ABSTRACT
The uniquely craftable qualities of wheat take it far beyond being a staple food, important as that is. It can be pulled apart and reassembled in many different ways. Some of these re-assemblages are edible, but many are not, hence wheat's status in the market as commodity rather than food. This chapter explores a number of those transformations, focusing on the material rather than metaphorical, and travelling between the laboratory and the supermarket and back to the farm. Food items that did not contain wheat included gluten-free specialty ranges; wine and soft drinks; yoghurts, creams and juices; and meat, fruit and vegetables, all supermarket-defined categories, which contained both processed and unprocessed foods. Important products in the supermarket are the various forms of pig meat and milk. The reliability and consistency of food labelling legislation are not perfect, but as a form of accountability they are much stronger than the subliminal message of the sheaves of wheat.
