Wheat Belly Total Health: The effortless grain-free health and weight-loss plan. Dr Davis William
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to do bad things as its gliadin counterpart.26 Likewise, the lectin of rye is nearly identical to wheat’s destructive lectin, wheat germ agglutinin, and therefore shares its potential for causing intestinal toxicity, clumping red blood cells, provoking abnormal growth of immune system lymphocytes and mimicking insulin.27 Rye shares with wheat a peculiar and only recently recognized phenomenon: the formation of acrylamide, a compound believed to be a carcinogen and neurotoxin.28 Rye and wheat contain a high content of the amino acid asparagine, which, when heated at high temperatures during baking or deep-frying, reacts with the plentiful carbohydrates present to form acrylamide. (It also forms in chips.) Modern reliance on nitrogen-rich synthetic fertilizers also boosts the asparagine content of rye and wheat, increasing acrylamide formation further.
For all practical purposes, given the crossbreeding that has occurred via natural Vavilovian means as well as the breeding efforts of humans, the differences are minor, meaning that they are virtually one and the same. Being wheat-free should also mean being rye-free.
Rye and the Work of the Devil
Rye has the unique potential to be infected with a parasitic fungus, Claviceps purpurea, that produces a human toxin called ergotamine. When ingested in, say, a loaf of rye bread, it exerts a range of hallucinogenic effects on humans, partly because it is converted to lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD.
History is filled with fascinating and terrifying stories of humans exposed to rye and ergotamine. Because some victims afflicted with contaminated rye experienced an intense dermatitis (skin inflammation), the condition became known as St Anthony’s Fire, named after the early 11th-century sanctuary operated by monks to treat victims of ergot poisoning. During the Middle Ages, writers described hysterical outbursts afflicting previously normal people, including thrashing and writhing while shouting, ‘I’m burning!’ The afflicted would eventually collapse, after which their bodies would blacken. And at least one observer has ascribed the madness of the Salem witch trials to ergotamine poisoning after determining that many of the 19 young women accused of being witches lived near a rye field. A ‘witch cake’ made of rye flour was fed to a dog to confirm a ‘bewitching’ effect.29
The rye itself was, of course, entirely innocent, since it was the common parasitic infestation of the grass that was to blame. But, as with so many other matters surrounding the relationship between the seeds of grasses and the hapless humans who try to consume them, it should come as no surprise that it is a relationship fraught with danger.
Barley
The origins of barley consumption parallel that of einkorn and emmer wheat in the Fertile Crescent, which is now Iraq, Iran and Turkey. For many years, barley was the preferred grain among ancient people of Greece and Egypt, spreading to Europe 7,000 years ago. Barley has largely been demoted to animal fodder, with most human exposure nowadays coming in the form of the barley malt used to make beer. As with rye, barley also shares many characteristics with its close grass relative, wheat. People with coeliac disease, for instance, who avoid wheat because it’s a source of gluten (and thereby gliadin), must also avoid barley due to gliadin’s similarities with barley’s equivalent protein, hordein. Gliadin and hordein overlap extensively, suggesting that the peculiar human effects of wheat are shared by barley.30 The lectin of barley is also virtually identical to wheat germ agglutinin, thereby sharing its potential for gastrointestinal toxicity. Barley’s allergic effects also overlap with those of wheat, meaning that the same asthma, sinus drainage and congestion, skin rashes and gastrointestinal distress provoked by a wheat allergy can also be provoked by barley.31
Corn
After modern wheat and its problematic closest brethren, rye, barley, bulgur and triticale, corn is the next problem grass. (For the sake of clarity, I will call maize by its North American colloquial name, ‘corn’. While corn outside the United States and Canada can mean wheat or be a nonspecific term for any grain, here it will be used to refer to maize.)
Like einkorn wheat, corn is among the oldest of cultivated grains, dating back 10,000 years to pre-Mayan times in South America, but corn didn’t make it onto European menus until 1493, when Christopher Columbus brought seeds to Spain. Corn was rapidly embraced, largely replacing barley and millet due to its spectacular yield per acre. Widespread, habitual consumption of cornbread and polenta resulted in deficiencies of niacin (vitamin B3) and the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, causing widespread epidemics of pellagra, evidenced as what doctors of the age called ‘The Four Ds’: dermatitis, diarrhoea, dementia and death. Even today, pellagra is a significant public health issue in rural South America, Africa and China. Meanwhile, in coastal Peru, Ecuador, Mexico and the Andes mountain highlands, increased corn consumption led to increased tooth decay, tooth loss, anaemia and iron deficiency, as well as loss of height in children and adults.32
Today, farmers fatten livestock by feeding them intact corn kernels. But much of the corn consumed by humans is in the form of cornflour, or derivatives of corn such as high-fructose corn syrup. This concentrated source of fructose is a form of sugar that fails to signal satiety – you don’t know when to stop. Corn and wheat jockey for inclusion in just about every processed food, many of which contain both. Corn in some form is therefore found in obvious sources, such as corn chips, cornbread, breakfast cereals, soft drinks with high-fructose corn syrup, tacos and tortillas, but also in some not-so-obvious foods, including hamburger meat, ketchup, salad dressings, yoghurt, soup mixes, sweets, seasoning mixes, mayonnaise, marinara sauce, fruit drinks and peanut butter.
Corn strains with the highest proportion of rapidly digested amylopectin, rather than the less efficiently digested amylose, are chosen to grind into cornflour. Given the exponential increase in surface area that results when corn is reduced to granules or powder, these products are responsible for extravagant rises in blood sugar. With a glycaemic index of 90 to 100, the highest of any food, they are perfectly crafted to contribute to diabetes.33
Corn allergies are on the rise, probably due to changes in alpha-amylase inhibitor proteins, lipid transfer proteins and others. Because the various grasses that we call ‘grains’ are genetically related, there can be overlapping grain allergies in humans exposed to them.34 Repeated and prolonged exposure to corn proteins, as in people who work in agriculture, food production or the pharmaceutical industry (cornflour is found in pills and capsules), can lead to as many as 90 per cent of workers developing a corn allergy.35 Such extravagant levels of allergy development do not occur in people working with apples, beef, kale or olives – only grains.
The zein protein of corn triggers antibodies reactive to wheat gliadin, which can lead to gastrointestinal distress, diarrhoea, bloating, bowel urgency and acid reflux after corn consumption.36 The immune response responsible for the destruction of the small intestine that occurs in people with coeliac disease can also be triggered, though less severely, by the zein protein of corn. Nevertheless, cornflour is – wrongly – used in gluten-free foods.37
Though they look quite different and the modern processed products that emerge from them look, smell and taste quite different, wheat and corn are too closely related for comfort. Minimal to no exposure is the desired strategy for non-ruminant Homo sapiens.
Genetic Modification: Don’t Look, Don’t Tell
Since gene-splicing technology made it possible to insert or remove specific genes in plants and animals, we have been reassured repeatedly by the FDA, the USDA and by agribusiness that the products of this technology are safe for the environment and for human consumption. And they have 90-day animal testing data to prove it.
While wheat was manipulated with methods that pre-date genetic modification and therefore didn’t raise many eyebrows, other genetically modified (GM) grains, especially corn and rice, have somehow escaped public scrutiny, and strains have made it onto supermarket shelves in North America and other parts of the world. Recent studies have raised questions about the safety of GM crops, as well as the herbicides and pesticides that go with them. One French research group, for instance, obtained internal proprietary research data from Monsanto that were used to justify claims of safety for both glyphosate-resistant corn and Bt toxin corn, the two most prevalent GM