Essay about Wheat: Wheat and Summary Wheat

Submitted By alexander2222
Words: 447
Pages: 2

Summary
Wheat is a grass that is cultivated throughout the world. It originated in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. It's second in production behind corn and just ahead of rice. Wheat comes in many different forms, wheat flakes, wheat berries, and the most common is wheat, ground wheat, or flour. Wheat is considered a staple food, meaning that it is used to produce many other products, cakes, breads, cookies, cereals, pasta, crackers, even beer, vodka and other alcoholic beverages.
By natural selection and trial-and-error early man led to different types of wheat that were easy to grow, harvest and thresh. Removal of the grain from the head is an important part of the process of turning wheat into flour and then into bread and other staple products, yet the head must remain intact long enough for gatherers to harvest it. Early humans chose those plants that were easiest to gather and yielded the most seeds, replanting from the same stock and thereby perpetuating the qualities they most prized. Later, as humans gained understanding of breeding for certain traits, they were able to consciously try to improve and cross various strains of wheat for hardiness and yield.
That is why over the years, wheat has been hybridized several times to create a super grain with a higher protein (gluten) content in order to achieve better yielding crops and improve pest/pesticide resistance. This increase in gluten coupled with the daily high consumption of wheat products has bombarded our bodies with more gluten than ever before. This has led to many pros and cons for instance, The pros of consuming a crop are that has its own antibiotic and allergen resistance may cause the consumer to become immune-deficient with certain nutrients and unable to digest certain nutrients or