words about wheat

all food, say the Angels, that comes from the Mother is good food. in the same way that a human mother produces breast milk perfectly calibrated to the needs of her infant, so too does the Great Mother produce the nourishment each of her children require.

in their natural state, there are no "bad" foods...it's the processing we subject foods to that turns them into something less than nuitritious.

to the Angels, grains such as wheat and corn are among the most abused of foods, broken down into components that were never meant to be used in ways in which they are. an example is gluten, the gluey part of the wheat fiber that allows cakes and breads to stick together. gluten, in its natural form, is a part of the whole wheat grain. in reasonable amounts and as part of an otherwise healthy diet, gluten was designed to be digested by the human animal with no ill effects.

however, our industrialized society has learned how to extract the gluten from the grain, and now gluten can be found in all sorts of foods, even some where you might least expect it. another form of gluten, monosodium glutamate, continues to be found in all sorts of foods and can be labeled - deceptively, in my opinion - as a "natural flavor." if you are unsure if your food contains msg, check the sodium content. i learned this the hard way when i fell in love with a local yogurt brand that happened to have a plum-honey-lavendar flavor. i thought i had died and gone to heaven. purple yogurt! such bliss!

until i realized that my migraines were happening nearly every day, much of which i attributed to the weather. it was my dear friend laura who reminded me about the possibility of msg lurking as a "natural flavor" and when i checked the sodium content of my new favorite flavor, i found it to be nearly double that of my former favorite brand. i stopped eating the yogurt, the weather pattern eased, and my migraines have returned to trouble me no more for at least a couple months.

in essence, what's happening is that because we are putting these grain by-products in so many other kinds of foods, many of us are developing sensitivies and allergies to foods our families may have traditionally eaten for generations.

this is why the Angels advise us to check the labels, read the ingredients, and to become very aware of the amounts of grain and grain by-products in your diet.