Wheat Belly Cookbook: 150 delicious wheat-free recipes for effortless weight loss and optimum health. Dr Davis William
Читать онлайн книгу.
to the einkorn wheat harvested wild, wheat becomes less and less destructive each step of the way, less likely to trigger human illness.
But does wheat ever become entirely benign, perhaps healthy, the farther back we go?
Here’s a tough question: How much better does a wheat strain have to be in order to be acceptable to most people – 50 per cent, 70 per cent, 80 per cent, 100 per cent better than our modern choice? What level of risk would you be willing to accept in order to consume foods made of this grain? If I had a cigarette, for instance, that posed 80 per cent less risk of lung cancer than conventional cigarettes, is that safe enough for you to consider?
There are no right or wrong answers. It will be something to ponder in the coming years as information and experience with the older forms of wheat grow. In the meantime, given what we know (and don’t know) about these older forms of wheat, my commonsense advice is to steer clear of all forms of wheat, new and old, and be certain you have great health and nutrition.
Fourth, and very importantly, wheat is about so much more than weight. Consumption of modern wheat is about acid reflux and irritable bowel syndrome. It’s about neurological impairment and coeliac disease. It’s about water retention and leg oedema. It’s about allergies, asthma and chronic sinus congestion and infections. It’s about inattention and behavioural outbursts in children with ADHD and autism. It’s about worsening symptoms of bipolar illness and schizophrenia. It’s about mental ‘fog’ and depression. It’s about acne, dandruff, seborrhoea, psoriasis and a whole host of other skin conditions. It’s about triggering the number one cause of heart disease, small LDL cholesterol particles.
Fifth, what other food contains the gluten protein that causes coeliac disease, neurological impairment (gluten ataxia, peripheral neuropathy and dementia), dermatitis herpetiformis and non-coeliac gluten sensitivity? Yes, barley, triticale, rye, bulgur and perhaps oats overlap with the immune properties of wheat, but the gluten of wheat remains the Emperor of Gluten. Corn syrup, sucrose, sweets, ‘trans’ fats – none of these foods can cause the range of diseases caused by wheat.
In other words, even if you struggle to come to grips with the appetite-stimulating and blood sugar-provoking effects of wheat, there is so much more to wheat’s effects on health that you’ve got to conclude that weight is among the least important of wheat’s effects. Yes, it’s an important effect, but the many components of modern wheat impair human health in so many other varied ways.
Put all these pieces together in the form of modern wheat, and you’ve got a heck of a health-distorting foodstuff. In short, wheat is the dietary perfect storm capable of generating in humans undesirable health effects that no other plant or food can match. And it enjoys the endorsements of ‘official’ agencies, all urging us to eat more ‘healthy whole grains’.
So, yes, wheat is the worst.
What’s in the Future?
While no current commercially produced wheat products on the market today are, in the language of geneticists, genetically modified, i.e., the product of gene splicing techniques to insert or delete a gene, they are coming. Their appearance on your supermarket shelf is inevitable.
Genetically modified wheat has been around since the mid-1980s, when gene splicing techniques, such as exposure of wheat embryos to polyethylene glycol (the same as in antifreeze), electrical current and particle bombardment that force insertion of new genes, made their appearance in genetics laboratories. Monsanto has been sitting on several strains of GM wheat but has not yet marketed the seed to farmers due to public resistance – but it’s coming, public resistance or no.
Semi-dwarf wheat strains with new genes for high-molecular-weight glutenins (a component of gluten) to improve visco-elasticity are in the works, as well as efforts to reduce the blood sugar-raising potential of wheat amylopectin A. Extensive work is also ongoing to generate new strains resistant to various pests, fungi and moulds by inserting genes encoding viral coat proteins, antifungal proteins and proteinase inhibitors.
Characteristic of the naive thinking of plant geneticists when considering the effects on humans who consume their products, much genetic research with wheat has focused on ways to disable the adverse health effects of gluten. In their way of thinking, breeding new strains of wheat that lack the 33 amino acid sequences most likely to stimulate the immune response of coeliac disease would yield a more benign form of wheat. The problem: All the other problem components of wheat remain, including wheat germ agglutinin, amylopectin A and alpha amylase inhibitors, not to mention the unanticipated effects of altered forms of gliadin, glutenin and gluten created by these genetics efforts never before consumed by humans.
With all that uncertainty, surely there will be extensive biochemical analyses, experimental animal assessments and human volunteer studies testing these products of genetic modification prior to introduction of such genetically and biochemically unique products . . . but probably not. Genetically modified wheat can be produced, marketed and sold in the supermarket, but there does not have to be any record of safe consumption in humans. After all, there hasn’t been any such effort for any genetically modified food before. And agribusiness has been spending tens of billions of dollars to lobby the federal government every year to oppose legislation that would only require that genetically modified food say so on the label.
Eat It . . . and Weep
Now that I’ve scared you silly with the science behind this crazy genetic monster called modern wheat, let’s now turn to understanding how this thing fiddles with your health.
What happens to us humans who, unadvised of the genetic changes introduced, consume this stuff every day?
And why do my joints ache, and my bowels rumble, and my feet swell, and my . . .?
Eat some jelly beans, and you get a blood sugar rise, grow some tummy fat and rot your teeth. Drink a carbonated soft drink, and you get a blood sugar rise, grow some tummy fat and rot your teeth. End of story.
But eat wheat, and you get a blood sugar rise, grow some tummy fat, rot your teeth – and experience increased appetite, addiction, acid reflux, bowel urgency, joint pain, leg swelling, migraine headaches, skin rashes, dandruff, moodiness, sleeplessness, depression, seizures, dementia and on and on. No other food is capable of such head-to-toe destruction of health – not jelly beans, not bag after bag of M&M’s, not soft drinks by the litre bottle, not high-fructose corn syrup. (I know of a few poisons that can do the same, however.)
We consume this genetically altered (notice that I did not say genetically modified, the imprecise and elusive terminology of those wily geneticists) form of wheat. You’ve been eating it, sharing it with friends and family, feeding it to your kids. You’ve been choosing multigrain over white because you were told it was a healthier choice. You’ve been loading up with bran cereal at breakfast to keep your colon working smoothly. And pasta? A low-fat staple at the dinner table.
The problem: Modern wheat is not the wheat of your mother’s day, nor is it the wheat of the 19th century. It is far removed from the wheat of the Bible and vastly different from the wheat that grew wild and was first consumed by hunter-gatherer humans.
So what happens to us modern humans who’ve been consuming this stuff, told by all ‘official’ sources of dietary advice to eat more ‘healthy whole grains’ that come from high-yield, semi-dwarf strains of wheat?
I’m afraid it’s not a short list. The list of effects – no, the catalogue of effects – that derive from consuming quantities of this modern creation of genetics research reads like a description of all the ills of modern life, hauntingly familiar in that it likely describes the people around you, perhaps even you.
Every wheat-consuming individual will not experience all of the effects discussed. You might experience, for instance, ‘only’ acid reflux and disrupted intestinal health, or ‘only’ appetite stimulation