The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Marksissons

and is narrated by Brock Armstrong

The Definitive Guide to Grains

Order up! Yes folks, it's definitive guide time again, and I've read your requests and I am happy, as always, to oblige.

Grab your coffee or tea and pull up a seat. Glad you're with us.

Insulin, cholesterol, fats, they're only the tip of the iceberg. I've had a few definitive topics up my sleeve for

a while now, and grains are it for today. Yes, grains. I know we've given them a bad rap before,

and it's safe to say I'll do it again here. Sometimes the truth hurts, but you know what

they say about the messenger, right? Without further adieu.

Grains

Every day were bombarded with them and their myriad of associations in American and much of

Western culture. Wilford Brimley, Uncle Ben, the Sunbeam Girl, the latest Wheaties athlete,

a pastramion rye, spaghetti dinners, buns for barbecue, corn on the cob, donuts, birthday cake, apple pie, amber waves of grain.

Gee, am I missing anything?

Of course.

So much, in fact, that it could, and usually does, take up the majority of the supermarket square footage. Not to mention those government farm subsidies, but that's another post entirely. Yes, grains are solidly etched into our modern Western psyche, just not so much into our physiology.

Those of you who've been with us for a while now know the evolutionary backdrop I mean here.

We humans had the pleasure, and occasional scourge, of evolving within a hunter-gatherer existence.

We're talking some 150,000- plus years of hunting and foraging.

On the daily scavenge menu, meats, nuts, leafy greens, regional veggies, some tubers and roots,

the occasional berries, or seasonal fruits, and seeds that other animals hadn't decimated.

Ever seen a dog at an apple picking?

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