Healthy Eating

The book "Wheat Belly" turns out to be about much more than just the relationship between weight loss and wheat. The author, Dr. William Davis, uses wheat to demonstrate how food can affect blood glucose, fat accumulation, inflammation, cholesterol, probiotics, aging, and immune system functioning. His book provides a comprehensive plan, based on extensive research, for preventing disease, controlling weight and prolonging life without cravings or complicated restrictions. What follows is an in-depth review.

Why Single Out Wheat?

Wheat and other grains have often been promoted as healthy diet staples. For example, in 1992, the US Department of Agriculture published a "Food Pyramid" that advised citizens to eat mostly grains such as wheat. The advice seemed sensible at the time, considering that wheat is a complex carbohydrate containing protein, dietary fibre and B vitamins, among other nutrients. It also has many practical advantages, such as being inexpensive, having a long shelf-life, and the ability to be moulded into distinctive types of bread, pasta, crackers, biscuits, cakes, etc. Hence, many food companies have made healthy profits by transforming the inexpensive grain into unique products.

Wheat has also been significantly modified to mature faster, harvest easier, and better resist drought, fungi, pests and herbicides. Although not technically "genetically engineered", the genetic code of wheat has nevertheless been altered by utilising less sophisticated methods. It has been crossbred with other grasses and exposed to toxic chemicals, gamma rays and high-dose x-rays to produce random but occasionally advantageous mutations. As a result, most of the wheat currently consumed contains thousands of additional genes and many new proteins that never existed in its natural ancestor, einkorn.

Because the emphasis has been on increasing production rather than nutrition or safety, new strains of wheat retain and sometimes increase wheat's harmful effects on the human body in the following ways:

Glucose Dangers

While there are benefits to only eliminating wheat from one's diet, there is a separate but possibly more significant health issue involving all grains. Grains contain complex carbohydrates (starches) that were once considered healthier than simple carbohydrates (sugars). However, we now know there are different types of starch. The predominant starch in grain is "amylopectin A". It breaks down into glucose and enters the bloodstream faster than nearly any other carbohydrate, including refined sugar. Once blood glucose rises, the pancreas must signal cells to store the excess by releasing insulin. Therefore, grains are more likely to be stored as fat than sugar. The fibre in whole grains will slow digestion and reduce weight gain somewhat. However, no study has ever associated whole grains with weight loss. Subjects typically still gain weight, simply less weight than subjects who eat processed flour.

In addition to weight gain, foods that significantly increase blood glucose also foster many other health complications and diseases, such as:

In addition to glucose-related complications, grains also contribute to bone calcium depletion by making extracellular fluid more acidic. Depletion occurs because the human body must keep extracellular fluid pH between 7.32 and 7.42 for cells to function. Lowering pH to increase acidity can be as easy as slowing breathing so that more carbon dioxide remains in the blood. However, raising pH to reduce acidity often involves extracting calcium from bones. Therefore, it is generally best for bone health to eat less acidic foods such as grains, carbonated sodas, meat, and animal products than alkaline foods such as most fruits and vegetables.

Precautions

The book advises people to at least eliminate wheat from their diet because of its potential to damage the digestive system, overstimulate the immune system, and amplify food cravings. However, to avoid the many damaging effects of high blood glucose, all grains and foods with similar starches should be eliminated in addition to foods with added sugar. Such foods include rice, corn, oats, rye, barley, emmer, einkorn, Kamut, spelt, bulgur, triticale, millet and sorghum.

Unfortunately, food labels do not always advertise the healthiest grain alternatives. The starches most often used to replace wheat in gluten-free foods, such as rice starch, corn starch, potato starch, and tapioca starch, are just as bad or worse for blood glucose and should also be avoided. Foods labelled "paleo" or "keto" are usually better choices than the ones labelled "gluten-free". However, Dr. Davis recommends not adopting a keto diet exclusively because virtually eliminating carbohydrates can starve beneficial intestinal bacteria, cause weight gain, constipation, the formation of pouches in the large intestine and colon cancer. Many children who adopt a keto diet to control seizures experience these complications along with kidney stones, low bone density and stunted growth.

Success Made Simple

Completely eliminating grains may seem quite constraining initially, especially for those who rely on convenience foods. However, there are enormous advantages to eating according to a simple and definitive rule:

  1. A simple rule makes it easier to anticipate when restaurants and social situations are unlikely to have satisfying grain-free options. Such foresight allows people to better prepare by going somewhere else, bringing some of their own food or eating before the event.
  2. Merely reducing grain consumption requires establishing a grain budget. Budgets can feel personally insulting to others because refusing their grain offerings indicates an unwillingness to spend the budget on them. However, there is nothing personal about a rule that always disallows grains because it treats everyone equally.
  3. Simple rules relieve people from the burden of evaluating the pros and cons of every food opportunity. Such decisions can be especially difficult when budgets are defined vaguely, or rules contain numerous exceptions. People are less likely to make unhealthy compromises when they are not overwhelmed by many nuanced decisions.
  4. People with budgets run the risk of exceeding them when better options are presented after the budgets have been depleted. Simple rules can prevent such dietary deficits, which are often never repaid.
  5. The clarity of simple rules fosters more support from friends and family. When it is obvious to others that grain is never an option, they can be more confident about accommodating, supporting, and, if necessary, reminding rule holders of their commitment.
  6. Strict rules disrupt old habits and provide opportunities to rethink everyday situations and find better options. Without prompts to seek alternatives, people are more likely to continue their previous routines.
  7. Eliminating grains also reduces the consumption of questionable sweeteners, flavourings, thickeners, colourings preservatives, emulsifiers, stabilisers and other additives because foods containing grain, especially wheat, are often heavily processed.

The "Wheat Belly" eating plan is basically a low-carbohydrate diet. However, what sets it apart from other such diets is the realisation that grains are so fattening, so pervasive, so addictive, so inflammatory, and so nutritionally replaceable that people are better off without them. By eliminating grain, people can also eliminate a lot of the nutritional budgeting that often overcomplicates dieting. This strict but simple rule facilitates optimal health without food diaries, calorie counting or food point systems. People naturally experience less hunger when blood glucose, mineral absorption and cravings are not being undermined.

Many wheat-based food producers, suppliers and advocates understandably view grain elimination as an unnecessarily extreme dietary deprivation. However, humans can't eat grass leaves, stalks or husks because we do not have the necessary enzymes or organ adaptations. We can't even fully digest grass seed gluten. Considering that we did not try to eat grain for the first 99.6% of our existence, what should seem equally extreme is the assumption that humans can do so today without adverse health consequences.

Recommended Foods

The book provides healthy grain-free recipes for bread, pasta, wraps, pies, fudge, pizza, soups, salad dressings, sauces and other familiar dishes and snacks. Alternatively, all the necessary information is provided for readers to invent or modify their own recipes. The recommendations generally allow for the following:

Just because grocery stores and restaurants are unlikely to have compliant versions of all your favourite foods does not mean meals must be made from scratch on this diet. On the contrary, healthy food can be acquired with relative ease by…

When eating a wide variety of whole and homemade foods, many people will still be deficient in some essential nutrients. Therefore, Dr. Davis recommends that people self-fortify their diets with the following supplements:

Conclusion

Compared to the split-second impulses of the nervous system, hormones act very slowly. As a result, every time blood glucose surges, we become temporarily diabetic while waiting for insulin to store the excess glucose as fat. Once the crisis ends, insulin also needs time to dissipate, which coaxes our cells to store more than necessary, and leaves us with low blood glucose and feelings of sluggishness and renewed hunger. Complex carbohydrates were previously thought not to cause glucose surges because long-chain molecules should theoretically digest more slowly than shorter ones. However, this conclusion was based on the false assumption that all chains are equally strong and are broken down by the same enzymes. As a result, by eating starchy grains, people have unknowingly been subjecting themselves to a steady barrage of diabetic episodes and setting themselves up for all of the well-known consequences.

I highly recommend the book "Wheat Belly" to everyone who routinely eats food. It explains how carbohydrates, particularly wheat, lead to diabetic-like complications in such detail and backs up its conclusions with so much compelling research that I stopped buying wheat products mid-way through my reading. It covers much more health information than I could fit into this summary review. Those who worry there may not be enough food options on this diet should also check out the companion book "Wheat Belly 30-Minute (Or Less!) Cookbook". It has another two hundred compliant recipes. Therefore, most people should be able to find grain-free meal ideas that are enjoyable, convenient and healthy.

References