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short, I felt fine. Whew!
    The next day, I repeated the procedure, substituting four ounces of conventional organic whole wheat bread. Blood sugar at the start: 84 mg/dl. Blood sugar after consuming conventional bread: 167 mg/dl. Moreover, I soon became nauseated, nearly losing my lunch. The queasy effect persisted for thirty-six hours, accompanied by stomach cramps that started almost immediately and lasted for many hours. Sleep that night was fitful, though filled with vivid dreams. I couldn’t think straight, nor could I understand the research papers I was trying to read the next morning, having to read and reread paragraphs four or five times; I finally gave up. Only a full day and a half later did I start feeling normal again.
    I survived my little wheat experiment, but I was impressed with the difference in responses to the ancient wheat and the modern wheat in my whole wheat bread. Surely something odd was going on here.
    My personal experience, of course, does not qualify as a clinical trial. But it raises some questions about the potential differences that span a distance of ten thousand years: ancient wheat that predates the changes introduced by human genetic intervention versus modern wheat.
    Multiply these alterations by the tens of thousands of hybridizations to which wheat has been subjected and you have the potential for dramatic shifts in genetically determined traits such as gluten structure. And note that the genetic modifications created by hybridization for the wheat plants themselves were essentially fatal, since the thousands of new wheat breeds were helpless when left to grow in the wild, relying on human assistance for survival. 8
    The new agriculture of increased wheat yield was initially met with skepticism in the Third World, with objections based mostly on the perennial “That’s not how we used to do it” variety. Dr. Borlaug, hero of wheat hybridization, answered critics of high-yield wheat by blaming explosive world population growth, making high-tech agriculture a “necessity.” The marvelously increased yields enjoyed in hunger-plagued India, Pakistan, China, Colombia,and other countries quickly quieted naysayers. Yields improved exponentially, turning shortages into surplus and making wheat products cheap and accessible.
    Can you blame farmers for preferring high-yield dwarf hybrid strains? After all, many small farmers struggle financially. If they can increase yield-per-acre up to tenfold, with a shorter growing season and easier harvest, why wouldn’t they?
    In the future, the science of genetic modification has the potential to change wheat even further. No longer do scientists need to breed strains, cross their fingers, and hope for just the right mix of chromosomal exchange. Instead, single genes can be purposefully inserted or removed, and strains bred for disease resistance, pesticide resistance, cold or drought tolerance, or any number of other genetically determined characteristics. In particular, new strains can be genetically tailored to be compatible with specific fertilizers or pesticides. This is a financially rewarding process for big agribusiness, and seed and farm chemical producers such as Cargill, Monsanto, and ADM, since specific strains of seed can be patent protected and thereby command a premium and boost sales of the compatible chemical treatments.
    Genetic modification is built on the premise that a single gene can be inserted in just the right place without disrupting the genetic expression of other characteristics. While the concept seems sound, it doesn’t always work out that cleanly. In the first decade of genetic modification, no animal or safety testing was required for genetically modified plants, since the practice was considered no different than the assumed-to-be-benign practice of hybridization. Public pressure has, more recently, caused regulatory agencies, such as the food-regulating branch of the FDA, to require testing prior to a genetically