In my culture, Ukrainian culture, bread is holy.

When a piece of bread fell on the floor, my grandmother would pick it up gently and kiss it. Not because it was trendy or spiritual or part of some diet. But because bread is life.

Bread feeds the soul, not just the stomach.
It’s what we bake for Easter, our holiest holiday. We prepare special bread for weddings, braided with meaning. We bake bread for funerals, to honor the dead. It is present in moments of birth, death, and transformation.

So when I read wellness authors like Alberto Villoldo calling grain “toxic” or “one of the worst things to ever happen to humanity,” I feel a deep and ancient fire rise in me. Because it’s not just inaccurate, it’s offensive.

Yes, modern wheat has changed. Yes, industrial farming and processing have stripped food of its original integrity. But blaming bread for all our modern illnesses (autism, ADHD, Alzheimer’s) is lazy science and cultural erasure.

The problem with the American diet (from my perspective) is the disconnection.

• From land
• From ritual
• From community
• From intuitive nourishment

The problem isn’t gluten, it’s greed.
It’s not wheat, it’s what’s been done to it.

And it’s certainly not the ancient practice of agriculture, which our ancestors across the globe saw as a gift from the gods, something sacred, learned from the Earth and stars and passed down through story and seed.

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Bread as Blessing

When I eat bread now,
I feel connection.
I feel my grandmother’s hands.
I feel a thousand years of women baking for survival and celebration.
I feel the sacred.

So no, I will not believe that bread is toxic.
Bread is a prayer.
Bread is a gift.
Bread is ours.