100
11 
Barley
Whether you like it roasted and blended with yak butter—like Tibetans, who name it as one of their favorite staples—or in beer like the ancient Egyptians (and, for that matter, people today), barley is a venerable grain that boasts plentiful amounts of both flavor and nutrition.
Barley’s Taste
Barley has a robust, nutty flavor and maintains its chewy texture well after cooking. In drinks, it often has a toasty flavor with a slight bitterness.
What’s Great About Barley
For pure, heart-friendly nutrition, it’s hard not to wish that barley had become the dominant grain instead of wheat. For one, barley is superior to wheat in fiber, and even better at managing blood sugar levels than our friend the oat. Too, hardy barley is more tolerant of harsh physical conditions than any other cereal crop. It grows in arctic and alpine latitudes, as well as very dry places like Yemen and parts of North Africa.
Kashi’s Barley
Barley adds a nutty goodness and heartiness to foods like pilaf, cookies, and cereals, and we use several varieties of barley in our foods. We source ours from such barley-growing hubs as Saskatchewan, Canada and North Dakota. In some of our foods, like Kashi® Honey Puffs and GOLEAN Crunch!® cereal, we use a variety called hulless waxy barley, sourced from growers in Montana. Although all types of barley possess strong nutritional qualities, hulless types don’t require milling to remove the hull. This leaves the full bran layer intact, contributing to high fiber content. Yay, fiber!
The “waxy” quality of hulless is caused by having a lot of the complex amylopectin starch that helps us feel satisfied. It also has a lower glycemic index than other whole grains, so it’s good as part of a diet to keep blood sugar stable.
Barley in North America
Most of the barley grown in North America comes from the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and the northern U.S. states of North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Minnesota (although it is produced in 27 U.S. states!). Since its peak in the mid 1980s, barley lands have decreased five-fold, mainly because of the movement to reclaim land for perennial grass and shrubs, the challenges of achieving malt-grade quality on rain-fed acreage, and low prices. Still, as a short-season, early-maturing crop that thrives in both irrigated and dry environments, it’s a perennial favorite of growers across North America.
Origins of Barley
Barley’s beginnings are hotly disputed by grainiacs all over the world. The point of contention centers on whether the original wild forms were indigenous to eastern Asia, namely Tibet, or to the Near East or eastern Mediterranean, or both. What researchers do agree on is that, in a crop so long cultivated, this question may never be answered with certainty.
What is known is that this hardy, adaptable grain was likely a major food crop—as prominent as wheat—until about the time of the Roman Empire. Grains found in Egyptian pits and pyramids show that barley was cultivated there more than 5000 years ago. The most ancient glyph or pictograph found for barley hails from 3000 B.C.E. And many references to barley and beer are found in early Egyptian and Sumerian writings.
Since then, however, barley has fallen from prominence. In fact, throughout the 19th century, it was regarded as “peasant” food and was used primarily for animal feed and beer brewing, with food use a distant third. Even so, barley is still the fourth most important grain crop in the United States. To give you an idea of what that means, in 2008, 3,767,000 acres of barley were harvested in the U.S. alone. That’s a lot of whole grains! It plays a vital role in world agriculture as well: As the fourth most important cereal crop in the world after wheat, maize, and rice, it is grown in dozens of challenging agricultural regions, and is often the only rain-fed crop people are able to grow in an intemperate area.
Barley’s Name
The words “barley” and “barn,” which originally meant barley-house, are both rooted in the Old English bære. They have been part of the English language for more than 1000 years.
Barley is a member of the grass family and, until recently, was thought to include several different species with different scientific names. Now, wild barley, two-rowed barley, and six-rowed barley are all classified as a single species, H. vulgare L.
Barley Around the World
Hulless barley is a staple in Tibet, where it is the predominant grain grown at high elevation. Barley is part of Tibetans’ dietary staple tsampa (or zampa), a blend of roasted barley and yak butter that comes in various flavors.
In places such as Tibet, Nepal, Ethiopia, the Andean countries, North Africa, Afghanistan, India, and Russia, people eat barley mixed with wheat in breads, or in local recipes.
Two-row barley, with its lower protein content and thus more fermentable sugar content, is traditionally used in English-ale type beers. Six-row barley is common in some American lagers, and two-row malted summer barley is the foundation of most German beers.
Roasted barley tea is popular in Japan (mugicha) and Korea (boricha). It is preferred as a cooling summer beverage in Japan and served year-round in Korea (hot in winter and cold in summer).
More 7 Whole Grains
Learn more about our 7 whole grains with these Grainipedia entries:
