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CleanTechnica reports
The "flash drought" that came out of nowhere this summer in the US High Plains, afflicting Montana and the Dakotas the worst, has already destroyed more than half of this year's wheat crop, going by some recent field surveys. Considering that the region is now one of the top wheat-growing regions in the world, the damage is very notable.
These so-called flash droughts are expected to become considerably more common over the coming decades as the climate continues warming and weather patterns continue changing.
[...] Something that's interesting to note here is that 2011, only 6 years back, was actually one of the wettest years on record in eastern Montana. Those sorts of rapid swings between extreme precipitation and flooding on the one hand, and extreme flash droughts on the other, are only going to become more common from here on out. Eventually, most of the agriculture in the region will have to cease.
Grist calls this a Cereal Killer.
(Score: 4, Funny) by mhajicek on Thursday August 10 2017, @04:59PM (23 children)
I'm gluten intolerant.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday August 10 2017, @05:26PM (13 children)
I'm glad for you. Well maybe. After all, wheat food is easy to find. My mother in law is always looking for gluten free foods.
But what about all the people who are intolerant of gluten intolerant people?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday August 10 2017, @05:28PM (11 children)
To clarify, glad you're not affected by wheat crop, but not sure it's a good thing that you're gluten intolerant.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @06:09PM (10 children)
I'm confused. Are we talking about celiac disease [wikipedia.org]? Or are we complaining about health food fads?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @07:19PM (6 children)
There is a little of both. Gluten intolerance (GI) includes more than just Celiac Disease, but actual scientific studies put the prevalence less than most realize even when you count those that are asymptomatic. According to my gastroenterologist (that I see for things other than GI), the last time he ran the numbers, the people who come through his door claiming GI that actually have GI is just over 5%, which is LOWER than the number in the general population. And there is no end to what he calls "gluten-free hypocrites," who claim intolerance but drink malt beer and eat other food they don't realize have gluten in them (like one that could only eat bread after using the gluten-free setting on her toaster), or claim sensitivity to foods that have no gluten in them, like corn and rice flour, or dairy and meats. He also dislikes them because the fad is making food more expensive for people without GI, spread disinformation, and make some think that the condition is purely psychosomatic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @11:24PM (5 children)
How does it make food more expensive for people who like to eat gluten? I would expect the opposite.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @12:08AM (4 children)
I meant to put "it makes food more expensive for people WITH GI," which is a result of the fad because it basically turns it into a luxury good.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday August 11 2017, @02:50PM (2 children)
I've found the opposite actually. The fad anti gluten people have caused suppliers to offer many more gluten free options, which are improving in quality and dropping in price. Gluten free food is no longer a rare specialty item.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @08:01PM (1 child)
Does it really though? All my GI family complain of same or higher prices, especially in staples. What they really complain about though is how many foods with big "gluten free" and other advertising were already gluten free or had ready alternatives. You can buy the regular and "gluten-free" versions of many foods with the exact same benefits, but the ones with the stickers on them are pricier.
Of course, it could just be where they shop vs. where you shop, in both where you live and what store you choose to go to.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday August 11 2017, @09:29PM
I think that's something a lot of people don't understand.
Your standard oatmeal may not contain wheat as an ingredient, but if it's made in the same facility as cream of wheat or other flour bearing products or if the oats were shipped in the same trucks or anything like that it may contain micrograms of wheat dust, which is enough to cause some people significant issues or even send them to the hospital. It's like if you had food that was made in the same building as a botulism toxin refinery using some of the same equipment; you'd pay extra for the food made elsewhere even if they assured you that they didn't put any botulism toxin in it.
So while you could buy cheap oatmeal before and have a decent shot at not getting sick from it depending on your sensitivity (I have sometimes gotten sick from the standard Quaker oatmeal), if you wanted to be certain you'd have to roll your own or maybe buy expensive organic small-batch free-range oatmeal where each grain of oat was individually hand washed. Now there are mainstream lines so you just pay a small premium.
I emailed Quaker about the subject a couple years ago and they said that they couldn't guarantee that their oatmeal didn't contain wheat, for the above reasons. Now they have GF oatmeal for not much more than their standard, so I can have a cheaper reliably GF breakfast than the comparable alternatives of a few years ago.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @04:21AM
Thanks for clarifying. I've noticed that gluten-free foods often are expensive. Greater demand could lead to greater production and wider availability. In theory, it could even result in lower prices because of economies of scale. But businesses tend to charge what the market will bear.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by frojack on Thursday August 10 2017, @07:33PM (2 children)
98% of the gluten whiners are indeed talking about the fad.
The fad is something of a self fulfilling prophesy.
You see a fad, you jump on the band wagon.
You avoid wheat like it was death.
Gradually your gut loses the ability to digest wheat. (not just gluten - all of the wheat).
You eat some wheat, fart and bloat a bit, attributed it to gluten intolerance.
Go back to eating gluten free smug that you are now a member of the in crowd.
Hint: Its temporary. You'd have as much problem digesting North American Wheat if you
had been raised on a diet of UK wheat, or Australian wheat. Your gut will reacquire the ability.
But you'll be way less cool.
Only 0.18–1.2% actually have celiac disease.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @07:55PM
Eating grains is weird anyway. Why not eat real food like meat, vegetables, nuts, and fruit? Leave the grains for when you are really desperate, then the insects for being really, really desperate. They shouldn't be a staple food. Then again I don't enjoy sugary deserts either so maybe that is just my taste.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday August 10 2017, @10:05PM
Sorry, but it doesn't necessarily work that way. (I'm a single data point, so I need to say "necessarily".) For totally other reasons I stopped eating wheat for around a decade. So much so that my sister who has celiac and ends up in the hospital if she eats something that's been cut with a knife that has been used to cut bread, could eat the same food I do. Then for other reasons I started eating wheat again, not just wheat, but actually refined gluten as well as wheat germ and wheat bran. This caused **NO** digestive problems except for a few days of rather loose bowels...too much wheat bran.
So you don't necessarily become wheat intolerant just because you don't eat it for awhile.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @09:43PM
Well, they'll either have to buy expensive gluten-intolerant-free people to eat, or just eat less dishes with people in them.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday August 10 2017, @06:18PM (7 children)
Yeah my son too, the bad news is instead of using wheat as a filler, "they" will have to use GF grains as filler, raising the prices of GF stuff even more. So the GF birthday cake mix will be $8 now instead of $6 per box or whatever.
After the first couple years we just don't eat grains stuff, generally, which is a lot cheaper and easier than weird GF substitutes. So last night was thai style cashew chicken stir fry night instead of burgers on GF bun. Or my GF substitute for cookies as a snack is, like, an apple.
Restaurants are a PITA. Steaks and salads all the way...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @07:59PM (1 child)
I've been thinking there is some contaminant in bread that people are getting allergic too, for example something left over from the cysteine extraction process:
https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/53jx5n/theres-human-hair-in-your-bread [vice.com]
The more gluten intolerant people may just be less suitable for cannibalism than the rest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @06:51AM
I think most of our digestive systems will be able to cope with human hair with no problems. The issue is there's a LOT of stuff that's not declared, or declared as "inert" when it's not actually inert: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weed-whacking-herbicide-p/ [scientificamerican.com]
Remember all the studies claiming that glyphosate is safe? Even if those studies are right, Roundup isn't only glyphosate, is contains POEA:
So there could be other reasons than people suddenly getting sensitive to wheat. I hear people saying they can eat bread from a different country, and others thus saying the problem is psychosomatic but it could be something is actually different.
Often I get pimples when I eat at Subway - I just have mayo, vege, tuna/meat (???), bread. But when I eat bread + meat (lamb) + garlic mayo at various cheap Middle Eastern places I don't get pimples. So what's the difference? The mayo is different? The meat? The lack of azodicarbonamide in the bread?
I'm not one of those afraid of chemicals just because of long names but the thing is the rats and mice they test these shit on don't die from getting pimples and they don't live much longer than 2 years. And the track record of industries and corporations in such stuff isn't confidence inspiring. If there are problems it doesn't affect those rich sociopaths at the top who can afford to eat organic food and have their own private medical team.
There are some theories that the US wheat is different: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/09/26/226510988/doctors-say-changes-in-wheat-do-not-explain-rise-of-celiac-disease [npr.org]
But others say:
But the fact is the vast majority of the US people are overweight and unhealthy. It may not be due to the wheat and more due to sugar, but that makes me doubt him and his claims of good evidence.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday August 10 2017, @10:11PM (4 children)
FWIW, if your Thai Chicken used soy sauce it wasn't gluten free. Similarly for many other such sauces. Most standard oriental dishes as normally served in a restaurant are NOT gluten free, even if they only use rice in the recipe...because most use soy sauce, or tamari, or terriyaki, or...
That said, it's quite possible to do some styles of Thai Chicken (etc.) gluten free, so you might be just phrasing your point poorly, but just being Thai style chicken doesn't mean it's gluten free. (There's this Thai sauce that *is* gluten free, which *I* can't eat. It involves lumps of rock candy stewed into the sauce. Delicious!...but truly terrible for my health.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Friday August 11 2017, @02:00PM (1 child)
Yes that's the crucial distinction between Thai and Chinese, Chinese cashew chicken would drown in (wheat) soy sauce but Thai cashew chicken doesn't if you avoid oyster sauce which my kids declare "gross" so I don't use it anyway. Still tastes pretty good. Stinky Vietnamese fish sauce is about four times stronger than Thai oyster sauce (my opinion, no idea how accurate that really is) and the "good / real" stuff is made out of nothing but anchovies and salt perfectly soy and wheat free, so you can swap out oyster sauce and some of the salt and use about 1/4 super salty Vietnam fish sauce. So instead of a teaspoon of oyster sauce you use like drops of fish sauce. For my weird local value of kid logic, my kids declare oyster juice too disgusting to consume but anchovy juice is merely juicy fish and they like fish so all is well WRT stinky fish sauce. I have no comment, kid logic, what more can be said... When that little is being used anyway you may as well skip it, the meal still tastes good.
WRT thai cuisine commercial oyster sauce "always" contains soy sauce which contains wheat. Other than that, you're mostly good aside from the usual "cheap imitation shit full of profit boosting filler" which applies to all cuisines.
I've heard rumors commercial "out of a jar" chili paste contain soy sauce, unconfirmed, my brand does not. Sometimes I'm lazy and mortar and pestle garlic and chili is not in the cards. Obviously if you make your own chili paste it is not an issue.
There's a Paleo thai cookbook by Fragoso (the hot woman who has written a stack of paleo cookbooks) Paleo is usually GF most of the time plus or minus minor condiments which still has to be looked out for.
If you want to piss off somewhat nationalist thai and chinese cooks/chefs at the same time just tell them its the same food except thai food replaces most of the soy with spicy/hot garlic and chili paste. You can go pretty far in cooking with that analogy. Take every chinese stir fry or fried rice (cauliflower rice in my case) recipe that uses teriyaki or soy sauce and just sub in thai chili paste and there you go.
My experience with coconut aminos is they're gross and don't taste much like soy sauce so don't bother, although opinions may vary. Technically if you had a source of oysters and a heck of a lot of spare time I think you could make Thai style oyster sauce homemade using coconut aminos. But since coconut aminos taste gross it would likely ruin the oyster sauce. If you take the soy sauce out of the oyster sauce you pretty much have vietnam fish sauce using a different species of seafood, so may as well use the stinky fish sauce and leave it at that.
From what I understand, local wheat agriculture in Thailand is essentially zero, which is a pretty good indicator the cuisine will be mostly GF, although, you know, imported soy sauce, imported wheat, etc. Ukraine Russian German cuisine, probably not fertile ground for naturally GF cuisine, LOL. Mexico grows surprisingly little wheat, as long as you're not allergic to corn they have plenty of GF cuisine or GF adaptable cuisine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @03:18PM
Because you're very wrong: https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/chinese-food/eight-cuisine.htm [chinahighlights.com]
And that's just the 8 famous cuisines, there are plenty of others see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_cuisine [wikipedia.org]
https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/z4dg4j/dividing-and-conquering-the-cuisines-of-china [vice.com]
What you said is about as silly as saying "US food" is the same food as European food except that US food just replaces the mayo with ketchup.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday August 11 2017, @02:56PM (1 child)
There are GF soysauces. Tamari is a good one, and I was already using it before GI because I think it tastes better.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday August 11 2017, @04:29PM
OK, if you say so. My sister doesn't like them at all, and I've no interest. Still, "de gustibus non disputandum est". If you like them then you like them.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @08:25PM
I'm a glutton for gluten.