We are in an era where people are trying to avoid GMO products and also trying a "gluten-free" diet because of the health damage of those 2 things.
For people dying from famine, the hipster nutrition trends are not on the radar.
So the "hipster fad" is actually the eating of wheat. It's not a natural food for mankind to be consuming.
Well, mankind practiced almost universal cannibalism for around a million years [note: this is true]. Then after restricting cannibalism to certain tribes and certain occasions for around 10,000 years, we've only ceased cannibalism entirely during the last century. So the "hipster fad" is actually the lack of cannibalism. It's not a natural thing for mankind to not be consuming the brains of its vanquished enemies.
Wash, rinse, and repeat.
And why is it "rather" healthy? I thought it causes "absolutely no health damage" for 6.9 of the 7 billion people out there?
The beginning of agriculture caused an overall loss in lifespans, but in different agricultural societies the reduction was inversely correlated with primary crop protein content. If you restrict yourself to grass crops, high-gluten wheat is one of the most healthy things you can eat. (Only surpassed by properly cooked quinoa, because it has even more proteins than wheat.)
> And why is it "rather" healthy?
What is this, the fifth grade? I in no way implied any downside to gluten (to non-celiac people).
> I thought it causes "absolutely no health damage" for 6.9 of the 7 billion people out there?
And that would be correct.
I encourage you to look into the fields of life-extension to reinforce the fact that our bodies and ecologies like them are in no way perfect. There is currently no food that causes absolutely zero health damage. I only mentioned your use of rather (i.e. "to a certain degree") because it seemed funny to then in the same breath claim an absolute---that there is no degree to even consider.
Where gluten lies in all of us this is up for debate because meaningful evidence interpreted in a dependable framework has yet to happen, as much as you'd like to think it's an utterly settled matter.
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4239 "Are gluten free diets really good for your general wellness?"
Gluten free diets actually are necessary for some people, and advisable for others. [...] Yet those whose business is the sale of gluten free products would often have us believe that many more of us should buy them. [...] So think of gluten sensitivities in the same way you'd think of bee stings or peanut allergies: of great and very real concern to a small number of people, of some concern for a few more, and of no concern to the rest of us. Don't let anyone tell you that gluten is harming you in some way that's so far not supported by any science, or that you should avoid it for the purpose of general wellness. For most of us, gluten is our friend; but never forget that it is also, like many compounds, definitely harmful to some.
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4112 "Are GMO crops dangerous, or a boon to mankind?"
Nature's method of genetically hybridizing plants is cross pollination, and for most of human history, this is how farmers and scientists have created new and improved species of crops. [...] When it comes to food crops, the idea is to take the strengths of one plant strain, such as an immunity to a certain disease or a hardiness to certain adverse conditions, and transfer that strength to another plant strain that needs it. [...] and by 1962, a new strain of rice called IR8 was feeding people all over the world. IR8 was the first really big modified crop to make a real impact on world hunger.
2) Er, no, the question was about genetic modification, which is not the same as hybridization.
Interesting how many people, who quite clearly know nothing about what they're writing, revel in the supposed scientific credibility the word "skeptic" gives them.
This kind of drivel gives skeptics a bad name, making them look as ignorant as the unquestioning who blindly accept the opposite story.
Modern wheat is not high gluten. It's actually probably lower gluten than what our ancestors had.
They even invented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process in order to manage to work with the low gluten wheats that are common.
Yes, it is, at least until you define precisely what kinds of genetic modification you're talking about, and we can get down to the nuts-and-bolts instead of generalities.
I mean, why would you do that if you actually took biology classes?