A Point To Ponder - Ergot In Rye
Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 2:52 amA Point To Ponder - Ergot In Rye - Far Out, Man!
It turns out that bleaching flour is not some money-making scheme or hoax invented by baking companies. During the late Middle Ages, many world cultures adopted white flour (mistakenly believing it was healthier than dark flour) when several diseases were virtually eliminated by bleaching and processing. Unknown to the masses of the time period, molds and fungi present in grains - especially ergot in rye - was to blame for much sickness and death! Bleaching wheat flour had refined it, eradicating the effects of poisonous molds.
In October 1692, Massachusetts’s citizens unhurriedly slayed an 80-year-old woman to death by “stoning” her in Salem’s town square over the period of two days. Accused of being a witch, she had failed to enter a plea in court. As trials ended, a hundred and forty-nine other people had been accused of crimes. Nineteen people were hanged while four others died in prison! What caused this cryptic mass hysterical behavior? Religious zealotry? Ignorance? Could it have been Encephalitis spread by mosquitoes, or perhaps Huntington’s Chorea?
Linda Caporael is a psychologist at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. She is convinced the culpability belongs to claviceps purpurea - ergot fungus found in rye grain. “What’s the big deal?” someone asked her. The “big deal” is simply this: Ergot fungus alkaloids include lysergic acid. You know… the stuff from which LSD is made! - the “far out” drug of choice of America’s seventy’s hallucinogenic hippies. Ergot affects multiple grains and grasses, but rye, the staple grain of the settling citizens of Salem, is particularly vulnerable to developing the fungus as it thrives in warm, damp, rainy environments. The initial signs of ergot poisoning, called “ergotism”, include gastrointestinal upset followed by burning and itching of the skin. Later, convulsions, hallucinations and psychosis are suffered - precisely the symptoms displayed by Salem’s citizenry. Outbreaks of ergotism are nothing new. “St. Anthony’s Fire”, as it was known in medieval times, poisoned entire villages of people and as late as 1951, ergot poisoning afflicted two hundred and fifty villagers of Pont-Saint-Esprit, France, where several died!
I suppose many people who make their own bread, as I do, shake their heads and shudder when they see others placing bleached “white bread” into their shopping baskets at a grocery store. I just have to have a little rye in mine. The fact remains, white flour is still used traditionally, and almost exclusively in many cultures throughout the modern world. I’m not sure about the UK, but in the United States, it still remains the preferred flour for bread making.
It turns out that bleaching flour is not some money-making scheme or hoax invented by baking companies. During the late Middle Ages, many world cultures adopted white flour (mistakenly believing it was healthier than dark flour) when several diseases were virtually eliminated by bleaching and processing. Unknown to the masses of the time period, molds and fungi present in grains - especially ergot in rye - was to blame for much sickness and death! Bleaching wheat flour had refined it, eradicating the effects of poisonous molds.
In October 1692, Massachusetts’s citizens unhurriedly slayed an 80-year-old woman to death by “stoning” her in Salem’s town square over the period of two days. Accused of being a witch, she had failed to enter a plea in court. As trials ended, a hundred and forty-nine other people had been accused of crimes. Nineteen people were hanged while four others died in prison! What caused this cryptic mass hysterical behavior? Religious zealotry? Ignorance? Could it have been Encephalitis spread by mosquitoes, or perhaps Huntington’s Chorea?
Linda Caporael is a psychologist at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. She is convinced the culpability belongs to claviceps purpurea - ergot fungus found in rye grain. “What’s the big deal?” someone asked her. The “big deal” is simply this: Ergot fungus alkaloids include lysergic acid. You know… the stuff from which LSD is made! - the “far out” drug of choice of America’s seventy’s hallucinogenic hippies. Ergot affects multiple grains and grasses, but rye, the staple grain of the settling citizens of Salem, is particularly vulnerable to developing the fungus as it thrives in warm, damp, rainy environments. The initial signs of ergot poisoning, called “ergotism”, include gastrointestinal upset followed by burning and itching of the skin. Later, convulsions, hallucinations and psychosis are suffered - precisely the symptoms displayed by Salem’s citizenry. Outbreaks of ergotism are nothing new. “St. Anthony’s Fire”, as it was known in medieval times, poisoned entire villages of people and as late as 1951, ergot poisoning afflicted two hundred and fifty villagers of Pont-Saint-Esprit, France, where several died!
I suppose many people who make their own bread, as I do, shake their heads and shudder when they see others placing bleached “white bread” into their shopping baskets at a grocery store. I just have to have a little rye in mine. The fact remains, white flour is still used traditionally, and almost exclusively in many cultures throughout the modern world. I’m not sure about the UK, but in the United States, it still remains the preferred flour for bread making.
