Low (available) calorie wheat may soon be available

I love bread, but I don't let myself eat too much of it. The reason? Like so many other people in the US, I am concerned about my waistline. Don't get me wrong, I eat bread. I just try to eat it in moderation. However my days of limited bread consumption may soon be over, as cereal scientists are working on creating a kind of wheat that produces flour with fewer available calories.

When I first saw this article at Inventor Spot, I was mighty skeptical. The title and early portion of the article make it seem as though the wheat being developed actually has fewer calories. However, as I read further, I realized that the wheat simply has fewer available calories. Because of the way the wheat is genetically altered, a portion of the calories are indigestible by our stomach acids and acts more like dietary fiber.

I know that the wheat currently available is genetically modified, but it's not the kind of GM wherein genes from another species is introduced. Instead, certain aspects of the wheat's genetic information have been turned off. Cereal scientists are working on growing this wheat by natural breeding rather than genetic modification.

If you're wondering where I got all this information, I have a secret weapon. My friend the cereal scientist explained Inventor Spot's article, albeit in pretty technical language. If you want to read what he has to say on this subject, just continue reading after the jump.

It should be effectively lower in available calories because the resistant [not resistance] starch is not easily digested by our own acids and enzymes and is fermented in the lower gut by the lower gut flora, hence it is more like dietary fiber in its properties. The reason is that the wheat is higher in the linear starch molecule amylose, and this is able to form tightly bound bundles after cooking and cooling, and these bundles are resistant to enzymatic degradation. The Cambridge group is probably working with the Australian group cited here [http://www.pnas.org/content/103/10/3546.abstract] who used RNA silencing to stop or slow the synthesis of key enzymes in the pathway leading to the branched starch molecule amylopectin. This is a form of GM, but not the introduction of genes from foreign species.

However, the Cambridge group is correct in asserting that there could be a non-GM variant with similar properties that would be bred by conventional cross-breeding. This was already achieved in 2000 by a Japanese group led by Makoto Yammamori [Yamamori, M., et al 2000. Genetic elimination of starch granule protein, SGP-1, of wheat generates an altered starch with apparent high amylose. Theoretical and Applied Genetics. 101:21-29.]. The "genetic elimination" "was produced by crossing three variants each deficient in one of three starch-granule-protein-1 classes, namely SGP-A1, -B1 or -D1." (quoting Yammamori et al).

Did you get all that?