Looking once again to words for clues about our long-time relationship to food prior to the dramatic changes of the past one hundred years or so, I thought it would be interesting to look at the words associated with harvesting grain.

I’ve written about how people’s characterization of low-grain diets as “low-carb” demonstrates some confusion about carbs in general. But I think it also displays a vague recognition that grains are somehow different from the rest of the carbs (fruit, vegetables, beans). Too many people have noticed for themselves that decreasing their intake of grain often makes their pants fit better. And rather quickly at that. Why would that be, and what does it mean?

The first thing to know about grain is that preparing it for consumption is back-breaking work. It’s nothing like picking oranges or pears, which I happen to know from personal experience can be pretty tiring. The second thing is that the words associated with grain harvesting — sheaving, threshing, winnowing —  are no longer in common usage, so most of us don’t even know what they mean. There’s an important clue.

Let’s assume you’ve grown a plot of winter wheat, and the grain has matured, and harvest time has arrived. You’re going to need pruners, a sickle, or a scythe to sweep across and cut the stalks, allowing them to fall to the ground. Then you’re going to gather up the stalks or sheaves, of the type that Vincent Van Gogh made famous, into a teepee-shaped “shock” to dry for a week or so.

The next step is to thresh the wheat. Notice how similar this word is to “thrash.” Threshing is the process of loosening the grain or seed from the husk and straw. Basically, it means to beat the stalks so that the grains (e.g., wheat berries) become separated and fall away. Stalks can be beaten with a wooden stick or baseball bat, or banged against the side of a bucket or can, or laid on a sheet and stepped on vigorously, or rubbed vigorously with the hands.

Then comes winnowing. To winnow is to toss grain into the wind so that the lighter chaff is blown away while the heavier grain falls. Chaff consists of plant straw and seed heads. “Separating the wheat from the chaff” is a way to express the idea of separating the valuable from the worthless.

It’s easy to remember what winnowing is once you learn that it is related to windwian, Old English for wind. During winnowing,  threshed grain is poured from one container to another in front of a fan or other wind source. In the past, farmers used winnowing baskets, or winnowing forks or shovels, or even a whole winnowing barn whose floor consisted of holes exactly the right size for wheat berries and other grains to fall through into the level below while retaining the chaff. Winnowing also removes pests from stored grain.

Once these steps have been completed, the grain is ready to be milled into flour, and then kneaded into bread, both of which were also labor-intensive efforts prior to the invention of the combine harvester (which combines several tasks into one) and the bread machine.

Then why did humans make the extraordinary effort? What made it  so worthwhile? A slice of bread, of course. A baguette, a muffin, a croissant, a pie crust. But, as opposed to the way we come into a loaf of bread now, they earned it through hard work over months and months. That is the difference.