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Barley's 'Shangri-la'?

On a visit to the remote Himalayan country of Tibet to provide expertise on barley processing, Canadian researcher Dr. Nancy Ames observes a rare society where barley is a long-standing dietary staple. What the Tibetans have known instinctively about barley's advantages for more than a century supports new research by Ames and colleagues to tap the grain's potential for commercial food and health products.

With approximately 13 million tonnes of barley produced in peak years in Western Canada, the region can lay claim to the title "barley capital of the world." But perhaps nowhere is barley a more integral component of local diets than in the unique, traditional society of Tibet, observes Dr. Nancy Ames, a Canadian researcher on a working visit to that country.

"Many of the people living in the mountain villages, and the nomads ñ called "yak people" ñ have a diet consisting of yak meat, yak butter, barley and little else," says Ames, via e-mail to Land and Science from the city of Lhasa. "The barley appears to providing a very good fibre source to balance a high fat diet."

Secret of the Sherpas

Is this how the region's famed Sherpas get their mountaineering energy? Barley can't take credit for all of that, jokes Ames, a scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Cereal Research Centre in Winnipeg, who has examined barley's food potential for more than a decade. However, as researchers have learned in recent years, barley does feature unique health-boosting components that make the grain a particularly beneficial dietary component. Most notably, barley contains beta-glucan, exceptionally high fibre, and tocopherols, which provide health benefits such as a reduction in serum cholesterol.

In Canada, a key processing approach Ames and colleagues have investigated is heat treatment, which the Tibetans have practiced in a very basic way for more than a century, she says.

"An objective of one of our major projects at the Cereal Research Centre was to utilize barley as a whole grain. This involved finding a treatment to eliminate rancidity causing enzymes without affecting the functionality of the end product. We focused on a heat/moisture treatment using infrared heat. The treatment resulted in improvements to the end product with respect to functionality and nutrition. The result was two new end products: an instant, whole grain side dish and a crunchy snack."

Barley, fresh-roasted from the field

This concept of heat treating the grain as a means to retain the quality is also well understood by the local farmers and highland people of Tibet, says Ames. "I had the opportunity to visit a farm in Tibet where I was served a barley snack that had been roasted in a large round metal pan over a fire.

"All the families in the village combine efforts to roast the barley. Some of this is used for tsampa, which is a flour powder eaten directly as a flour. I found a spoonful of tsampa was best followed by a swig of barley beer, which I was also served by the women of the village."

Developing a palate for butter tea

Tsampa is also mixed with Tibetan butter tea to make a thick porridge for breakfast, Ames observes.

How did this compare to a typical breakfast back home? "I found the only way I could actually drink the Tibetan butter tea was after mixing the tsampa into it," she confesses. "Tibetan butter tea is made from freshly churned yak milk, which I believe is an acquired taste."

Read more on Ames visit to Tibet and her latest food barley research progress in the new May edition of Western Grains Research Magazine.

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