Subject: Re: Food oddities (was Food in 1970)

From: [email-masked]
Date: 10 May 95 12:53:33 -0500

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Gary Fritz) writes:
> [email-masked] wrote:
> : This is Urban Legend... (?Seed preservation legend?).  Cereal seeds
> : are not long lived, even under cryogenic conditions... esp. not
> : compared to, say, legume seeds.
> 
> Kamut is a grain that was found in an Egyptian tomb and subsequently
> planted in the US.  If it isn't a genuine 3000-year-old grain, then
> the companies that market it using that claim would be nailed by the
> appropriate government agencies.

Gary, it isn't 3000 year old grain.  It *may* be a 3000 year old cultivar,
(a barley if I recall correctly) or it may have been "found in 3000 year old
tombs", but the grain kernels themselves can't be 3000 years old.   
My reference books are packed at the moment, but a look at a seed
preservation text, a seed physiology text, or a call to the National
Seed Storage Lab at Ft. Collins should put this straight.

US Government labeling laws are very strange sometimes, and not always
based on sound biology.  For instance, according to a Supreme Court
decision, a tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit.  To a botanist, a
fruit is a matured, ripened ovary, and contains seeds or ovules.  That's
a definition that a tomato fits into nicely.  "Vegetable" simply
means "plant" to a botanist, and doesn't designate a piece of a plant
usually eaten with dinner.

Another oddity of labeling is the "no added sugar/sugar-free" 
designations, because, to the FDA, sugar = sucrose.  If it doesn't
have sucrose, and has instead fructose, glucose, mannose, mannitol,
or any of the other sugar-alcohols, it has no sugar to the rule makers.  
The caloric value will shoe up under the "Total Carbohydrate" on the
package label.  Some of those sugars in my list above are quite 
digestible by humans (glucose, for instance, is "blood sugar", 
while fructose is a normal component of semen.  

When science and bureaucracy get together, the science always seems
to take a back seat.

Kay Klier   [email-masked]
Assistant Professor, Biology   
Director of the Herbarium (ISTC)

---

From: [email-masked] (Gary Fritz)
Date: 10 May 1995 15:29:41 GMT

[email-masked] wrote:
: >>I believe that some cereal grains found in tombs in Egypt, that is, items 
: >>known to be well over 3,000 years old, have been sprouted.
: > 
: > I've heard that blue corn was recovered from Indian ruins and re-discovered.
: > I've no data to base that on, though.

Gary