An Interview with Wheat

Wheat has 3 parts: the bran, the germ, and the endosperm.

I've invited them all here today to tell you a little bit about their contributions. Introduce yourself guys.

Bran: "I have the most fiber and became a diet fad in the 1980's."

Germ: "I'm full of nutrients like iron and I'm responsible for sprouting the new wheat plant. I'm kind of an important guy."

Endosperm (munching a bag of Cheetos): "I'm the largest part of the kernel and I'm mostly starch. (Clears throat, licks fingers and looks at Germ condiscendingly) I'm responsible for a little thing called white flour. You know--Sunbeam, Wonder, Pillsbury and Sara Lee anything--the best thing since 'white bread?'"

Bran: "I think that's sliced bread..."

Endosperm: "No one asked you, Bran. Moving along, I'm mass-produced, commercially processed, and practically void of any nutritional value unless you count sugar as a nutrient. I'm put through steam rollers and pampered with a chlorine bath (to perfect my starchy whiteness). Bleaching flour is an industry standard.

Germ: "Of course the real reason that no one can eat any commercial bread is because it's bathed in insecticide before it's even processed."

Endosperm: "Shhhhhh...then no one will even want to eat YOU guys."

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): "We define chlorine gas as a flour-bleaching and aging process that is a powerful irritant. Alloxan is a biproduct of bleaching. It intentionally causes diabetes in lab rats so researches can study cures. It's highly toxic."

Endosperm: "No one invited you. You're not even a component of wheat."

Dr. Harvey Wiley: "I'm dead now but in 1906 I was a consumer advocate and head of the Bureau of Chemistry which eventually turned into the FDA. I went to the Supreme Court trying to stop the bleaching of food because I was so convinced of it's dangers. A law was passed that wheat couldn't be altered but it wasn't enforced. Later on I resigned out of frustration when big food corporations like Pillsbury and advocates for big farming beat out any effort to keep poison out of our food."

Endosperm: "Dead people can't talk."

Bran: "Neither can food."

Endosperm: "This is why no one likes you, Bran--you like getting things stirred up."