There are foods that comfort us.
The smell of fresh bread just taken from the oven, a plate of steaming pasta on the table — they remind us of home, family, safety. For centuries they have been part of our traditions, our memories, our culture.

But let us be honest: what comforts the soul does not always nourish the body.
The bread and pasta of today are not the same as those our grandparents once ate.

Before the 1800s — and up until the first decades of the 20th century — people consumed ancient grains. These were varieties such as einkorn, emmer, and spelt: rich in minerals, lower in gluten, and with proteins and fibers that the human body could recognize and digest in harmony. They were cultivated in natural fields, without pesticides, without aggressive industrial processing, without the constant exposure to the electromagnetic environment in which today’s modern crops are grown, harvested, and processed.

Then, after the industrial revolution and especially after the First World War, agriculture changed. Grains were selectively bred to increase yield, speed, and resistance. What we now call “modern wheat” is not the same plant. Its gluten is more abundant and more aggressive, its starch is more refined, and its organoleptic qualities — taste, texture, nutrition — are profoundly altered.

So when we eat pasta and bread made from these modern grains, our bodies are not eating what our grandparents ate.
They are eating a product that has been transformed by technology, stripped of natural fibers, and processed into a form that the body experiences as almost pure glucose.

Occasionally, enjoying them is not a crime. Life is not about rigid restrictions.
But when bread and pasta become daily staples — especially in a life without physical activity — they slowly feed a fire inside us: the fire of chronic inflammation.

This fire is silent, but relentless.
Each time we flood the system with refined carbohydrates, blood sugar spikes, insulin follows, and the inflammatory cycle is triggered. If this becomes routine, the body begins to live in a permanent state of defense.

And here is where it becomes dangerous.
When the immune system cannot resolve inflammation, it calls for help from the brain. The brain responds by releasing chemokines and interleukins — inflammatory messengers that attract more immune cells. They are designed to protect us, but when produced in excess, they do the opposite: they sustain and amplify inflammation.

This is the vicious circle:
Chronic stress fuels chronic inflammation.
Chronic inflammation fuels chronic stress.

Over time, the body enters glucocorticoid resistance. Cortisol, our natural anti-inflammatory hormone, no longer calms the system. Even if the body produces it, the tissues stop listening. The natural “fire extinguisher” is useless. The flames spread — silently — to arteries, joints, skin, even the brain.

Bread and pasta are not “poisons.” But they are no longer the neutral, nourishing foods of the past either.
The modern versions are fundamentally different from what our grandparents ate. They no longer sustain life in the same way. Instead, they drain it.

So what is the message?
Enjoy them occasionally, with awareness. Choose, when possible, ancient grains that are closer to nature and closer to the foods our bodies evolved to accept. Fill your daily plate with vegetables, healthy fats, and proteins that calm, rather than inflame. And above all, move.

Because the human body was not designed for stillness, nor for daily feasts of modern refined flour.

This is not about fear.
It is about respect — for the intelligence of the body, for the quiet signals it sends, and for the gift of health we so often take for granted until it is too late.

References

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