Ship of Fools: Genetically modified wheat in the Eucharist?

Thread: Genetically modified wheat in the Eucharist? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

I've heard this before, but here's a news story about a doctor's claim that, due to genetic modification, wheat today isn't what it used to be - and is, in fact, a "poison." In particular, the doctor claims that modern wheat contains a new protein, gliadin, which stimulates opiate receptors in the brain, leading people to overeat wheaten products.

I'm open to any angle of discussion on this, but here's what really interests me (of course, me being me...): What could this mean for Communion?

In the RCC, the bread for Communion is required to be wheat, 'cause that's what Jesus used (is it? Do we know for sure?). But if wheat today is no longer the same as wheat before the 1960s, it's also not the same wheat Jesus used.

And if modern wheat is actually bad for us, is it a good element to offer God to be transformed into the Body of Christ? (Even non-RC churches might be disinclined to use bread that makes for a poor symbol here.)

I'm really asking these as open questions - I have no agenda one way or the other. I honestly am asking if we know for sure what kind of grain was in the bread Jesus used at the Last Supper, since I know bread at that time was often barley (the poor people's grain).

There apparently is still some supply of heritage wheat (that hasn't been genetically modified), but it's not in your commercially available bread, flour, or other wheat products. I imagine it's possible (though not probable) that Cavanaugh, the producers of most Communion wafers, and other suppliers (such as nuns) might be using heritage wheat, or might be able to switch to it if deemed necessary. Perhaps the Church could set standards for the wheat used just as certain wines are approved for sacramental use.

I'd love to hear Catholic opinions about whether there could, in theory, be a point that wheat is no longer an appropriate element, and if so, what would happen then. I suspect changes in wheat over time aren't considered to fundamentally change the substance being offered to God, but it seems like this could be an interesting discussion.

[ 16. October 2012, 18:53: Message edited by: churchgeek ]

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

quote:
I've heard this before, but here's a news story about a doctor's claim that, due to genetic modification, wheat today isn't what it used to be - and is, in fact, a "poison."

Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:

quote:
I've heard this before, but here's a news story about a doctor's claim that, due to genetic modification, wheat today isn't what it used to be - and is, in fact, a "poison."
Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

Thanks, that's helpful. [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

It should be. The questions raised are a complete non-starter. Gen-mod wheat is simply a certain strain of wheat bred to have desirable qualities. To say that it is less wheat than the wheat of Jesus' day is ridiculous.

The poison thing, furthermore, is absolute hokum.

[ 16. October 2012, 19:02: Message edited by: Zach82 ]

Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
It should be. The questions raised are a complete non-starter. Gen-mod wheat is simply a certain strain of wheat bred to have desirable qualities.

Not quite. When you breed wheat, you select desirable qualities that are inherent in the wheat plant. Genetic modification inserts something into the plant that was never there before -- they insert genes from other plants, or from fungi or microbes.

I think the question of whether genetically modified wheat is a suitable substance for the Eucharist is a interesting question.

Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on :

The wheat is still wheat and remains valid matter for use in the Eucharist. The type of bread actually used by Jesus is irrelevant. The Church guided by the Holy Spirit (presumably) declared the bread should be made of wheat. Therefore, proper communion bread should be made of wheat. Personally, I'd prefer we use wheat that wasn't genetically modified. Barley would be fine. Do you know if barley is genetically modified or not?

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

That's interesting an quite worrying. Because of the history of BSE, the public here are much more suspicious of GM food than in other countries.

Most plain flour, used for pies, cakes etc, is indigenous, but most strong flour, used for bread, is imported. It is to do with climate. So there's less risk of plain flour being GM than strong.

I don't think GM wheat should be used for the Eucharist, but how do you tell if any has somehow sneaked in?

I'm fairly sure the bread in the C1 Holy Land would have been made of wheat flour, though probably rougher than we're now used to. It's been the norm in the Old World since people discovered agriculture.

Posted by Inger (# 15285) on :

The wheat eaten at the time of Jesus was probably Emmer which hasn't been eaten for a very long time.

And Gliadin is found in most grains, not just wheat.

I think this is a load of bull.

Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :

Organic flour cannot be GM, so there's that. Additionally you can use spelt, which is an older strain of wheat.

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

I think the doctor in the article used the term "poison" hyperbolically. His point, though, is that modern, GM wheat lacks the nutritional value that old wheat has (and I've heard that point from other sources in the past), and that it causes people to crave carbs more, thus leading to obesity, diabetes, etc.

Whether or not this is true, I don't know. I also don't know about the specific protein he mentioned.

As for Communion, Beeswax Altar has a great point. Certainly the faithful should not worry about the validity of the Sacrament because of this.

I think the thought experiment is worthwhile, though. Presumably the substance of wheat bread was chosen because it is/was both a staple and a nutritious food. (Although I'm not pretending I can read Jesus' mind on why he chose it - presumably the link to Passover traditions also applies, but note he didn't specify roasted lamb.)

So can we conceive circumstances under which the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, would need to make a change based on the nutritional quality of available wheat?

It seems to me that what is at stake is the symbolism. Where I work, I've switched us from using white wafers and pita to using whole wheat wafers & pita specifically because Americans tend to associate whole wheat bread with good nutrition and white bread with empty calories. (Our principal Sunday service uses a whole wheat bread baked by congregation members.) Even though the Sacrament isn't merely symbolic, I think the symbolic aspect is important.

Posted by dj_ordinaire (# 4643) on :

Modern wheat isn't GM, the author of the screed linked to is deliberately using the term 'genetically improved' to refer to conventional breeding programs which have been used for centuries in the hope that people will make a connection with unpopular GM approaches.

The wheat we eat now has been modified by breeding from the time of Christ up to the present day - and unlike rice which was significantly altered during the 'Green Revolution' in the 60s and 70s, I can't think why the author believes the 60s was a time of unusual change for wheat. The major leap was the incorporation of genetic characters discovered by Sir Rowland Biffen, the so-called 'Wheat Wizard' which occurred rather earlier, in the 1920s.

Anyway, the point is that if we have to rely upon wheat that is genetically identical to those used at the Last Supper to celebrate a valid Eucharist then we are in a lot of trouble!... And you don't even want to know what grapevines have been through!

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

If someone is in search of a more perfect symbolism for the sake of liturgy-as-an-art, fussing about whether to use spelt or emmer or modern wheat or GM wheat would be sensible, I suppose. And I don't deny that someone, somewhere, might be called to do this (not me, thank the Lord).

But I don't think it has anything to do with the validity (efficacy and reality, rather?) of the Eucharist. That depends on Christ's promise; and unless we do something such that we can reasonably be in doubt as to whether that promise still applies, I don't thing we have to worry.

So I'd be concerned about the use-Coke-and-Doritos crowd, because that is so far removed from the institution that I'd think you could legitimately be worried about it; but fussing over the exact strain of wheat seems to me, well, just fussing.

Posted by Flossymole (# 17339) on :

I wonder whether the nutritional aspect matters much, given the size of the average bit of communion bread. Although it's good to encourage manufacturers of decent food. If anybody's actually worried about this, emmer is also known as farro, it's popular in Italy (deservedly - it's very tasty) and it should be fairly readily available for most people. It can be found through wholefood shops or ordered on line in the UK. Does all this mean some people think that if, say, you could only grow oats and potatoes in your region, oatcakes wouldn't do as communion bread? Or chips come to that? Where do people think the symbolism lies? (I ask in a spirit of genuine enquiry.) And I think Inger is probably right in saying that the doctor's claim/scare-story was a load of bull.

Posted by Flossymole (# 17339) on :

Thanks, Lamb Chopped, you've answered my question before I managed to post it. I suppose even Coke and Doritos (horrid thought) would be OK on a desert island with nothing else available, though.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

If all I had was Doritos and Coke (on the desert island!), I would ask the Lord if he'd mind making an exception, so to speak, and go ahead. The same would be true if I were among a culture where bread and wine were simply unobtainable. The whole matter rests on his promise, after all, and he is perfectly capable of saying "Yes, I'll allow this special case as well." Just as I might allow a student to turn in homework late, or by e-mail, or in video form rather than type, or any of a zillion exceptions to the usual way--because I'm the teacher, and I have that authority, if I see fit. (Not that other students ought to take notice and try the same thing without request or good reason!)

Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :

I imagine the doc is referring to the work of Norman Borlaug, who developed the dwarf wheat strain which seems to be referred to in the article.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

I participated in a eucharist 15 years ago or so after a dumping canoes in heavy winds a couple hundred miles from nowhere. We had a hot dog bun and some rye whisky, and we'd lost the prayerbook. You do what you have to.

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

The article is nonsense. Gliadin is one of two precursors to gluten in unmixed flour, the other is glutenin. When combined with water and mixed, they meld and form gluten, which forms bubbles in the crumb (bread interior). These capture carbon dioxide produced by the yeast and give bread its rise.

Wiki on Gluten

Gliadin has been in wheat since forever, it's natural.

Different wheats have different percentages of gluten. Canadian Hard Red Spring Wheat is among the hardest in the world (highest gluten content), 15%+. British flour, which is White Wheat, is softer at 7%.

Gluten content of flour varies by purpose and location. Some locations are used to using soft local wheat, in Canada we use only Hard Red Spring Wheat. I once had a conversation with an Austrian who worked in Canada and backed cakes as a hobby. He complained they were tough. I think he was using Austrian recipes with Canadian flour, which results in hard, tough cakes due to the different gluten content.

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

I know we've all had this debate before, but why not simply pray to God when there is no bread and wine on hand, with the faith that he offers his grace in prayer, instead of presuming there must be a Eucharist where God hasn't promised one?

Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :

If I might be so bold I think worrying about genetically modified wheat in the Eucharist is straining out a gnat but swallowing a camel!

Genetically modified crops are evil and it's all about money. They threaten our food supply by diminishing genetic diversity in crops, they give ownership of God's creation ie biological material that has been available for people and animals as food forever to a megacorp (who are prime candidates for the antichrist IMO) who the world will have to pay in order to feed itself with what used to be freely available through natural reproduction, GM crops pollute natural crops and then megacorp sue (and bankrupt) the farmers of the crops they've polluted for payment for growing the GM product. The price of food will inevitably rise as a result of megacorp taking a cut of every bit of grain sold and with a substantial portion of the world close to starvation this will only lead to a great concentration of wealth in the hands of the megarich and less in the hands of 99% of the world's population.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

Wasn't the original body of Christ = Jesus, virgin-born, genetically modified?

Posted by Latchkey Kid (# 12444) on :

Barley isn't acceptable to the RC church, I understand.
Wheat has been selectively bred by man so that it cannot reproduce except with man's aid.

I am happy to use whatever is to hand as the form is not important. Jesus and the disciples would have all reclined, and though I have done this, it is not my culture to do this when sharing a meal, and I would not say the eucharist is not authentic unless we recline.

Posted by Anyuta (# 14692) on :

OK, broader question: how close is close enough with ANYTHING we do in an attempt to approximate what Jesus/the first Christians did? any of our symbolism? the all male priesthood is attributed to Jesus's being male.. but of course, maleness is hardly his defining characteristic (I don't want to go too far into DH territory, it's just one example). how authentic must the wheat be? the wine? vestments, music, language... none are what they were in Jesus's time, but are still (often) frozen in time at some point. and I don't see anything necessarily wrong with that in general. but how far is too far? at what point do we say "well, we COULD try to get even closer to the authentic (by using only heritage wheat and grapes, say), but why should we? what is gained? at what point is close enough close enough?

I don't imagine there is any one single "Right" answer to that, but it's something to ponder.

What other things do various churches do that is intended to in some way re-create or approximate "the original"?

Posted by Latchkey Kid (# 12444) on :

When we are ruled by laws rather than the "law" (of) love.

Posted by Latchkey Kid (# 12444) on :

That was really the answer to the question "When do we over-prescribe the requirements for the eucharist?".

It is close enough when 2 or 3 are gathered in his name. He promises to be present there.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
... a doctor's claim that, due to genetic modification, wheat today isn't what it used to be - and is, in fact, a "poison." In particular, the doctor claims that modern wheat contains a new protein, gliadin, which stimulates opiate receptors in the brain, leading people to overeat wheaten products.

That seems to be complete bollocks. "Gliadins" is a word for some peptides found in gluten. There is nothing new about them, though there might be something new about the name. A quick look through PubMed and the NCBI website seems to back up the idea that gliadins cause health problems to peopel with coeliac disease, and maybe also some auto-immune diseases. They are in all kinds of wheat, also rye and barley. Nothing to do with GM one way or the other.

As most of the population of the world has been eating wheat for many centuries, if it caused widespread health problems in normal people we'd have noticed by now. We really are objectively healthier than we were fifty years ago, and fifty years ago we were healthier than we were five hundred years ago. You can be sure of that because we live longer on average. If eating wheat was so bad for us could that be true?

quote:

What could this mean for Communion?

LIke everyone else has said, nothing at all.

Trust me, I'm a botanist [Two face]

quote:

In the RCC, the bread for Communion is required to be wheat, 'cause that's what Jesus used (is it? Do we know for sure?).

Yes, pretty much. We know quite a lot about the genetic history of wheat. And we have archaeological evidence that the most common grain grown in the area was wheat (with barley some way behind). And specifically for ancient Jews, the insistence on using unleavened bread for Passover implies that the normal bread was leavened, which implies that the grain was largely wheat, because other grains aren't so good at making risen bread. Rye is the nearest but not a very important crop in Palestine or Syria. Barley bread doesn't rise much either, and its more likely to be used for animal feed anyway.

Of course its quite possible that the fields weren't a pure crop. Even though there was a Torah law against it, mixed crops make sense in all sorts of ways. And its difficult to separate the plants sometimes anyway - some people think that domesticated rye started as a weed in wheat fields.

quote:

But if wheat today is no longer the same as wheat before the 1960s, it's also not the same wheat Jesus used.

No two individuals are genetically the same anyway. Do you want to get in a time machine and take seeds from the very same plants that Jesus ate?

Most GM done to crops involves changing a handful of genes. But different traditional varieties of wheat can differ from each other in thousands of genes. Whole chrosomes. Most crop wheats are hexaploid, that means they have six full sets of chromosomes. Ancient einkorn wheat (hardly grown any more) is diploid, it has two sets of chromosomes, emmer wheat (a local crop in the Middle East and parts of the Mediterranean area) and durum (grown in Italy for pasta and Turkey for other things) are tetrapoloid with four sets, apparently they are hybrids between some form of wheat not unlike einkorn and another grass entirely; and spelt (another local crop) and most modern bread wheats are hexaploid, six full sets of chromosomes, derived from three ancestral species, at least one of which wasn't actually wheat at all. All this variation existed before the time of Jesus - we know, because we sometimes find wheat grains in archaeological sites. And there is documentary as well as archaological evidence that different ancient countries grew different kinds or wheat, people were aware of the differneces, and had preferences for one over another (whether because of taste of crop yields)

quote:

There apparently is still some supply of heritage wheat (that hasn't been genetically modified), but it's not in your commercially available bread, flour, or other wheat products.

There is almost certainly almost no GM wheat used in ordinary supermarket bread and flour in Britain. Modern varieties were bred by traditional methods, not GM. (Not that that makes any real difference to the outcome) "Heritage wheats" night be pre-20th century varieties of bread wheat, or varieties of spelt and durum - which are still popular in some other countries but rarely grown here, though we import a lot of pasta made from durum (and a few other things like semolina and bulgur as well)

quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
If I might be so bold I think worrying about genetically modified wheat in the Eucharist is straining out a gnat but swallowing a camel!

Genetically modified crops are evil and it's all about money. They threaten our food supply by diminishing genetic diversity in crops,

Hear hear! To both points.

The problem with GM crops is politics, not biology. They are used to concentrate power in the hands of a few rich individuals, corporations, and governments; and remove power from poor farmers. As are traditionally bred crops.

quote:
Originally posted by dj_ordinaire:
And you don't even want to know what grapevines have been through!

Rumour has it that there are still some original strains of vine left in Chile and possibly the Caucasus or Syria... [Biased]

quote:
Originally posted by Latchkey Kid:
Jesus and the disciples would have all reclined....

That might well be true, but do we have any contemporary evidnce for that? We know that rich Romans reclined at posh parties. That's not the same as knowing what ordinary Jews living in Syria or Palestine did.

(And that upper room must have been pretty big if 13 diners could all recline on couches)

Posted by Latchkey Kid (# 12444) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:

quote:
Originally posted by Latchkey Kid:
Jesus and the disciples would have all reclined....
That might well be true, but do we have any contemporary evidnce for that? We know that rich Romans reclined at posh parties. That's not the same as knowing what ordinary Jews living in Syria or Palestine did.

(And that upper room must have been pretty big if 13 diners could all recline on couches)

The synoptics all talk about the disciples and Jesus reclining.
Matt 26: 20 " When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the Twelve."
Luke 22:13 " When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table."
Mark 14:17-18 " When evening came, Jesus arrived with the Twelve. While they were reclining at the table eating, he said, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me—one who is eating with me.”
And John 21:20 refers back to this "Peter turned around and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them. (This was the disciple who had leaned back against Jesus’ chest at the meal and asked, “Lord, who is the one who is going to betray you?”)

So I understand that we have textual evidence. I don't know what you expect in contemporary evidence.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

total tangent, but it wasn't one couch per diner--what I've seen pictured (which may not be Jerusalem-accurate!) is more like a platform or bed, which three people would use at once; so you'd only need four or five of those to accommodate 13 people. Although there's no saying but the host family might have been present too...

Or they coudl have done what a lot of Vietnamese do at great feasts--eat in shifts, and sit/recline on the floor. With mats, if you want to be posh.

Posted by Latchkey Kid (# 12444) on :

That's what I've heard, too.

Obviously, there personal space was much smaller than ours - like a child, perhaps.

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

The basic problem with the line of thinking raised in the OP is the implicit assumption that genetic modification is the first change to wheat in 2000 years.

It isn't. Whatever strain of wheat Jesus was eating, it almost certainly isn't the same strain of wheat that people were putting in communion wafers in the 1960s.

I have other issues with GM, but this particular issue is a non-starter.

[ 18. October 2012, 01:33: Message edited by: orfeo ]

Posted by Latchkey Kid (# 12444) on :

It's a legalistic approach IMO. I have more problem with legalism than what to use for the elements.

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