Was agriculture “the worst mistake in the history of the human race”? Skeletal analysis shows that early farming communities were shorter-lived and sicker than their hunter-gatherer predecessors – height dropped by 5-6 inches, life expectancy fell by seven years. Studies of prehistoric skeletons reveal a nearly 50% increase in signs of malnutrition (like enamel defects in teeth) and a fourfold rise in iron-deficiency anemia when agriculture took over.
The dark side of wheat is a story about listening – listening to our bodies, to the lessons of history, and to the emerging science that challenges nutritional orthodoxies. It urges us to reconsider the comforting narrative that has placed wheat on a pedestal. Yes, wheat nurtured civilizations and fills bellies in a hungry world. But it may also underlie a great deal of the chronic illness that plagues those very civilizations in the modern era.
https://open.substack.com/pub/sayerji/p/beyond-the-gluten-free-fad-the-unchanged