should only be consuming ancient grains, but that is not the entire story. Above all, as I preach loud and clear, you should just be milling your own grains yourself. The way that we did for thousands of years, where people would either be milling their grains themselves or they would have a local miller that they would take their wheat to to have milled for them. But either way, it was fresh, it was local, and they were doing it themselves, baking that bread at home themselves. And that's what we need to get back to. That ultimately is what we need to get back to. Many, many testimonies I've heard from people who just they they could not tolerate the bread from the store, this typical bread that we have, especially here in the United States, they just they can't take, they can't handle it. But then they switched to milling their grains, even with our modern wheat varieties, and they were fine. Because that's the key. The key is to actually get freshly milled whole grain wheat. Now there are still a few people out there that maybe this modern wheat isn't your jam. Okay. It is, it's still my with you. ⁓ things like that. That's okay. We still have our heritage and ancient varieties that you can do. But bottom line, you should be milling. Them yourself, which I'm gonna chase a rabbit trail here. I do believe why ⁓ some people can say, ⁓ well, I can have ancient grains, I can't have modern wheat, even though they are not milling anything themselves, is because many times when you're buying an ancient grain, a lot of times that is a whole grain flour, only if it says all purpose. So there's an all-purpose eincorn out there or an all-purpose, all purpose corsan. You know, if it says all purpose, that usually means that they're taking out that brain and the germ. But if you're just buying Corsan or spelt flour or having a bread made from that, there's a possibility that is a whole grain, that it's not that the brain and germ is still intact in there. So that's why I think some people can just, while not milling it, just switch to an ancient grain flour and be better than all-purpose flour, because of many ancient grain flours are being sold as whole grain and people don't even realize it. I hope that makes sense. Hopefully that makes sense. That's a rabbit trail theory. Okay. But bottom line is I think the no the first step people need to take is milling the grains themselves, whether that be modern wheat or ancient or heritage varieties. That's step one. And you may be very surprised that you're able to handle that just fine because that's the key. All right. Now he did get into the whole chromosomes and genetics and how there's more. Gluten ⁓ compounds and our modern wheat as opposed to the ancient varieties. And that is true. That's why your modern wheat varieties are easier to work with, that they're easier to work with with bread baking and that you get a better rise. But I honestly, my opinion is I don't think that is what is messing people up. There, I said it. And actually, a recent study has come out showing that it's usually not the gluten that people are having an issue with. That's a whole other podcast or video or something. But I don't think people actually having issues with the gluten. All right. So even though it's a different type of gluten structure with our modern wheat varieties, I think the key ultimately is milling it yourself and consuming it whole grain because then you're still getting the beneficial fiber with that gluten and it's still being it's still just a hybridized wheat. It is not a genetically modified wheat. It's still wheat, meaning there's still aspects of it that God put in there, meaning, you know, the fiber that you need to digest and all of these B vitamins, vitamin E, all of these essential nutrients that you still need, absolutely, and that is still in there even on our in our modern wheats. And you can only do the gluten can only get so much out of whack. Okay. So I still believe that it obviously is in a ratio that God allowed whenever he created and designed the fact that things could hybridize. Again, hopefully that makes sense. But that's another thing that he got into that I think can be just deceiving because ultimately, again, especially when they keep weaving in and out of associating it with white flour, but modern wheat, and that's ⁓ that's so deceptive and it leaves people with despair. So the gluten ratio is out of whack when you do all-purpose flour with our modern wheat. I would say it's out of whack even if you do all-purpose flour with your ancient or heritage grains. Okay, you need to just be consuming the whole grains. So those are things right there. Ultimately, it comes down to it's not the wheat, it's the flour. Okay, I'm gonna say it again: not the wheat, it's the flour that has been messed with. Okay, white flour became out for the masses. This was because of the industrial revolution, and we said white flour was great. It was and that happened like in the ninth by the 1920s. White flour was available for the masses, and very soon after that. We started having epidemics of ⁓ these B vitamin deficiencies, which is why they had to enrich the flour. It wasn't until the nineteen fifties that our modern wheat varieties was ⁓ put together by Norman Gul Gulag. Norman Gulag. Yeah, that's the name. ⁓ where they did this huge project and that's where we get our our modern wheat varieties. So we were already having issues with this white flour before our modern wheats came around in the nineteen fifties. They've definitely gotten worse. Since then, but that's because we're consuming all-purpose flour. Okay. Not necessarily the wheat. Mill it yourself. Mill it yourself. How many times can I beat this drum? A lot. Now, the second thing that I really want to talk about is how we mentioned about glyphosate. Now, absolutely 110%. I do not like glyphosate. I will avoid products that have it. I want to avoid glyphosate as much as I can. We've already seen the lawsuits of, you know, glyphosate causing cancer. Absolutely, it is 100%. We need to avoid it. And I wish we never, ever, ever, ever invented it or used it. But here we are, and it's in our lives. So one thing he said in the video was that 70% of bread was tested and tested positive for glyphosate here in the United States. Now, questions about that. is one, what breads were you testing? Were you just testing breads from the store, bread products from the store, or are you actually going around to wheat farmers and testing them? Because I'll go ahead and tell you now, y'all. Milling my own grains, I'm buying from plenty there are plenty of farmers out there that do not use glyphosate. First of all, buy organic. If you're buying organic, they do not use glyphosate. It their products cannot test for glyphosate. It is not in their soil. It hasn't been for a long time. ⁓ it's it's just not there. So if all else fails, buy organic wheat, which there are wonderful wheat farmers out there that are organic. I mean, many of them, and I prefer to buy organic. And the beauty of milling grains yourself is buying those organic wheat berries is actually not much more expensive than conventional. But even with conventional brands, many of them don't want to use glyphosate. We actually don't need to really use glyphosate here in the United States because what where Wheat is grown is usually a dry climate. The reason why they spray glyphosate is to dry out the wheat. Well, where it is grown here in the US, that's typically not a problem. So most farmers just aren't going to use it, maybe not on some principle, just because they don't have to. And my last research that I did was only about 20, maybe 30% of American wheat farmers even used glyphosate. I did a video on YouTube all about that. If you just search like grains and grit glyphosate, it'll it'll probably show up. It's not as commonly used here in the US as you think. However, if you are if you go to Canada or the UK, wetter, ⁓ colder climates, shorter growing seasons, they are more prone to use glyphosate. And I do believe that there's a possibility. We we ⁓ that many manufacturers here in the United States probably get some of their wheat. From Canada. They get it from American farmers, but they may also get it from Canada as well. And especially your typical run-of-the-mill, you know, like your gold metal, Pillsbury, these huge, massive companies, they are just buying from many different wheat farmers and throwing it all in and milling it up. So some may use glyphosate, some don't. ⁓ so when you go and test any product made from that, that's gonna test positive for glyphosate. But if you actually just go to one farmer, say for example, Four Generations Organic Farms is an organic farm that grows our modern wheat varieties. They use no glyphosate and they don't test for glyphosate. Same thing with pol now, the contrast to poluse, ⁓ poluse grains, they are conventional farmers, but they also don't use glyphosate. They don't want to use glyphosate and they test regularly for that. They use no desiccants in their conventional farm. Here in the United States. Those are just two of many, many farmers out there that you can buy from and there's no glyphosate. So he made it sound like way worse than what it is. Again, if you're buying bread from the store, absolutely your chances are much higher for having bread with glyphosate in it because you have no idea where that wheat came from. You have no idea where it came from. So much higher chance of it doing of it. Of you getting glyphosate in your food. ⁓ lower chance, significantly lower chance to zero chance if you actually are milling your grains at home and you know your farmer, know who you're buying from, ask those questions. And many of them have them on their website because they know people don't want it. And so they're gonna state on their website if they don't use it loud and proud, believe me. So that was the other thing about the glyphosates, is yes, it's out there. It's a terrible thing, but there are ways that you can avoid it. So, problem number three, misleading thing that he did, was talking about when he gave the solution at the very end. So here is a solution. People were like, ⁓ no, what do I actually do? How can I get my bread back if ever? And his solution was find someone who happens to be milling with a stone mill, an ancient grain variety. And then using that in a sourdough bread. And that was pretty much his solution, which is so defeating. So incredibly defeating. If I heard that, and this was the first time I was ever even aware of this, I would be like, well, I'm in trouble. Because y'all, I live out in the middle of nowhere. Okay. In the middle of nowhere here in Florida. We do not have wheat farmers here in Florida. Wheat is typically not grown here. So that's out if I wanted a local wheat. And then also, where am I gonna go for someone who happens to be stone grind stone milling an ancient grain? First of all, what is an ancient grain? What's a stone mill? Blah, blah, blah. He never even said, mill it from home. You can actually buy a stone mill for your house in electric form. It's wonderful. Praise the Lord for technology. Okay. We've electrified those stone mills. It is now easier than ever to mill your own grains at home. So I would say that's what you need to do. Again, you can mill your own grains. Secondly, you don't have to do sourdough. You don't have to. Most of the problem is solved by just milling your grains and consuming them whole, even with commercial yeast. That's that resolves most of people's problems right there, right off the bat. There, I've made it easier for you. Boom. Okay, make it. It's just even with commercial yeast, it is so much better. To get that, even with our modern wheat varieties, so long as you are just milling it yourself. You don't have to do sourdough. Now, did they, is that what they did back then? Yep. Yep. And that is the way that God designed it. And I do think that it is best, but I think the best is just whole grain flour that you've milled yourself with sourdough. Something that I have yet to master because I'm lazy. Okay. I like commercial yeast. It is easy, it is predictable, it's faster, and we don't have a problem with it. So going on from there, you also don't have to use an ancient grain. Again, going back, most people's problems are resolved by just milling the flour themselves. You don't have to only use an ancient grain because there's not only ancient grains, we have heritage varieties as well. Those are ones like your Rouge de Bordeaux, something I just completely slaughtered in pronunciation, but also your turkey red, your sonora white. These are heritage grains. And then we also have our modern dwarf wheat varieties, that those hard, red, hard, white wheats, your typical hard, red, hard white wheats. And ⁓ you know, you don't have to just stick with Emmer, Eincorn, or Corsan, or spelt. Like you don't have to just stick with those. Now, I did a video on YouTube that did surprise me that yes, one thing he did get correct is these ancient varieties are a bit more nutritious. Now, I say that it was mainly in the micronutrients that they varied. All wheats have pretty much the same amount of B vitamins, fiber, those type of things. The most important thing is that you're with a farmer who takes care of their soil to make their plant as nutrient dense as possible. All right. That's our regenerative farming practices that we have these days. And that's what you're looking for. But it was in the micronutrients, selenium, ⁓ those type of things, ⁓ magnesium. That your ancient grain varieties did tend to do a bit better on when tested against our modern dwarf wheat varieties. But ultimately, I think this really once again goes back to the farmer. ⁓ I want to see, I I would like to see those studies, which wheat were like where were you testing our modern wheats? Because if you were going with a most ancient grain farmers, I would say are organic farmers. And they're doing these regenerative practices and really taking care of their soil. That automatically is going to make their product more nutritious. Now, do they also compare it to a regenerative organic farmer growing our modern dwarf wheat and comparing it to that? Like that's what I would like to know. Like, how does the nutrition nutrient nutrient levels compare when you actually are comparing those apples to apples? You're just changing up the wheat variety. That's what I would like to know. But I did in my research, I did see where in testing they they were seeing that. So that is fair. But I will say the major nutrients that wheat really thrives on, like your B vitamins, your fiber, your vitamin E, that's pretty much the same all around. Again, mill it, mill it yourself. So that's the good news, y'all. This video, I was really I like at the very end, like I was I was yelling at it, like my dad yells at the TV on a foot with a football game. And I was just like, no, like, ⁓ that's white flour. Like, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, go back. You're talking about white flour now, not modern dwarf wheat with that is whole grain and milled. Now talking about white flour. Nope, you're still talking. No, that's white flour again. And they just kept making people think that our modern wheat is bad all around. But really, they were talking about the disadvantages that are with white flour. Okay. Again. It's the flour that is ultimately the problem, not the wheat. White flour, you need to avoid. White flour is what causes the issues, especially if you enrich that white flour. For those of you who have the MTHFR gene mutation, you cannot handle folic acid, which is in enriched flour. You can have folate, which that is the real form of that vitamin B that is in whole grain that you get when you mill the grains yourself and bake that bread at home yourself. All right. So that is my two cents that I really want to get into with this, with this video. Again, he was right on certain things. If this is how they used to have bread, we used to have whole grain bread that was milled. And we've lost that. It is an art that people have lost. But unfortunately, what we have also lost is just common sense in a way. But also we've we've lost, like we are so far, we've been so distant from our food. and what real food is that people people don't have a clue. But y'all, I wasn't even until my twenties that I was fortunate enough to find out where our wheat comes from. That, ⁓ wait, that's stuff in the store. That's white flour. And the difference between that and freshly milled wheat, it had never dawned on me. Okay, what people used to have for bread. I didn't know. It never I never knew. Only recently have people It's just compounded over the last several decades where now it's just really common that people are having issues with bread from the store. But I I just believe that that is because that is just white flour. It's just white flour. Get away from white flour and you'd be amazed. That's why people say, Well, I no longer eat bread and I feel great. Well, yeah, you probably dump the white flour. Anyone feels great. Absolutely. Good for you. Now get the real stuff. We can get our staff of life back. We can have our bread again. And it's not as hard as you think. Again, this is why I brought out my my training program. ⁓ that is not just the recipes, but the full technique where ⁓ I this is an online course that I have and it's my full training program, and I'll link it in the description box below. But it is my full training program where I walk you through, I hold your hand on how to really get started with milling your grains. And for those who maybe already have your grain mill, this is a course that's gonna give you the confidence and to master using freshly milled wheat. So you can actually have delicious, amazing bread at home and have all the beneficial nutrients of doing so by milling your own wheat in a simple format. You don't have to do sourdough. You don't have to do ancient grains. That is all fine and dandy, but not something I recommend for beginners because it's harder. It's a it's a larger learning curve. And that really discourages people from doing it themselves. But you can do it yourself. There's a way I teach you how. But And that's also what I just do on YouTube. That's what I do is I teach you how to do this. And I also kind of re I feel like I I'm I have to reprogram people's brains and make them realize and teach people the truth about real bread. So that's it, y'all. That was a doozy. ⁓ be sure to subscribe to this channel and hopefully in the near future I will be able to get these out on other ⁓ platforms like the, you know, Spotify, Apple, whatever all the podcast apps are that are out there so far. It's just on YouTube, but you can just listen to it. And I really appreciate y'all being here. Thank y'all so much for sticking with me. And I hope I will be seeing or talking with y'all very soon in another episode with the grains and grit unsifted. Y'all have a wonderful day and I'll see you later. Or I'll talk to you later. I guess I should say talk to you later. Either way, have a great day.