Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Comment
  • Published:

Is modern wheat bad for health?

Nature Plants volume 2, Article number: 16097 (2016) Cite this article

Subjects

Prolonged and intensive breeding of wheat has produced varieties that would be unrecognizable to our ancestors. Such artificial selection can risk prioritizing traits of value to producers over those of importance to consumers. So is there evidence that crop improvement has left modern wheat nutritionally impoverished?

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Increased interest in the impact of wheat on health over the past two decades shown by internet search hits.
Figure 2: The relationship between the percentage of amylose in starch and the release date in 150 wheat cultivars and lines.
Figure 3: Changes in height and the contents of protein and minerals in the grain in wheat grown commercially in the UK over the past 200 years.

References

  1. Voegtlin, W. L. Stone Age Diet: Based on In-Depth Studies of Human Ecology and the Diet of Man (Vantage, 1975).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Hellmich, N. Is gluten-free a lifestyle or a diet craze? USA Today (5 March 2013); http://usat.ly/1WIhArv

  3. Pellegrini, N. & Agostoni, C. J. Sci. Food Agric. 95, 2380–2385 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Morris, C. E. & Sands, D. C. Nature Biotechnol. 24, 1078–1080 (2006).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. http://www.grainstorm.com/pages/modern-wheat

  6. Mackay, I. et al. Theor. Appl. Genet. 122, 225–238 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Rakszegi, M. et al. J. Agric. Food Chem. 56, 9750–9757 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Kasarda, D. D. J. Agric. Food Chem. 61, 1155–1159 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Hucl, P., Briggs, C., Graf, R. J. & Chibbar, R. Cereal Chem. 92, 537–543 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Cummins, A. G. & Roberts-Thomson, I. C. J. Gastroenterol. Hepatol. 24, 1347–1351 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. van den Broeck, H. C. et al. Theor. Appl. Genet. 121, 1527–1539 (2010).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Sollid, L. M. et al. Immunogenetics 64, 455–460 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Shewry, P. R. & Tatham, A. S. J. Cereal Sci. 67, 12–21 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Shewry, P. R. et al. J. Agric. Food Chem. 59, 928–933 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Shewry, P. R. & Hey, S. J. Cereal Sci. 65, 236–243 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Fan, M.-S. et al. J. Trace Elem. Med. Biol. 22, 315–324 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Murphy, K. M., Reeves, P. G. & Jones, S. S. Euphytica 163, 381–390 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to CGIAR and the CGIAR WHEAT programme for financial support to prepare a review (Project No. A403 1.09.47) on which parts of this article are based. Rothamsted Research receives strategic funding from the Biotechnological and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) of the UK. We are grateful to M. Rakszegi (Agricultural Institute, Centre for Agricultural Research, Martonvásár, Hungary) and D. Boros (Institute of Plant Breeding and Acclimatization, Radzikow, Poland) for providing the data for Fig. 2 and S. Hey (Rothamsted Research) for preparing the figure.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Peter R. Shewry, Till K. Pellny and Alison Lovegrove are at Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, AL5 2JQ, UK.,

    Peter R. Shewry, Till K. Pellny & Alison Lovegrove

Authors
  1. Peter R. Shewry
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Till K. Pellny
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Alison Lovegrove
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

T.K.P. and A.L. carried out the analyses of samples and data. All authors wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter R. Shewry.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Shewry, P., Pellny, T. & Lovegrove, A. Is modern wheat bad for health?. Nature Plants 2, 16097 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.97

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.97

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing Anthropocene

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Anthropocene newsletter — what matters in anthropocene research, free to your inbox weekly.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Anthropocene