Are Ancient Grains Really Better For You? 

''we use about 550 metric tons of wheat per year'' who are ''we''? humanity? USA? important detail

My mom uses spelt in baking because she's allergic to something in modern wheat. So getting production up to where it's less expensive would be fantastic

Whether a grain is more economically feasible or expedient is a far different issue than whether it’s “better” for you or not.

For me, "less gluten" means fewer migraines, fewer allergies, better sleep and more focus when working. Which is a good thing.

I'd find it amusing if we selectively bred these up for better properties, and they ended up becoming basically just modern wheat XD

A big benefit to ancient grains that he didn't go into is the low gluten to gliodin ratio that causes inflammation. These grains are a great option for people who have issues eating modern wheat.

Interesting video but I was surprised that you didn't cover the digestive impacts these have on the body. I read that modern wheat is more difficult to digest since the glutine of the hybrid wheat is much stronger, and therefore more difficult for humans to digest, and can even cause inflammation in the body. Is this scientifically backed up? Could you consider doing another more in depth video? Thanks!

Hohenheim is Ed and Al's father silly

Decent quality but I thought the video was a bit grainy. Just me?

Einkorn is Finkle; finkle is Einkorn.

Speaking of grass, can you do an episode on how amazing bamboo is? It's tragically underappreciated in the Western world.

You answered the question if ancient grains better for us just by comparing the protein values?!?! That's really weak. What about vitamins minerals and the other good jazz?

Monsanto financed video. Makes me lol.

I really love Spelt, but just for the taste, never knew it is an "ancient grain" with different nutritions. And Hank, your pronounciation of "Einkorn" was perfect.

What about the minerals and vitamins contained in the final product? Because this is where I would suspect and advantage of the older versions, since the modern wheat was bred for high caloric value.

i love you so much for making videos using science to shut up stupid trendy dieters

Why is gluten considered a high-quality protein?

I think there is a mistake in this presentation. Modern wheat doesn't have all the amino acids. Einkorn does. So in that respect Einkorn has a better protein profile than modern wheat.

+SciShow All I want is for nipa grass/palmer's grass to get domesticated into a commercially viable form. It will do wonders for the world. 'Cause, y'know, being able to grow with saltwater, or on salinated soil.

Guys I appreciate your channel, but it's an understatement to say that the factors you considered in the opinions presented here appear extremely limited and ultimately the information is highly under-serving and misleading. There's a plethora of scientific reasons why ancient grains are worlds apart from modern wheat in terms of healthfulness. The most commonly eaten wheat today is dangerous and was engineered primarily for what's proven to be the most monetarily beneficial (greater yield, size, etc) for the corporations, not for health. Also greater yield has nothing at all to do with if it's good for you or not (the topic of the video)! I know it wasn't your intention, but PLEASE do more research on these types of topics before propagating damaging and untrue information to the masses.

I find it amusing that they are arguing that ancient wheat varieties are nutritionally inferior because of the lower protein quality. The protein "quality" is only relevant if you're using wheat as a nearly exclusive food source. Since this is not the case in our modern world, then I would argue that the higher protein content makes the ancient wheat varieties nutritionally superior. I am curious if they compared micronutrient content, however: that could be really revealing.

Wait, so they didn't give the older grains as much nitrogen as the newer ones? Nitrogen in the soil is very important for wheat yields (and other grains). Studies have consistently shown this. That's why some people grow soybeans in between their wheat or corn harvests -- the soybeans fix nitrogen from the air so that other plants can access it in the soil. That's a biased study. You're not supposed to change multiple variables at once without a control group for each one.

The one question they never considered though is how does the hybridized wheat effect our health. It is the cause of many diseases, weight gain, and problems today. That and refined sugars.

Out of curiosity: what factors did they use to determine what protein was considered higher quality?

2:57 Ancient grains might be useful for people who can't digest gluten.

We ought bring them back if only to increase the genetic diversity of our food sources.

Hello SciShow. Instead of answering the question, you created more confusion. Your masters love you. Your cheque is in the mail.

Wasn't the whole point of this video to discuss if the grains were "better for you".... meaning healthier. And then you spent like one second on that! Just protein content! really? a simplistic conclusion don't you think? Soooo.... those people who get sick from regular wheat but can then eat these grains (particularly Einkorn from personal experience) without any problem... ya think that might be something to look into? I think they'd be willing to sacrifice "higher yield" to be able to actually eat a damn piece of bread!

You forgot to mention that some just taste better, Boiled spelt with pesto for the win!

Except gluten doesn't give you energy any more than any other protein, it's the carbs that most readily become sugars and ATP

Just GMO the shit out of them and be done with it. Who has time to selectively breed over decades, something that can be done in a lab in a few months.

thanks for looking into this, always good to get an unbiased look into the latest food fads.

but what about the protien that wasn't gluten?

Where I live, they spray the wheat with Roundup just before harvest so that the wheat all matures at the same time. The grains have to much moisture while it’s alive and those grains get crushed in the thresher. Killing the wheat allows the grains to dry out, producing better yields. We should be looking at farming methods as well.

It yeilds less product, is more expensive to process and is less nutritious. sounds great.

Hank, the hulled wheats do have a much more beneficial aspect that you glossed over: Gluten. The lower gluten content might not be high enough to trigger Celiac(since yes it's a gluten intolerance, but it also depends on the amount of gluten in some cases.) but it will still give that taste of bread without being completely artificial. Also, we could finally make some of that good old fashioned Egyptian beer.

green screen or blue screen?

I was just wondering about this today, I'm impressed with the timing.

This guy must be getting a hunk of dough (pun intended) from certain agricultural companies for talking up modern wheat performance. Quantity doesn't mean quality! The health risks being shown with ultra-hybridized wheat are alarming. Personally, I have developed severe angioedema when eating that crap. When I am in the middle east or Europe, I do not have any issues. While scientists would consider my testimony anecdotal at best, I'd like to think that i'm a first hand witness to what it can do to you.

Ancient wheat > Monsanto Wheat, that's for sure.

This really misses the nutritional advantages of ancient wheats, which is more than just protein content. Most modern wheats don't have the carotenoids of ancient wheats, which was bred out in the 19th century to make "white" bread. Carotenoids are important anti-oxidants, especially important for eye health. Khorosan wheat, in particular, has been shown in research to have higher antioxidant activity than modern hard white spring wheat.

I can't stop watching this show. I keep binge watching....whenever a new episode comes on I go on RU-vid and I can't stop clicking on the recommended SciShow videos on the side

ancient grains are really cool! when i was studying breadmaking one of my classmates who went to visit a traditional wheat farm in france suck some ancient grains back in jars in his suitcase. He could've gotten arrested! He planted them on his friend's farm last year and this year he should have the first good crop.

The implication was that lower nutritional yield equates to lower calories. I'd be very interested in seeing the difference in both vitamin and mineral makeup of old vs new grains and also the difference in relative calorie densiy

Gluten is what gives you energy when you take a bite of bread? THAT 's the meat on the click-bait hook? That means so little as to be deliberately deceitful.

It’s actually not gluten that caused the problem with wheat. Gluten is hard to digest but not as bad as other proteins in wheats. We really shouldn’t be producing hybrids they have lower nutrition. The ancient wheats will produce less and will need less fertilizer. It’s profitable. They make way better bread too.

Interesting but food scientists always seem to ignore the main reason why we choose one food over another: taste. Spelt bread tastes nicer than standard white sliced. The grain yields might be not so good, but that's for the benefit of producers, not consumers. It's good to have a diversity of grains - as you said, our modern monocultures are very vulnerable to diseases.

What!? You need to do an interview with wheat farmer Bob Quinn and Dr. John Douillard. Your information is a bit off in terms of accuracy.

0:56 "well need to develop the older types of wheat" Sometimes I wonder if people ever stop to think before speaking. Its precisely all the development that people dont want.

thanks somuch making us update.

What about flavor? That's one reason for growing specialty wheat, especially for artisan and home bakers. Commodity wheat may perform well in industrial baking at the sacrifice of good taste.

While I see your points, I wish you had compared more than just protein content. I think mineral content would have been interesting. I also think comparing highly refined white wheat flour to flours milled from grains than can not so easily be removed from the chaff could produce a much healthier fiber content.

They are the ORIGINAL design, the way God designed it and it is significantly different and healthier for humans. Modern wheat is better for profit, not for human health. People can actually digest ancient grains unlike the modern crap, oops pardon, crop.

I really enjoy these videos that debunk and/or educate in relation to modern trends. Keep up the good work. I truly appreciate these short and sweet science based clips.

I'd love it if spelt came back strong. I tried a loaf of spelt bread before and found it very tasty.

Clickbait / wrong title. The title is "Are Ancient Grains Really Better For You?", but it should be, "Are Ancient Grains Really Better For Farmers?"

Not necessarily true about modern wheat strictly being better for you. There are generally a lot more micronutrients and a larger variety of regular nutrients in less developed wheat, which can have some big benefits.

I think there are (2) additional factors mentioning. (note: I have added paragraph breaks to this for better readability, here's hoping they stay in) #1.) Modern wheat is devoid of much of the best nutritional parts of the wheat itself to make it last longer in the supply chain. This excerpt from Wikipedia says it well: “From a human nutrition standpoint, it is ironic that wheat milling methods to produce white flour eliminate those portions of the wheat kernel (bran, germ, shorts, and red dog mill streams) that are richest in proteins, vitamins, lipids and minerals.” So to make wheat last longer we have to strip out the good stuff which means pests and bacteria no longer want it.. But's that's the point - if they don't want it then it means there must be a reason.. a nutritional content reason.. #2) The Rise of Wheat sensitivities - There is growing data to suggest that the weeds that Dr. Borlaug used to make wheat grow shorter and faster in the 1950's and 60's are the proteins signatures that most people are actually allergic to. According to his Wikipedia entry, Borlaug led initiatives that “involved the development of high-yielding varieties of cereal grains, expansion of irrigation infrastructure, modernization of management techniques, distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers.” This actually bears true for me and my family as we are Celiacs. We can tolerate ancient grains (wheat strains) just fine, but we have allergic responses to the Hybrid Wheat-weed strains now being used since the 1960's for more yield per hectare.

Selective breeding. . . you mean . . . genetic MODIFICATION OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG@@!@!!@@!! For the purposes of making sure it's obvious, this is sarcasm.

Less gluten is good. Gluten is relatively useless to people except to cause excessive inflammation in high quantities. It does make bread baking more difficult, though.

Brought to you by Wonder Bread...

I want to see a video on hydroponics and how that can be the farming of the future!

I was told ancient grains have less chromosomes than modern wheat and that makes them easier to digest than modern wheat.

Maaaaaaaaaaaan, what an awsome intro song you have here. Maaaaaaaaan, i just cant stop to rewind it. Congrats

I feel like just having more diverse crops is a point for ancient grains, especially since they don't seem to have any major downsides. Sure they may not really be better than modern grains exactly, but from what little I understand about farming, more diversity is almost always a good thing.

Just wondering. Why is a high-protein content considered the basis for a better quality wheat? What are the markers for determining when a protein is of a higher quality? What about other considerations such as the long term effect of growing a genetically manipulated plant such as modern wheat, often patented by large corporations that want their piece of the pie? What about the amount of water the soil requires to grow modern wheat verses ancient wheat? These are just some questions that I have. Not sure if you have the answers but maybe they are worth pondering.

After enough time passes, everything we are eating today will be viewed as "ancient."

Could you do a video on what we understand about the very edge of the universe and how we know what happened within moments of its happening?

Heyyyy!!!! I was eating my sprouted spelt cinnamon bread when I found this video XD. Tastes epic, and I go with sprouted spelt cause it tastes better :|

Do a show on grass! Meaning all we use in the grass family. Love these kind of videos

our ancestors must be thinking, "we created all these wheats that you eat through selective breeding and now you want to go back to the ones we were originally were eating? so all our efforts were in vain."

So what were the values of protein in each for comparison? What percentage of digestible protein was in each? What vitamins and fiber content? Kind of glossing over a lot of things here.

Eating too much bread made with modern wheat makes me bloated and gassy. Rye, oat, and spelt breads don’t. Not a difficult choice for me. Also, I do genuinely love a slice of warm rye toast with gobs of melted butter. It doesn’t get soggy the way regular sandwich bread does.

Well, I haven't thought about if is better for me...but it makes my homemade breads taste better.

Well yeah societies wouldn't have switched if the other wheats were better that was petty obvious, it's good to have a backup but I think our main variants will hold up for quite a while given how much selective breeding to improve them must have happened over hundreds of years.

Extremely superficial video doesn't really answer the question it poses in its own title. Are the ancient grains better for ME, as opposed to farmers and their yields and bakers and what i assume are their leavening needs? The term "protein quality" appears to be used spuriously and doesn't really provide an answer.

The video maker is misleading the public. But I understand if the truth were told big business will be in trouble

I would have liked a better side-by-side comparison of the quality of the grain compared to the faster-growing wheats such as winter red wheat. Alongside the kind of fertilizers. Quality is very important along with sprouted bread vs unsprouted bread. You seemed not to care as you glossed over much of the important information that makes the difference.

Who is paying you? You so wrong. May be you should have more knowledge before you open your mouth.

Two positive sides of ancient grains: Longer grass puts natural selection pressure on larger roots, thus binds more CO2. And of course - Bread made from ancient grains taste so much better!!! Trust me, if you haven't had einkorn bread before you got to try it.

Why are people so scared of GMOs? From all the research I've done, the biggest argument I've heard is "GMOs are bad because they mess with the balance of nature!" Well, I've got a few things to say: 1: Quite a lot of GMOs only use genes already found in the organism. This means that there are quite a few GMOs which are basically the same as selective breeding sped up (In other words, the process used to domesticate animals and create farmable crops, SUCH AS WHEAT). 2: Humans have pretty much always messed with the balance of nature! From global warning to wiping out species, we've already messed plenty with the balance of nature.

"Ancient grain" is a really misleading title when applied to commercially available food cereals. Often, they may just be less common, older varieties (like the spelt), or something like sorghum, which is anything but ancient and more commonly used for livestock feed.

The information is not accurate and very misleading!!

The lack of gluten is more the reason why there's so much interest. The prevalence of Celiac Disease and wheat allergies leaves people still wanting wheat and not forced to eat shit that tastes like my coffee table.

Thanks for making these great, informative videos!

The video does not address the question posed in the title. It describes the differences, but that is not relevant to which is better for you.

What's the point in developing the old wheats? Because we will just end up with what we have now. I have a relative that buys spelt *because* it has *less* gluten (she has gluten allergies). It seems like a was of time developing something into something you already have.

It seems they skipped the middle ground which would be, "heritage wheats", old varieties from the 1800's that are making a comeback

The hulled wheats are better for those with the gluten-protein sensitivity. The autoimmune reaction to gluten (Celiacs Disease) where one's immune system attacks the small intenstine mistaking gluten as a toxic intuder has increased in prevalence due to the modern wheat being bread to have more gluten.

Isnt it the carbs that give the eneegy, not the gluten?

Do ancient wheats contain different forms of gluten or perhaps different binding proteins all together for the 20% of people with wheat sensitivity or those who are completely intolerant to gluten?

breads, pasta (i love the stuff) but its really just junk food and ive found rice is a good replacement to wheat and flour... the more processed the food is the worse it is for you

I have done a lot of research regarding the nutrition in wheat. Focusing on gluten, the burst of energy is a reaction similar to drugs like ritalin or speed. It isn't that you're body gets energy from the gluten. It is not like a nicotine buz from smoking cigarettes.

my mom and i want to use hulled wheat BECAUSE it has less gluten. she has a gluten intolerance which has unfortunately been in my family for 4 generations....

Had he fully researched this subject i might come back.he cares more about his popularity than facts

You pronounciation of Einkorn was pretty good, except the 'r' of couse. Well done, Hank

Great shirt, and great video

Take in mind that it is not just the product but also how it is made. One reason I firmly believe honey is way better for us than sugar. I take bee vomit over sulfur dioxide treated product any day.

My son has anaphylaxis reaction from exerciseing after eating wheat people are surprised by this kind of allergic reaction. Wonder if you can make a video on that.

My question concerning this video is this: when did we switch over? Because, not to belittle scishow but it seems pretty clear to me that most of the qualities that made free threshing grain "better" (i.e. the shorter stalks, higher yield and better quality protein) could've been a product of breeding. After all, as they themselves said in their video on GMO's we've been genetically modifying plants and animals since we started farming, so it could be that these ancient grains simply didn't get the same type or amount of breeding that the others did. Just a thought I had while watching this.