White or Wheat Trivia Quiz

Answer: Grass

Cereal grains come specifically from the grass family. These include wheat, barley and oats. Confusingly perhaps, the seed of the other families (except for the mint family) can be called 'grain', although the seed of the legume is more commonly called a pulse.

Answer: Rice

Rice is the only member of the grass family listed. Chia and quinoa are termed pseudocereals, chia coming from the mint family and quinoa from the amaranth family (related to spinach). The lentil is an edible pulse from the legume family.

Answer: Endosperm

Many of the nutrients in wheat grain are found in the germ and bran. Those are the bits that are removed when making white flour. The endosperm which remains is mainly composed of starches, a form of complex carbohydrates, although there are also some proteins, fats, fibre and vitamins. The percentages vary depending on the variety of wheat and the nature of the processing.

Answer: Zinc oxide

Zinc oxide (which is white) has many uses such as in suncreams, as a source of zinc in food, and as a paint pigment however it is not used to colour or bleach flour. The others listed are some of the bleaching agents used in the US. The European Union and Australasia have banned the bleaching of flour. The bleaching process also further reduces the nutrient content of the flour.

As well as for bleaching flour, chlorine gas is used as a maturing agent. It weakens gluten development and oxidises starches, making the flour more suitable for use in cakes and biscuits. Europeans use heat-treatment instead.

Answer: Protein

Gluten typically forms 75-85% of the protein in bread. It is a mix of proteins found in the endosperm of various cereal grains, namely wheat, rye, oats, barley and related species.

The amount present and its treatment will affect its viscosity and the chewiness of the baking product it is used in. The amount of refining of the flour also helps determine the flour's suitability for particular end uses such as pastries (less refining) and pizza (more refining).

Answer: Coeliac disease

Coeliac disease causes the body to attack itself when gluten is present. It is an autoimmune disease resulting in damage to the gut lining causing inability to absorb nutrients properly. There are also other medical conditions linked to gluten.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a fatal brain disorder, Graves disease is an immune system disorder resulting in hyperthyroidism and Hodgkin's disease is a blood cancer.

Answer: Explosion

In 1878 the world's largest grain mill was the Washburn "A" Mill in Minneapolis. A spark ignited airborne flour dust in the mill demolishing it and killing eighteen people instantly. The fire which followed killed another four people and destroyed another five mills.

Dust clouds increase the risk of explosion. Coal dust, sawdust, sugar, powdered milk and coffee have all been involved in such incidents. Ventilation is one of the things that helps mitigate the risk.

Answer: Fungus

The Claviceps purpurea fungus affects rye and other cereals such as wheat. The alkaloids produced can cause convulsions, gangrene and ultimately death. It has been around a long time. The Assyrians appear to refer to it in records from 600 BC.

An order of hospitalers was established by monks in 1095 to specialise in treating the effects ergot poisoning. The order took its name after the Third century Egyptian ascetic St Anthony. The name of the order and the pain caused in the limbs by the poisoning gave rise to the term St Anthony's fire for ergotism. The same term has been applied to the skin infection erysipelas.

In agriculture, crop rotation and deep plowing are the main methods of preventing ergot affecting subsequent crops. Ergot-infected grain floats and healthy grain sinks when placed in brine. Milled infected grain is red in colour. Cooking does not destroy the alkaloids.

Answer: As a desiccant

The practice developed in Scotland during the 1980s. Farmers were having problems with uneven ripening of crops due to wet summers. Using glyphosate as a desiccant mitigated this problem and allowed earlier harvesting of the crop. The practice is now widespread in North America as well as the UK across a variety of crops.

Other advantages include earlier planting of the follow-on crop (due to the weedkilling also taking place) and less strain on the harvesting machinery. The farmer must however judge when to apply the herbicide in order to minimise the herbicide residues in the crop. Herbicide residues in food are not desirable.

Answer: Thicker stalks support the larger seedheads

The nitrogen fertilisers used on poorer soils resulted in long, spindly stalks that tended to collapse under the weight of the grain, causing yield losses.

Borlaug reasoned that the high yields resulting from the large-scale input-intensive monoculture of wheat helped curb deforestation. He felt that one of the main problems facing the world was population growth and that increasing crop yield only bought some time.

The great leap forward in productivity has not gone without criticism. It has had negative impacts in many areas including food security, socioeconomics, the environment and health. Farmers have gone from independent subsistence farming to debt-laden dependence on multi-national corporations in the pursuit of yield. Crop failures mean that suicide by pesticide is all too common.