Ancient grains

Ancient grains is a marketing term used to describe a category of grains and pseudocereals that are purported to have been minimally changed by selective breeding over recent millennia, as opposed to more widespread cereals such as corn, rice and modern varieties of wheat, which are the product of thousands of years of selective breeding. Ancient grains are often marketed as being more nutritious than modern grains, though their health benefits over modern varieties have been disputed by some nutritionists.^[1][2]

Ancient grains include varieties of wheat: spelt, Khorasan wheat (Kamut), einkorn, and emmer; the grains millet, barley, teff, oats, and sorghum; and the pseudocereals quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, and chia.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]} Some authors even consider bulgur and freekeh to be ancient grains,^[7] even though they are usually made from ordinary wheat. Modern wheat is a hybrid descendant of three wheat species considered to be ancient grains: spelt, einkorn, and emmer.^[2][3]