The taste test came back negative.
By JOHN STROMNES of the Missoulian
The colleague said it tasted like moose droppings, Sands recalled in a recent telephone interview.
Sands was taken aback but not disheartened. He has the reputation as something of a visionary as a plant scientist and he had been working on Indian rice grass for years. He believed the grain had great potential for Montana agriculture, and for millions of people with gluten intolerance, which causes a serious digestive disorder called celiac disease. He wasn't about to let one curmudgeonly review end his work.
He knew that Indian rice grass, a wild perennial that thrives in the sandy, arid scrub lands of western North America, had been gleaned and eaten by tribal people for thousands of years. So he asked an American Indian acquaintance to take the taste test.
He said it tasted like elk droppings, Sands recalled.
So it was back to the lab awhile for Indian rice grass.
By the late 1990s, the seed the MSU researchers had developed was ready for another taste test. This time, Sands asked one of his colleagues, Bettie Stanislao, a nutritionist and food researcher in MSU's Human Resources and Health Department, to try it out.
Stanislao, who has some 30 years of experience in recipe development, took some of the newer prototype of the flour home and tinkered with it.
"I got my first flour in September three years ago," Stanislao said. "I decided I was going to make apple pies and I was determined these were going to be excellent pies." She knew if she could roll out a good pie crust from the flour, other kinds of baked goods, like muffins, brownies and yeast-rising bread, would all come relatively easily.
She had obtained three grinds of the new prototype flour - called Montina - from Sands: coarse, medium and fine. She used the finest grind for her crust. She made a few other adjustments, then popped the pies into the oven. Next morning, she took a pie to Sands' office.
"The first person to try took the first bite, and said, 'Mmm, pretty good,' " she recalled. Soon the pies were gone, and folks were looking for more Montina-flour pies.
"There was something different about these products," said Stanislao.
The "something different" from a marketing perspective is the fact that the Indian rice grass seed that Sands and his research team have developed is gluten-free.
Gluten is the protein substance in wheat that helps baked goods rise. Many home cooks add gluten to their whole-wheat bread recipes to ensure a light and airy loaf. This quality makes gluten valuable in all sorts of commercial baking. Gluten also is contained in lesser amounts in barley and rye.
"Most baked bread depends on gluten," Stanislao said. "That's why wheat flour is the most wonderful flour for making bread. All you have to do is wet it, knead it a little, and you wind up with a beautiful loaf of bread."
But millions of people, especially Caucasians of northern European origin, have a dietary intolerance for gluten. It afflicts about one in every 120-150 in this population group, and results in the serious but seldom-diagnosed ailment celiac disease. People with the disease can't digest foods containing even tiny amounts of gluten. In extreme cases, people with celiac disease have starved to death.
Treatment is simple - change the diet to foods completely free of gluten. But that's easier said than done, since gluten pops up in many manufactured products, and even grain that is gluten-free can easily be contaminated by milling or harvesting equipment also used for gluten-content grains.
Recognition of the prevalence of celiac disease has been a long time coming in the United States. But in many European countries - Sweden is a notable example - gluten-free products are sold almost everywhere.
Sands figured out that Indian rice grass is gluten-free, as well as being far more nutritious than many gluten-free grains made into flour, notably tapioca and rice.
"It is a powerhouse of nutrition," Stanislao said. The grain is very high in protein, fiber and iron.
Foods made from Indian rice grass flour can be safely eaten by the estimated 30 million people with celiac disease. But the flour must be produced and manufactured with precision and care, said Sands.
"One gluten-containing seed in a thousand without gluten will contaminate it."
So Sands started looking around for growers who would help him develop his new seed.
John Sheldon of Creston, near Kalispell, was such a farmer. Sheldon, 51, has been growing small plots of Indian rice grass on his 250-acre seed-production farm since 1980, but not for human consumption.
"My specialty is seed production of grasses - Indian rice grass, green needle grass, bluebunch wheat grass - all native to Montana," he said.
A niche market had developed for Indian rice grass in the 1980s, but it was for land reclamation, especially mining reclamation. The perennial is one of the few native grasses that can be grown successfully on drifting and blowing sand. It was also a valuable native soil-conservation management tool, and much in demand for grassland reclamation after wildfires.
But the market was volatile - a big demand one year, little or none the next. So Indian rice grass wasn't hugely popular to grow, and no one grew it for its food value.
"Unbeknownst to us, work at Montana State was going on, developing the crop for human consumption. It was nutritious, high in protein and totally gluten-free," Sheldon recalled.
MSU investigated milling technology, developed recipes, and put forward a strategy for production. But the massive wildfires of 2000 intervened. Demand for rice-grass seed for fire reclamation skyrocketed, and none was available for food development.
To overcome this difficulty, the MSU team asked Sheldon to recruit farmers for a proposed growers cooperative, to be called Amazing Grains http://www.montina.com/ The product would be called Montina and would be protected by a trademark.
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Amazing Grains Grower Cooperative
405 West Main
Ronan, MT 59864
Toll Free 1-877-278-6585
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With Sheldon in the field convincing growers to dedicate some acreage to the plant for the two years it takes to get established, and Sands' colleague, Tim Anderson, directing the effort from Bozeman, some 40 growers signed on to the Amazing Grains cooperative. This year membership has increased to 54, most all from Montana.
"The objective was to form an open cooperative for those who wanted to step up to the plate and do a higher-technology agriculture," Sands said.
The cooperative aims to keep the Montina brand of flour directly under the control of the farmers, all the way from the farmer's field to the products on the grocery store shelves.
The Amazing Grains farmers had no experience in marketing and product development. So they hired Bob Warren, 58, a marketing executive who successfully brought Cream of the West cereal into regional prominence. (He owned the firm for 12 years.) He also had worked as a sales and marketing executive at Jore Corp., the tool manufacturer in Ronan.
Warren was hired in July 2002, helped by a $323,000 "added value" matching-fund grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development.
The cooperative partnered with the expanding nonprofit Mission Mountain Market food-processing and marketing facility in Ronan, leasing space at the market for offices, research and for milling and packaging.
Milling and packaging of the Montina products are done under conditions more akin to a pharmaceutical company than a flour mill. It is tested for purity down to the 20 parts per million level, Warren said.
Two retail products developed by Warren are now on the market, sold at health food stores across the country and at the Web site, www.montina.com. They are Montina Pure (100 percent Indian rice grass) and Montina All Purpose (a blend of 20 percent Montina, with white rice and tapioca flour). Both are 100 percent gluten-free and rapidly gaining consumer acceptance. Production has increased from 20,000 pounds of rice grass made into flour last year to 125,000 pounds this year.
"We've gone through the packaging and product development, and now we're out selling it," Warren said.
The trend is nowhere but up in the niche market being created by the Montina producers cooperative.
"There's just been an explosion of gluten-free foods," said Jean Powell of the Montana Celiac Society, based in Bozeman.
Recently, tests have been developed to more easily diagnosis celiac disease, and it is being diagnosed sooner and more often than just a few years ago. And there is a growing national interest in healthy foods in general these days.
"A lot of people, even though they are not gluten intolerant, prefer to cut back on wheat," said Powell.
Montina works best for most consumers as a blend with other flours, to make anything from cookies and yeast bread to pancakes and breading. Its nutty flavor is rather strong, and the 100-percent flour is difficult to work with, many consumers say.
But Kathleen Karlsen of Bozeman feeds her family of six, all of whom have celiac disease, using straight Montina, blending it herself.
"I blend brown rice flour, potato starch flour and tapioca flour, and use it in everything from coffeecakes to corn dog breading," she said.
One drawback is Montina's price. It sells at a premium compared to more common commodity flours. The current retail price of Montana Pure is $13.49 for 24 ounces; the same size package of Montina All Purpose sells for $5.99.
Of course, the higher price helps the farmers who grow the grain. After all, the original objective was to develop a new product for a niche market that wouldn't be priced like a commodity.
"The question is, should we work only on commodities, or should we invent products for niche markets," Sands said.
He and others believe that bringing new products to niche markets provides the best bet for Montana agriculture competing in a high-tech world economy.
"Alternative crops can provide access to new markets that show signs of long-term and sustainable growth and profitability," said Ralph Peck, director of the Montana Department of Agriculture in a press release.
"Some of these crops also can be processed into new products for our state, adding employment and the chance for producers to profit by marketing food and fiber products rather than raw materials," Peck said.
Although production numbers do not come close to the volume of traditional crops like wheat and barley, the specialty niches can provide significant added-value income to growers who choose them, he said.
"Crops like Indian rice grass represent a major advancement in agriculture because growers are able to use a perennial grass as a crop rather than just as a forage item," said grower Sheldon. Indian rice grass is also drought tolerant, and can be harvested just like wheat with a combine, saving labor costs.
Now that Indian rice grass is on its way to a profitable future, Sands at MSU is looking for other ways to add value to Montana farming.
He is researching numerous new seeds and plants, but they are hush-hush at this point. He wants MSU to patent the new crops before they come to market. He foresees a not-to-distant day when technology, through the use of genetic analysis that can pinpoint food allergies and intolerances, can prescribe a list of what each person should or shouldn't eat. This will provide a big opportunity for producers who anticipate the demand for these "prescription" foods.
University research can supply the knowledge to develop these new niche foods, and turn over the results to Montana farm co-ops, like the Amazing Grains group, for product development, advertising, marketing and sales.
"We see a huge future in Montana with prescription foods," said Sands. "We can invent new wheat and keep getting 6 cents a pound, or we can find new things that fit into Montana's clean environment, benefit agriculture ad maybe we can benefit some groups of people that need a better diet."
Reporter John Stromnes can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or jstromnes@missoulian.com
http://missoulian.com/articles/2003/11/16/news/mtregional/news05.txt