It takes me a full 15 minutes to make a cup of fresh oat-milk from organic, whole grain oats, from scratch. This includes the cumbersome cleaning of the blender and the cheesecloth afterwards. In comparison- opening a box of OATLY takes only a few seconds, and they conveniently have it in Starbucks and many other coffee shops. But OATLY not only gave me a very unpleasant aftertaste with their terrible stock market debut, but also an upset stomach: they use enzymes to clear their oat-milk—which leaves my stomach upset when I drink it daily for a couple of days in a row.

On that note, in Europe “they” may put more than 200 ingredients into plain wheat flour without declaring those ingredients (Ref. Billige Brötchen – Die Spur der Teiglinge, NDR, Manfred Ladwig, 45min, S1.E86). These are high-tech additives—often derived from engineered fungi—to make every ounce of wheat flour behave exactly the same (which makes sense in every aspect, except for health.) I guess that’s not only the case in Europe, but everywhere. I would argue it’s those ingredients that make so many people sensitive to bread, not the carbs, not the gluten. Real, historical bread disappeared when I was a kid, I still remember. Now I’m living in a world without bread, but instead with bread-look-alike products that still taste excellent but make us sick. I love bread, but haven’t gotten around to mill flour from organic, non-GMO grains and baking bread myself. Therefore I too get the bad side-effects when I eat bread more often than just once in a while.

Okay, with that out of the way I finally might start to write about what I really wanted to write about today.