the importance of Bread
Senza il pane tutti divento orfano.
"Without bread everyone's an orphan."
-Italian proverb-
History, and the history of the food we eat, are
inextricably intertwined. In many ways, modern societies
have forgotten their culinary pasts, and as far as diet
goes, at least, are being condemned by NOT repeating it. The
central notion of The Diet Code is to remember and
reapply what we once knew, the same way Da Vinci caught hold
of ancient math and deployed it in even the most
forward-thinking of his projects. One of the best examples
of our skewed relationship with food is they way we think
about carbohydrates and especially about bread. Let’s start
there.
Bread
embodies memories both personal and cultural. Just a whiff
of fresh bread can easily transport you to particular times
and places in your own life. Likewise whole cultures know
themselves by their bread: tortilla, biscuit, pita, nan,
vollkornbrot, baguette, focaccia, matzoh, johnnycake, injera
and on and on. Bread is a hallmark of a people. At the
center of any community, with the same pride of place as a
house of worship, there will be a bakery.
Take away the bread, and the center will not hold.
Lately bread has gotten a bad rap, and many fad diets have
suggested cutting bread out of our menus entirely. That’s a
mistake – we need a wide variety of natural foods to sustain
us, and as you’ll see when you read more about The Diet
Code, BREAD IS BACK!
It’s not coincidence that we find greater satisfaction in a
handmade, traditional loaf of bread than in a
plastic-wrapped loaf at the supermarket. The same happens
when we choose whole, fresh, real food of any kind. It’s
always better than pre-fab, overly processed, or fake. You
know it, and your body knows it. That’s why eating the real
thing is one of the core themes of The Diet Code.
Peak physical and mental condition requires a balance of
macronutrients, including carbs. And so does a permanently
trim waistline.
A Brief History...
Societies
throughout history have been founded on grain
and carbohydrate based diets much like The
Diet Code. It took tens of thousands of
years after modern humans emerged in the Black
Sea region, bearing all-important language
skills and advanced stone tools, before climate
changes produced the final piece necessary to
build great civilizations - the appearance of
primitive forms of wheat.
As
people learned to raise a variety of grains and
other crops adapted to their place in the world,
early forms of bread quickly followed. Making
grain into bread – one of the earliest known
foods requiring real preparation – heralded
another stage in cultural development. Even in
Neolithic times, nomadic tribes mixed water with
cereal grains they crushed with stones, and
cooked the resulting paste into flat cakes or
hot stones over open fires. The earliest breads
were like tortilla or chapatti – thin,
unleavened leaves of mixed grains often baked on
mounds of hot sand; cakes of wheat and barley
parched in the desert sun have been traced to
Jericho 8,000 years ago. Egypt later developed a
precursor to leavened bread probably from
partially sprouted grains. The first raised
breads were baked in Egypt around 3000 BCE.
(Excavations of ancient Egyptian tombs have
revealed actual intact loaves baked over 5,000
years ago that you can see today in the British
Museum!)
Human cultures around the planet have enjoyed bread ever
since, each developing a signature bread based on grains and
methods best suited to their particular climate and
geography. In this way, bread signifies both our unity and
diversity; all our ancestors made bread; all our ancestors
made their own special kind of bread.
The
loaf is an ancient representation of the human
form. Both evolve from root words meaning
"shaped of earth". The baker conjures a mythic
connection hundreds of times a day--replaying
the story of creation by mixing the elements of
earth (as grain), water, air (leaven), and
firing the loaves in oven heat. The very word
baker means "learned shaper", sharing roots with
mason and magician and further associations with
the linguistic derivations of material, maternal and
mother.
No wonder the Italians insist on a familial bond
with bread! |