Whole Wheat Flour is .... well... What is it exactly?

Perhaps this is a bit off topic for our farm blog, but I'd like to share a pet peeve of mine. So much of what we buy in the store is advertised as one thing, when it is truly something else entirely. We can unknowingly spend our entire lives  thinking we are consuming a food that in fact we are not. That... is disturbing to me.

A perfect example is whole wheat flour. I can attest to you that I am now 100% sure that whole wheat flour bought from the average grocery store is not in fact whole wheat berries ground into flour.  How do I know this? What scientific evidence do I offer to support this claim?  No evidence other than common sense.

The demand for scientific evidence to prove every point is, in itself, part of the problem. Science as we know it today does not include "common sense" and thereby often the conclusions reached through science are often blatantly false. If you need proof of that, just look back over the last 20 or 30 years and ask yourself how any "proofs" have only years later been solidly proven false. I will not present a list here for brevity, but I will assure you that only a little searching can find a very long list of reversals in science. From this we must deduce the often what we "know" today through science will be disproven tomorrow, and disproves yesterday.  So... I offer you common sense.

We have been grinding our own wheat berries into flour for months now. Baking with fresh ground whole wheat is very different than baking with any store bought whole wheat flour. By this I must deduce that store bought whole wheat flour is different from fresh ground whole wheat flour. 

Another bit of common sense evidence is the warning that fresh ground flour must be carefully stored or it will go rancid. Think for a second, is that a real concern with store bought whole wheat flour? How long has the flour in the store been sitting at room temperature on the shelf or in storage? You don't even know today. It is impossible to tell in most cases, not because there is a conspiracy to sell you rancid flour, but because it doesn't matter, Store bought "whole wheat" flour does not go rancid in any reasonable time frame. On the contrary fresh ground wheat flour goes rancid in just 2-4 months, and changes content and baking characteristics in days to weeks. 

So, without going into the legal ramifications, and trying to discover what exactly store bought whole wheat flour is... I present you this one astounding realization... Store bought whole wheat flour is NOT the same as fresh ground whole wheat flour, meaning it can not be  truly "whole wheat." What is it? I do not know for sure, but I don't buy it anymore!

Hmmm, well I suppose then this blog post does fit for our farm blog, because is shows yet another way in which our modern food system has failed us. Not only is the wheat grown today not the same wheat that was grown for centuries which supported man and beast in good health, but it is not even presented to us in a truthful manner. The wheat (meaning flour) of today is something that produces bread that is not the "staff of life" as it has been for centuries.. but rather is something to be avoided as an unhealthy treat, or even avoided all together.

Perhaps Little Sprouts will start selling fresh ground whole wheat flour to those who wish to use whole wheat flour. We could even supplement that with selling our home grown sourdough starter to those wishing to bake traditional breads that improved health of the consumer. Then, perhaps when we have enough land we can grow the wheat that was the "staff of life" for centuries in most cultures.