Members of Oklahoma State University’s Wheat Improvement Team recently co-authored a paper on research related to a campaign “to boost public health without relying on individuals to give up foods they love” through their partnership with the Foundation for Innovation in Healthy Food, which includes multiple university partners.
“While it remains highly focused on traditional farm-based targets like yield and pest resistance, consumer acceptance of wheat-based foods has taken on newfound meaning with the U.S. wheat improvement community,” said Brett Carver, OSU Regents professor and wheat genetics chair. “We already know that wheat foods provide a critical source of energy and fiber to the human diet. Future acceptance will hinge upon creating subtle and natural shifts in those two qualities, which in turn can have broad-scale effects on human health, particularly Type II diabetes.”
The foundation’s primary goal is to make staple foods, such as bread products, healthier for consumers. The collaborative study advocates for improving wheat and other staple foods through agricultural techniques. The journal article, authored by 53 researchers across the United States, is titled “Toward an Emerging Public Health Paradigm: Agriculture and Food Production for Health.” It details a plan to revitalize the public health paradigm by altering food production to make food healthier.
“For decades, chronic disease has continued to plague populations globally, partly because of
nutritionally insufficient diets,” the foundation said in a recent statement. “Researchers assert that by changing the fiber content of wheat, there could be improved health changes on a population scale because wheat-based foods are the source of 20% of global energy and 30% of U.S. dietary fiber intake. This simple improvement could lead to lower risks for cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes and colorectal cancer across the world without consumers changing their diets individually.”
The study suggests that scientists and agriculture professionals work together to increase the nutritional value of crops, specifically increasing the fiber content of wheat through plant breeding and production practices as a first step to enhance the nutritional value of wheat. The paper suggests wheat as a case study to introduce the idea that these agricultural changes can be made and expanded to other crops such as rice, corn, potatoes, sorghum and plantains.
The key findings of the current study are:
- Commodity wheat breeding will increase fiber content, which will lead to reduced rates of cardiovascular disease, type two diabetes and colorectal cancer.
- Wheat with increased fiber could generate peak U.S. healthcare savings of approximately $12 billion per year.
- Increased-fiber wheat could prevent medical conditions for six million Americans and save more than 60,000 lives annually.
“The OSU wheat improvement program has been an active participant and contributor of germplasm in the FIHF project since the opportunity presented itself over three years ago,” Carver said. “Multiple genetic factors exist in wheat to bring about positive change in its fiber composition. We had already started down the path of breeding for increased wheat fiber as of 2012. It was an easy decision to merge our efforts with the broader research community and find that common ground.”
OSU Ag Research is Oklahoma’s premier research and technology development agency in agriculture, natural resources and the life sciences.
FIHF works to build communities focused on improving the nutritional value of everyday foods in order to prevent chronic disease, while preserving the joy of consuming food. FIHF is a charitable foundation that promotes making staple foods healthier and freely shares its ideas, without benefiting financially from the publication of the article or the ideas expressed within it.
