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Comment by ndsipa_pomu | Hacker News Reader

It irks me that Western diets feature so much wheat in everything (I'm gluten sensitive so avoid it as much as possible). What really grinds my gears is when traditional non-wheat products (e.g. onion bhajis, tortillas) are made using wheat instead.

We should be moving away from monocultures in food, just as in software.

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Wheat tortillas have been used in Western cuisine since the 1500s, soon after the Columbian Exchange brought wheat to the west. What, exactly, does it take for something to become tradition?

Also, wouldn't the expansion of tortillas to use other grain products push for exactly the kind of move away from monocultures that you want? As a grain farmer myself, having a market for both corn and wheat means that we can rotate our crops, to not have to rely on monocultures.

Pffft 1500s? Corn tortillas have been eaten since prehistory and wheat wasn't grown in the Americas until European colonisation. Give it another few hundred years (to be fair I was not aware that wheat tortillas were that old).

I would welcome tortillas made using other grains, but the majority of them available in shops just use wheat which is problematic to some people. How about mixing them up with some buckwheat or millet? As well as varying the type of grain crop, I'd like to see greater variety of the types of grain used e.g. blue corn

Be the change you want to see in the world, I suppose. But if you don't want to get into the buckwheat tortilla business we shouldn't be surprised if nobody else wants to either.

I'm not really positioned to get into the food production business, so I choose to complain about it instead. There is at least a small market for more unusual products and certainly there's quite a few gluten-free products that use inventive ingredients that are easy to pick up from supermarkets so there is at least some demand for them.

What do you need to get yourself positioned? I am in the food production business, both as a farmer and as an operator of a commercial kitchen, so if you have something compelling here I am listening.

Pretty much everything. I have zero experience in food production, although I am experienced at eating food. I don't know about compelling ideas, but I would like to see more products using grains such as amaranth, buckwheat, chia, teff, millet etc. Also, grains aren't the only source of carbohydrates, so there's also the possibility of using beetroot, sweet potatoes or other vegetables to introduce a greater variety of nutrition.

Are you currently producing these at home for personal consumption?

No. I usually buy similar things from the gluten free section in supermarkets or specialist delicatessens.

Seems the market is already met, then? It is unlikely these alternative grains will ever see mass appeal. While such history is hard to validate, legend has it that wheat tortillas became popular soon after wheat became available in the Americas because a lot of people preferred it. I think there is little question that wheat tortillas are the preferred form in modern times.

>We should be moving away from monocultures in food, just as in software.

We are, aren't we? You can go to a supermarket anywhere in North America and literally get whatever you want in abundant variety. I'm not sure how you can claim we aren't "moving away" from resource constraints that have existed for eternity.

We've historically used a lot of wheat in products because we grow a lot of wheat. But there are plenty of alternatives now that never existed before.

The variety you see in a Supermarket is very shallow. There are literally hundreds of varieties of every item you find in the produce section, but only handful are raised as scale. Those handful of varieties dominate the landscapes and dwarf the production of all of the other varieties combined.

Also the whole middle of the store is just commodity corn, wheat, and soybeans rearranged in hundreds of different ways.

> We are, aren't we?

"There are more than 1 000 varieties of bananas produced and consumed locally in the world, but the most commercialized is the Cavendish type banana, which accounts for around 47 percent of global production." ... "Virtually all bananas supplied to the US and European markets are Cavendish, which are better suited to international trade than other varieties as they are more resilient to the effects of global travel."

Just as an example. You may find three types of banana in your supermarket from the 1000 varities. But most of the production is Cavendish. The other ones are just a novelty item and it the logistics to get them to the supermarket are more complicated.

"The impact of TR4 on food security in developing countries has so far luckily been limited because the spread of the disease is gradual at larger scale. The disease predominantly affects the Cavendish variety, which primarily meets the international market demand but is also important for local consumption in developing countries."

And Cavendish is in danger. Partly because it is so dominant that it is very difficult to stop a disease that targets this variety.

- https://www.fao.org/economic/est/est-commodities/oilcrops/ba...

Isn't the major reason why there is one dominating type today, because some decades ago the Panama disease mostly wiped out all other competing types?

There was one dominant type at the time too, which the Panama disease wiped out, and it got replaced with the Cavendish.

But corn tortillas are way worse than flower ones, I understand why they chose to switch.

This is entirely personal taste and ephemeral. Flour tortillas stay together a bit better if you’re not eating them immediately. But from a taste perspective, after you’ve had both a few times, it’s easy to appreciate why they complement different types of tacos.

Fully disagree

I really prefer the taste of corn tortillas over wheat tortillas, so it's subjective. My favorite by far is blue corn tortillas. Coincidentally blue corn is pretty impressive nutritionally: https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20070730/blue-corn-t...

This is a very wild statement. They are very very different. It's hard to understand how to even compare them. Are pancakes better than naan? Is congee better than grits?

Some people just don’t like corn tortillas. Wheat tortillas have their benefits like how they don’t dry out as easily and they brown in the pan nicer and they have some sort of sweetness. I almost always reach for corn tortillas but definitely appreciate a wheat tortilla.

Wheat tortillas are also an obvious choice if you’re stuck choosing between packaged tortillas.

The reason corn and wheat tortillas are compared is because they are the two options given to you, so they aren’t hard to compare. You can get the same taco in each tortilla in the same sitting and come to a conclusion of which one you prefer right then and there.

I mean yeah you can compare your preferences about which is a better taco wrapper, but there are many dishes where it makes little sense to swap one for the other. Enchiladas with flour tortillas? That's a totally different dish that I've never even heard of. Chimichangas with corn tortillas? I'm not sure it's possible. Can you make tortilla chips out of flour tortillas? I don't know but if you can, they'll be much different than normal tortilla chips.

Most people don’t seem to understand than you need to reheat corn tortillas in a dry skillet, and therefore think corn tortillas are bad because they’ve only eaten dry mealy versions.

It’s like eating day old rice cold out of the refrigerator and saying that it doesn’t taste good, like yeah, it doesn’t.

Corn tortillas prepared fresh are delicious and if you haven’t had them then that’s a shame.

I have had fresh, straight from a pro, corn tortillas. I just don't like how corn meal tastes (except as a bread with equal parts butter) so I don't like corn "bread" products.

I personally like both.

There is no requirement that you must like corn tortillas, but to act like one is objectively better, rather than simply a matter of personal preference, is ridiculous. (Not that you said this, but the original post I responded to did)

There are a tonn of alternative grain that humanity used to use. Agressive industrialisation of agriculture wiped out these alternatives common knowledge.

Just a few I wasn't aware of before I had to reduce gluten in my diet:

- Spelt (still wheat)

- Buckwheat (not a wheat)

- Bitter vetch

- Amaranth

- Finger millet

Corn has vomitoxins as well. If you want to avoid it then eat rice instead of other grains.

> This mycotoxin occurs predominantly in grains such as wheat, barley, oats, rye, and corn, and less often in rice, sorghum, and triticale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomitoxin

Doesn't rice tend to collect heavy metals?

I figure if you want to avoid toxins in your food, don't eat.

Rice tends to accumulate arsenic, and together with the already lax standards for arsenic in potable water in the US, that fact should cause some concern.

Just because Prop 65 is overdone it doesn't follow that food standards are pointless.

Also, American rice is relatively arsenic heavy

https://www.nature.com/articles/news050801-5

Was the first thing I could pull up, but I've read that in a couple places

Is it possible to determine if one is gluten sensitive if 80% of the grains are contaminated with fungal toxins?

I’m enjoying red beet pomace (leftover pulp from making juice) wraps, but sadly they are (to be fair, like most niche replacement products) extremely expensive.

At least one big UK supermarket has onion bhajis just made from gram flour. No idea what restaurants do.

Which one? I occasionally check the ingredients on the ones in Tesco and Aldi.

Indian restaurants would likely use the authentic recipe - the use of wheat is more for supermarkets.

Tesco [1], a bit of rice flour too but no wheat.

[1] https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/273927062

Thanks - I'll go have another look. Maybe my local one has a different brand, but I can go find a bigger branch.

what is "onion bhajis"?

They're an indian starter/snack made chiefly from onions and chickpea/gram flour: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/onion-bhajis-raita

Looks yum, will have to try it. Love Indian food.

Also tried something called Dosa and Idli during my brief visit there.

I was told they are made from fermentation process and from all I read fermentation is healthy. Maybe one of the reasons Indians are not as obese as their western counterparts? Not sure just guessing.

Although every time I tried making Dosa it turned out not as soft or crispy as the ones I had in India.

Never been to India, but here in the UK we've got a big passion for Indian food but then we did have an interesting relationship with India in the past. When I've visited the U.S. there is a noticeable lack of Indian restaurants compared to the UK.

If you have a pizza steel, put that directly on the stove. Otherwise use a crepe pan. Water down the batter much more than you think you should, that will help you spread it thin and give you more time before it thickens up.

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