Preferred gluten free grains???

Read brain grain and wheat belly and you will drop it fast. So many diseases caused by and enhanced by wheat. Especially today's wheat. And is not a fad. It's been growing steady for over 10 years. Many are discovering all the problems they have had for years with stomach and diet are linked to it. Almost all pizza places like dominoes, pizza hut ledos all carry gf now. And most all major restaurants have gf menu. And since the wheat of today is causing celiacs it will only grow even more as people will have no choice. On a side note. My father who lives with us went gluten free simply because he had to our starve. Guess what news we just received? He is no longer diabetic. Wheat becomes sugar and is linked heavily to diabetes. My father is living proof. The doctor just took him off all his meds. True blessing indeed.

I googled the Brain grain and Wheat belly books and this is the first thing that popped up:

http://www.forksoverknives.com/the-s...d-grain-brain/

I am really glad the gluten free thing is working for your family.

But last week the "authorities" tell us they had told us wrong for the last 4 or 5 decades about the dangers of eating eggs.

I have lived through the horrors of Acid rain and The hole in the Ozone layer.

Then in the 70's we were all gonna die from Global cooling, that died away, to be replaced a couple decades later with us gonna die from Global warming, then the scientists claiming global warming were found to have cooked the books, and it quietly morphed into Climate change so they could capitalize on any rainstorm.

Guess I just figure something is gonna kill me, and I sure like homemade bread, pizza and mashed taters. I grill everythng I can. I smoke meats, and I love bacon.

So I will just as soon die as give those things up.

The fella started this thread by asking about ideas for niche markets and was looking into gluten free grains. I have farmed for 5 decades and seen lots of things come and go. Our neighbor ended up turning all his dam*ed Emu's loose when they got to be worthless. Ran all through my foodplots.

Now, My step daughter did mention an interesting, gluten free grain that she liked to substitute for rice. I can't remembe the spelling. It is pronounced "keen-waa" Starts with the letter Q though. We are gonna try it just cause she says it is good, and high in protein.

Best of luck to you and yours and I am sure happy for whoever it was that is now diabetes free. That is wonderful.

Gene

I have read the book Grain Brain. I have also read the footnotes and cited studies, which I suspect you did not do. Perlmutter makes a lot of claims, but he provides no evidence to back them up. He cites many studies and claims that they prove points that are only loosely related to the study, if they even relate at all. Examples: He cites studies that indicate blood sugar spikes (like you get from chugging a can of soda on an empty stomach) are bad for your brain. He then claims that those studies show that whole grains do the same thing, which is absolutely false.

He cites studies showing obesity and sedentary lifestyles are bad for you, and claims that whole wheat causes obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.

The studies he cites actually show that high glycemic index foods and a sedentary lifestyle are bad for you and contribute to a number of degenerative diseases, diabetes among them. But you do not need to avoid whole grains in order to avoid high glycemic index foods or to get exercise.

In short, that book is a collection of massive leaps of logic with no evidence for his main premise, that modern wheat is causing that whole list of problems.

He tells people to cut back on carbs and get more exercise. That's good advice for the average American, but that doesn't mean throwing whole grains out with the white flour and sugar.


Anything based on the authority of that book is questionable.

Now go down and read the comments of that article. The author is a quack. The author of brain grain is one of the leading neurologist is the world.

I have found a local company that buys quinoa, and contracts growers for a VERY lucrative price. It is tricky to get a contract as there are very specific stipulations to grow it, in terms of location and farming practices and prior rotation, but it does look like my farm and practices would fit what they require. I have sent them an email, hopefully they get back to me. The price they are offering is so good, that if this works out, I see little point in going on my own.

I would still like to maybe try buckwheat and mill it and sell the flour at farmers markets etc..

Just a bit of an update:

We do not eat gluten free but we do sell buckwheat flour along with our other milled products - cornmeal, wheat flour, grits, etc. However, as someone else has said, we do not mill the buckwheat because we use our equipment to produce wheat flour. The buckwheat flour we sell is processed in a mill dedicated to buckwheat. Even then, I won't sell to a person with celiac disease because of the possibilities for cross-contamination in our mill. So, yes there is a market for gluten-free products but you walk a very tight line when selling any product to highly sensitive people. On the other hand, there are a HUGE number of people who have simply taken it into their heads that wheat and gluten are bad and should be avoided. To those people, you could sell without your having to worry about causing a real health problem Be aware that the "gluten free" craze will pass one of these fine days and the next health fad will come along. This will leave you producing a product for only those who really cannot eat gluten. To answer your original question, buckwheat and also cornmeal are very popular. We charge $3.for a 2 lb bag of cornmeal and $5 for a 2 lb bag of buckwheat flour. Oh, buckwheat needs to be hulled before grinding.

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I dont really care who is a quack or not, as I dont have a dog in the hunt. I am not gonna pay much attention to any of them.

When someone publishes a book, they have one goal in mind. To sell books.

Since I dont care much one way or the other, I am not gonna buy any of their books.

All I would care about is growing a product that I could sell to the city slickers for about 4 times what it is worth.

Gene

Farmer dale, do you have harvesting equipment, fanning mills, drying equipment, etc?

I worked in the crop insurance industry for 35 years. So many of the specality crops have issues with lodging, shatter, storage, etc.

Just wondering.

My counterpart in Arkansas and I did a video showing the problems of shatter in the grain of mature rice. It was a Ricetec variety, I think 725. Yielded good, and all was fine till weather kept you out of the field past the optimum time, then it all ended up on the ground.

Mitchell soybeans did the same thing back in the early 80's.

Canola had a brief run here in central Mo., but the seed was so tiny and shatter was also a problem.

Another issue I can see is liability insurance. You start selling for food grade stuff then your ins. company is gonna put you in a commercial category.

Gene

I am a grain farmer, and I have a full line of farm machinery, and seed cleaning machines/storage/aeration. One thing I would need is some kind of good sized mill for grinding.

Quinoa seems to stand well from what I have found. It is swathed before combining, much like most canola is, to avoid shattering, etc..

Regarding insurance etc. I am already a commercial entity, and sell piles of stuff for human consumption, so I am good that way.

Good thoughts. It is one of those, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it things... It is just that I see the obscene prices that people pay for stuff, and well, I would love a piece of that pie for once!

Dale, another thing, and I hate to be a spoil sport, but if you process the flour, then what about labeling, food handlers permits, then as I mentioned the ins. issues.

Would you be better off to grow, harvest, the hire someone to process and bag, then put your businesses name on the sack and do the selling?

Permits, fees, etc might eat up any profit. Just something to think about.

Gene

My idea, is that I form a company that would sell the finished product. Kind of like how Wheat Montana hoses it's customers by taking raw wheat worth 6 bucks a bushel, putting it in buckets, and charging 35 bucks a bushel.

But seriously, I would be as professional about it as possible. With the prices some of this stuff goes for, the value adding to the raw material is tremendous, and has the potential to pay off rapidly.

What kinda combine do you use on the small seeded crops?

I grew up with AC pull type combines and Gleaners. We also cleaned lots of our own seed, so I have spent days messing with an old Clipper fanning mill.

Gene

I am using a CIH 2388 these days. I have a crippen air screen, indents, carter discs, a grader, several aspirators, and lots of different screen sizes. I used to custom seed clean, and thankfully kept the equipment...

For many people it really is not a fad, we simply feel better. For others it is a necessity. I have Hashimoto's thyroid disease and completely cutting out gluten was the best thing that I ever did to help control my thyroid disease. Because I am out of whack with my thyroid, I am out of whack everywhere. I can tolerate small amounts every now and then of rice (brown or black) or oatmeal. They are very small amounts and don't have an effect on my blood sugar, which is out of whack because of my thyroid. However, wheat gives me episodes of hypoglycemia, migraine headaches and severe stomach issues. I know many hashi's patients who simply feel better and have an easier time regulating their thyroid when they stay away from gluten and many other grains. For us it is simply a matter of feeling human and being able to live a somewhat normal life without the severe ups and downs of hashimoto's disease. So for many of us it isn't just a fad diet. I think you will find more and more people who give up wheat and other grains simply because they feel better when they do. Blessings, Kat

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Gene you deserve a lot of CRAP for this comment.

Just be grateful you do not have challenging diet issues.

For me it is simpler.
From age 18 to 30 I was a very miserable person.
Three different doctors put me through the wringer and told me things like,"Do not eat white bread. Eat whole wheat bread."
Really I just wanted to die.
My whole system was messed up. I never felt hungry during those years. I would just start to feel more sick and more sick. The last thing I wanted to do was to eat anything. Then I learned that was the only thing that would make me feel better. So I ate. Soon I would be feeling worse again. Twelve years like that. A gal at church had Yeast problems and she had all of my symptoms and so many more. She loaned me a book so I started reading it then knew it wasn't for me so I laid it aside. The next Saturday I knew she would ask and I would be giving the book back to her on Sunday so at Noon I picked it up and scanned through it so I could tell her I had read it. As I was closing the book I saw something.
In many books there is that blank sheet in the back of the book.
What my eye caught was a list on the back of that sheet titled, "Wheat Allergy?" I opened to it and read through the list of 12 symptoms and every one of them I had. There were three that I thought were not at all connected to my main issue but there they were on that very detailed list.

My sweet wife was making a pizza for lunch. She mas not making it very spicy because that was what I had the most trouble with.
Now that title was completely wrong for that list.
What those 12 symptoms described were a Wheat Intolerance.
With an allergy your throat swells shut or you break out is a rash.
The reason I got more sick as my stomach emptied was because my body would not digest the wheat so all that was left in there was the wheat my body was rejecting. I read that list to my sweet wife and asked her who that was and she was in shock as she told me that was me perfectly.

I was still messed up for the next two weeks as my body was dealing with the wheat in me but we were learning what I could eat and I was starting to feel better.
Exactly two weeks after reading that list at Noon on a Saturday I got a very strange pain in my gut. It was freaking me out until I realized I was just very hungry. You go 12 years like I did then feel that and you would react the same way. For the next five to eight years any time I accidentally got a little wheat I would go back to that same feeling sick for two weeks.
Then I learned more about food intolerances and knew what the real problem was.

My body had run out of the minerals it needed to make the enzymes that were needed to digest wheat. I sought out a great mineral supplement and took it for a couple years and since then if I do get into a little wheat now and then it is fine. I will always take some kind of mineral supplement every year or two but I will not just go back to eating wheat full time. It isn't the gluten because right at the start I was eating grains with gluten.
Just two Sundays ago I was in a restaurant and intentionally ate food that had a little wheat in it. It didn't bother me a bit.

I know this is a bit long but this is all how it happened to me.

Can't help you. I am celiac but use almond meal for baking and I don't do much baking besides muffins and pancakes. I use the pancake like a bread for sandwichs. Good luck with your ideas though.

I realize that thread drift is normal but it would be kinda nice if we could keep halfway on topic so someone could get some information on potential crops.

http://www.brulecreekfarms.ca/about/ Dale I know Jeff slightly, he's probably in about the direction you're wanting to go marketing wise, but short on production capacity. Check him out. He isn't even THAT far from you (relatively speaking)

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I'm cheering for the quinoa route! It's a very nutritious grain with it's own market aside from the gluten issues. Plus it's something I like to eat.

I'd be very interested in updates if you try that route. Fungal diseases are going to be a challenge. Maybe they won't be a problem in your climate. Here, they would eat the plants alive and there are few good control methods. You can't use most synthetic fungicides because they aren't labeled for quinoa. It'll be an interesting learning curve for sure. Probably talk to the organic community a bit more for ideas.
You're fortunate that you have the cleaning equipment already available to be dedicated to this one product. Good luck with it, I hope you try quinoa and succeed.

I have ulcerative colitis (similar to Crohns disease) and have probably gotten a respite from active disease by going low gluten for a few months. BUt am not true gluten intolerant. But I don't like the taste of quinoa. (keen wah)

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