Until the introduction of agriculture, roughly 10,000 years ago, grains were virtually non-existent in the human diet. Since that time, the cultivation of wheat has literally served as an anchor for the expansion of civilisation as we know it. In Roman times, wheat was the primary fuel used to power the Roman army and every man in the republic was entitled to a wheat dole equivalent to 3,000-3,500 calories a day.(1) Bread has been considered “the staff of life” since biblical times (“give us this day our daily bread”) and today it is one of the most widely consumed staple foods in the world. So can something so pivotal to human civilisation actually be bad for us?
