Ingrained: a human bio-geography of wheat

Having picked up this book and turned to this page, you have continued the human relationship with wheat, whose starch has been an important component of paper production since the ancient Egyptians made papyrus. Wheat is embedded in Western consciousness as the biblical staff of life, one the founding grains of the Neolithic revolution, a marker of colonial productivity and progress in the settlement of new lands, and a globalised commodity. It is embedded in everyday lives, including urban lives, and most of us ate it for breakfast with out thinking too much about it unless that is, we suffer from coeliac disease and need to follow its presence everywhere in order to avoid it.