Mass market shoppers looking for grains usually end up with wheat, corn, or rice. Natural foods shoppers, however, face a growing number of exotic choices: quinoa, blue corn, SPELT, amarnath, teff, kamut, and chia.

The increasing popularity of "ancient" grains rests on a three- legged base: they appeal to adventurous cooks searching for new textures and tastes; they provide vital alternatives to people who suffer form allergies to more common grains; and they supply a different range of nutrients than whole wheat, corn or rice.

The taste of ancient grains is often distinctive. Modern grains are carefully bred for high yield crops, versatility, and pest resistance, says Bob Quinn, farmer, biochemist, and president of Montana Flour and Grains in Big Sandy, Montana.

Since taste and nutrition are usually secondary concerns, said Quinn, they can be less flavorful than their ancestors, which have been virtually untouched by plant science. This lack of breeding has endeared ancient grains to the macrobiotic community and those who believe a grain's nutritional profile is important.

Grains "come closer than any other vegetable crop to providing an adequate diet," food author Rebecca Woods writes in Quinoa-the Supergrain. "Grains contain all the major nutrient groups needed by the body - carbohydrates, protein, fats, vitamins, and minerals."

Ancient grains are often a richer source of nutrients than conventional grains. Quinoa, for instance, is dubbed the supergrain because researchers have found it can contain up to 50 percent more protein than common grains, as well as higher levels of fat, calcium, phosphorus, iron, and B-Vitamins.

Amaranth, a companion to quinoa, once revered by the Aztecs, has a nutritional file so impressive that it was named one of the world's most promising foods by the National Academy of Sciences. It's high in protein, calcium, iron and fiber, as well as lysine and methionine, amino acids often in short supply in grains. SPELT, mentioned in the Old Testament also tops wheat in protein, amino acids, minerals, and vitamins B-1 and B-2. It is rich in complex carbohydrates and fiber.

People react poorly to some grains partly because they have allergic tendencies, but also because most Americans eat the same grains day in and day out fro years until their systems rebel, says Eileen Yoder, Ph.D., director of the International Food Allergy Association in Oak Park, Ill.

"It's important to rotate foods," Yoder says, adding that ancient grains such spelt play an important role in allergy free diets because most people are not overexposed to then and more choices lengthen the food cycle.

Buying alternatives to common grains can also help the environment by indirectly encouraging biodiversity. Modern agriculture encourages monocropping and genetic uniformity because it boosts annual crop yields and makes it easier to fight certain diseases and pests. But the case for biodiversity is strong.

"The staff of life is biodiversity," says Alan Kapular, Ph.D., President of Peace Seeds in Corvallis, Ore., and founder of the University of Connecticut's microbiology department. "The reservoir of potentiality and change depends upon it."

There are other dangers as well. "Although more than 20,000 edible plant species are known, and perhaps 3,000 have been used by mankind throughout history, a mere handful of crops now dominate the world's food supply," says Noel D. Vietmeyer, a world resource expert at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC. "This is a dangerously small larder from which to feed a whole planet."

While uniformity has raised crop production it also poses risks when disease strikes, such as Ireland's potato blight and famine in the mid-1880's and the near destruction of the U.S. corn crop by blight in the 1970's.

According to Quinn, many modern grains also need more water, chemical fertilizers, insecticides or herbicides than ancient grains.

Mark Lawton

Modern Market Rediscovers Ancient Grains

Natural Foods Merchandiser, July 1991.