William Davis's Blog: Dr. Davis Infinite Health Blog, page 153

Spicy Salsa Stuffed Avocado

Avocados fit perfectly into a Wheat Belly grain-free lifestyle

Here’s a way to have a delicious and filling avocado for lunch, stuffed with a salsa of tomato, onion, and fresh cilantro. To cart to the office, transport both a whole avocado and some of the pre-made salsa in an airtight container; halve and pit the avocado and spoon salsa over the avocado half just before eating.

Avocado Stuffed With Spicy Salsa   Print A delicious and filling avocado for lunch, stuffed with a salsa of tomato, onion, and fresh cilantro. Author: Dr. William Davis Serves: 8 Halves Ingredients 1 medium tomato, finely chopped (Roma works well) 1 poblano pepper, finely chopped ½ red onion, finely chopped ¼ teaspoon sea salt ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper 3 tablespoons fresh cilantro, finely chopped 1 lime 4 medium avocados, halved and pitted Instructions In medium sized bowl, combine tomato, pepper, onion, salt, pepper, and cilanto and mix. Spoon mixture into each avocado half. (Optionally, some of the pulp can be scooped out and used in the salsa.) Drizzle lime juice over each and serve. (For easy variations, add tuna, crab, or chopped baked chicken to the salsa; add chili powder; add crumbled feta cheese.) 3.2.1311

Eat Up & Enjoy!

The post Spicy Salsa Stuffed Avocado appeared first on Dr. William Davis.

Avocado Stuffed with Spicy Salsa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Avocados fit perfectly into a Wheat Belly grain-free lifestyle. Here’s a way to have a delicious and filling avocado for lunch, stuffed with a salsa of tomato, onion, and fresh cilantro. To cart to the office, transport both a whole avocado and some of the pre-made salsa in an airtight container; halve and pit the avocado and spoon salsa over the avocado half just before eating.

For easy variations, add tuna, crab, or chopped baked chicken to the salsa; add chili powder; add crumbled feta cheese.

Makes 8 halves

1 medium tomato, finely chopped (Roma works well)

1 poblano pepper, finely chopped

1/2 red onion, finely chopped

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

3 tablespoons fresh cilantro, finely chopped

1 lime

4 medium avocados, halved and pitted

In medium sized bowl, combine tomato, pepper, onion, salt, pepper, and cilanto and mix. Spoon mixture into each avocado half. (Optionally, some of the pulp can be scooped out and used in the salsa.) Drizzle lime juice over each and serve.

Eat Pooideae (A Problem For Hungry Humans)

Pooideae is a subfamily within the biological family of grasses, Poaceae. Grasses within the Pooideae subfamily include wheat, rye, barley, corn, and rice, as well as the rye grass and Kentucky bluegrass in your back yard and wild grasses in fields near your home.

Pooideae grasses can be promiscuous. Some of the grasses in this subfamily are able to cross-fertilize and mate with each other. This is how, for instance, einkorn wheat from 10,000 years ago evolved to create emmer wheat, the 28-chromosome of the Bible. Emmer is the product of the natural mating of 14-chromosome einkorn with a 14-chromosome wild grass, Aegilops speltoides, typically regarded as animal fodder for ruminants or as a weed. Wheat is a grass and it shares genes with other grasses. Eating the seeds of grasses means consuming products from many grasses.

Aegilops speltoides in Greece. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Attribution: Sten

I pick on wheat most of all for a variety of reasons:

Wheat is more promiscuous than other grasses. Because of this capacity to multiply its genetic content of chromosomes (“polyploidy”), the genetics of wheat is more complex than most other grasses. It means that there is greater variability from strain to strain, from year to year, within wheat. Because of this variability, it also has a wider range of effects in humans who consume it.
It enjoys such an exalted position in conventional nutritional advice. When we are advised to consume more “healthy whole grains,” rarely are they referring to teff or amaranth; they are referring mostly to wheat.
The manipulations of geneticists and agribusiness of the last 50 years have amplified the deleterious effects of wheat, such as alterations in the amino acid sequence of the gliadin protein that triggers celiac disease, opiate effects on the human brain, and initiates autoimmunity in the intestinal tract.

This does not mean, however, that if a seed of a grass — “grain” — is not wheat it must therefore be good. Other grains are, for the most part, less bad than wheat. Just because the zein protein of corn is less potent in triggering the sequence of events leading to celiac disease does not mean it is not without autoimmune consequences. Just because the wheat germ agglutinin of rice (though still called “wheat germ agglutinin” in rice, since the amino acid sequence is identical) is present in lesser quantities does not mean that it still does not exert adverse intestinal consequences as it does from wheat.

The seeds of Pooideae grasses have always been a problem for hungry humans. At first, they were eaten out of desperation; now they serve as the source of 50% of all calories: from desperation to commoditization.

Here is what Pulitzer prize-winning author, Jared Diamond, PhD, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, has to say about corn, the human domesticated brethren of teosinte and maize:

“Corn, first domesticated in Central America thousands of years ago, became the basis of intensive farming in those valleys around A.D. 1000. Until then, Indian hunter-gatherers had skeletons ‘so healthy it is somewhat discouraging to work with them,’ as one paleopathologist complained. With the arrival of corn, Indian skeletons sudden became interesting to study. The number of cavities in an average adult’s mouth jumped from fewer than one to nearly seven, and tooth loss and abscesses became rampant. Enamel defects in children’s milk teeth imply that pregnant and nursing mothers were severely undernourished. Anemia quadrupled in frequency; tuberculosis became established as an epidemic disease; half the population suffered from yaws or syphilis; and two-thirds suffered from osteoarthritis and other degenerative disease. Mortality rates at every age increased, with the result that only 1 percent of the population survived past age fifty, as compared to 5 percent in the golden days before corn. Almost one-fifth of the whole population died between the ages of one an four, probably because weaned toddlers succumbed to malnutrition and infectious diseases. Thus corn, usually considered among the New World’s blessings, actually proved to be a public-health disaster.”

Jared Diamond, PhD

The Third Chimpanzee

All grains are unhealthy for humans. It’s all a matter of degree.

The post Eat Pooideae (A Problem For Hungry Humans) appeared first on Dr. William Davis.

Eat Pooideae

Pooideae is a subfamily within the biological family of grasses, Poaceae. Grasses within the Pooideae subfamily include wheat, rye, barley, corn, and rice, as well as the rye grass and Kentucky bluegrass in your back yard and wild grasses in fields near your home.

Pooideae grasses can be promiscuous. Some of the grasses in this subfamily are able to cross-fertilize and mate with each other. This is how, for instance, einkorn wheat from 10,000 years ago evolved to create emmer wheat, the 28-chromosome of the Bible. Emmer is the product of the natural mating of 14-chromosome einkorn with a 14-chromosome wild grass, Aegilops speltoides, typically regarded as animal fodder for ruminants or as a weed. Wheat is a grass and it shares genes with other grasses. Eating the seeds of grasses means consuming products from many grasses.

Aegilops speltoides in Greece. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Attribution: Sten

I pick on wheat most of all for a variety of reasons:

–Wheat is more promiscuous than other grasses. Because of this capacity to multiply its genetic content of chromosomes (“polyploidy”), the genetics of wheat is more complex than most other grasses. It means that there is greater variability from strain to strain, from year to year, within wheat. Because of this variability, it also has a wider range of effects in humans who consume it.

–It enjoys such an exalted position in conventional nutritional advice. When we are advised to consume more “healthy whole grains,” rarely are they referring to teff or amaranth; they are referring mostly to wheat.

–The manipulations of geneticists and agribusiness of the last 50 years has amplified the deleterious effects of wheat, such as alterations in the amino acid sequence of the gliadin protein that triggers celiac disease, opiate effects on the human brain, and initiates autoimmunity in the intestinal tract.

This does not mean, however, that if a seed of a grass–”grain”–is not wheat it must therefore be good. Other grains are, for the most part, less bad than wheat. Just because the zein protein of corn is less potent in triggering the sequence of events leading to celiac disease does not mean it is not without autoimmune consequences. Just because the wheat germ agglutinin of rice (though still called “wheat germ agglutinin” in rice, since the amino acid sequence is identical) is present in lesser quantities does not mean that it still does not exert adverse intestinal consequences as it does from wheat.

The seeds of Pooideae grasses have always been a problem for hungry humans. At first, they were eaten out of desperation; now they serve as the source of 50% of all calories: from desperation to commoditization.

Here is what Pulitzer prize-winning author, Jared Diamond, PhD, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, has to say about corn, the human domesticated brethren of teosinte and maize:

“Corn, first domesticated in Central America thousands of years ago, became the basis of intensive farming in those valleys around A.D. 1000. Until then, Indian hunter-gatherers had skeletons ‘so healthy it is somewhat discouraging to work with them,’ as one paleopathologist complained. With the arrival of corn, Indian skeletons sudden became interesting to study. The number of cavities in an average adult’s mouth jumped from fewer than one to nearly seven, and tooth loss and abscesses became rampant. Enamel defects in children’s milk teeth imply that pregnant and nursing mothers were severely undernourished. Anemia quadrupled in frequency; tuberculosis became established as an epidemic disease; half the population suffered from yaws or syphilis; and two-thirds suffered from osteoarthritis and other degenerative disease. Mortality rates at every age increased, with the result that only 1 percent of the population survived past age fifty, as compared to 5 percent in the golden days before corn. Almost one-fifth of the whole population died between the ages of one an four, probably because weaned toddlers succumbed to malnutrition and infectious diseases. Thus corn, usually considered among the New World’s blessings, actually proved to be a public-health disaster.”

Jared Diamond, PhD

The Third Chimpanzee

All grains are unhealthy for humans. It’s all a matter of degree.

Wheat And Atrial Fibrillation? A Look At the Correlation

I have personally witnessed improvements in the duration and frequency of the common abnormal heart rhythm, atrial fibrillation, or A Fib, about a dozen times. (This discussion only applies to intermittent A Fib, not chronic, 24-hour-a-day A Fib; the latter condition does not appear to be influenced by diet, as it is a much more advanced situation.) Someone with, say, 4 or 5 10-minute long episodes per week, for instance, can experience a marked reduction in the frequency and duration of episodes, sometimes complete elimination.

Relief from A Fib is a truly wonderful thing because it spares you from the risk for stroke that develops from stagnation of blood that develops in the left atrium if the rhythm persists for more than a few hours — the fibrillating atria send out rapid (about 300 beats per minute) electrical signals, but they are essentially at a physical standstill. Strokes from A Fib are generally large, devastating strokes.

The drugs are also far from perfect and filled with side-effects. Metoprolol, for instance, to reduce episodes and slow the heart rate, increases risk for diabetes by 30% and blocks your ability to lose weight. The true anti-arrhythmic drugs for A Fib, such as sotalol, flecainide, disopyramide, Tikosyn, and amiodarone, are quite dangerous; they need to be initiated in the hospital while being monitored, as there are occasional fatal rhythm complications of their use (“pro arrhythmia”), not to mention long-term difficulties.

Here is Pearl’s story of fairly dramatic improvement in A Fib.

This does not prove that all people with intermittent A Fib will obtain relief. But I share this as a tantalizing possibility that it may be possible that, the longer you are wheat- and gluten-free, the lower your long-term potential for A Fib may be.

“I am 75 years old and have suffered atrial fibrillation since 2008, getting increasingly worse every year. Almost none of the recommended medications helped, and the ones that did I had to discontinue due to serious side-effects. I even underwent an ablation, but it didn’t help. This past November, my symptoms got so bad that my doctors recommended that I undergo an AV Node Ablation, which would make me entirely pacemaker dependent.

All the while, my daughter has been encouraging me to give up wheat and see if I saw any improvement. But I always answered “I hardly eat any wheat. Maybe a slice of bread a day.” But she encouraged me to try going 100% anyway, stating that a “renowned heart doctor had seen many improvements in his patients by eliminating wheat.”

So on Jan 1, 2014, I took the plunge and went entirely gluten-free, thinking “What’s to lose, maybe I’ll even lose some weight?”

On January 2nd, I had my standard pacemaker interrogation. It showed that, from October 3, 2013 through Jan 2, 2014 I had gone in and out of high-rate episodes [A Fib] 2,944 times in 3 months, at heart rates as high as 208 bpm, the longest lasting 03:50. I could feel most of these episodes over those 3 months, and they were extremely scary. I was breathless and had very little energy to do anything. I was very seriously considering having the surgery.

On Jan. 2, I told my heart doctor I went gluten-free. He replied “Now just what do you expect to accomplish by that?”

But, interestingly, it seemed it did me good almost immediately! From that day on, until my next pacemaker interrogation, I only felt 1, yes just 1 episode of A-fib! So I was convinced that eliminating wheat was helping, but I couldn’t know for certain until I had my next pacemaker interrogation, which I just had on May 1, 2014.

The interrogation on May 1 showed that, between Jan 2 and May 1, 2014, I had only 185 high-rate episodes in 4 months, verses the 2,944 episodes in the 3 months prior.

This is just amazing to me. The only change I made was going gluten-free. I am not scheduled to see my heart Dr. until August; it will be interesting to note his reaction.”

Why might wheat elimination yield a reduction in A Fib? As there are no formal explorations of this phenomenon, I can only speculate. Could it work through some reduction in inflammatory signals or reduction in glycation? Is it a consequence of blood-borne wheat germ agglutinin? Might gliadin-derived opiate peptides play a role?

I don’t know. Having spent a couple of years in A Fib research during my cardiovascular training fellowship many years ago, I cannot conceive of just how a change in electrical activity can be achieved by this lifestyle change.

Nonetheless, wheat- and gluten-elimination do indeed seem to exert some pretty darned substantial effects on A Fib, as Pearl’s experience suggests. And, as I often remind people, NOTHING is lost in trying!

The post Wheat And Atrial Fibrillation? A Look At the Correlation appeared first on Dr. William Davis.

Wheat and atrial fibrillation?

I have personally witnessed improvements in the duration and frequency of the common abnormal heart rhythm, atrial fibrillation, or A Fib, about a dozen times. (This discussion only applies to intermittent A Fib, not chronic, 24-hour-a-day A Fib; the latter condition does not appear to be influenced by diet, as it is a much more advanced situation.) Someone with, say, 4 or 5 10-minute long episodes per week, for instance, can experience a marked reduction in the frequency and duration of episodes, sometimes complete elimination.

Relief from A Fib is a truly wonderful thing because it spares you from the risk for stroke that develops from stagnation of blood that develops in the left atrium if the rhythm persists for more than a few hours–the fibrillating atria send out rapid (about 300 beats per minute) electrical signals, but they are essentially at a physical standstill. Strokes from A Fib are generally large, devastating strokes. The drugs are also far from perfect and filled with side-effects. Metoprolol, for instance, to reduce episodes and slow the heart rate, increases risk for diabetes by 30% and blocks your ability to lose weight. The true anti-arrhythmic drugs for A Fib, such as sotalol, flecainide, disopyramide, Tikosyn, and amiodarone, are quite dangerous; they need to be initiated in the hospital while being monitored, as there are occasional fatal rhythm complications of their use (“pro arrhythmia”), not to mention long-term difficulties.

Here is Pearl’s story of fairly dramatic improvement in A Fib. This does not prove that all people with intermittent A Fib will obtain relief. But I share this as a tantalizing possibility that it may be possible that, the longer you are wheat- and gluten-free, the lower your long-term potential for A Fib may be.

I am 75 years old and have suffered atrial fibrillation since 2008, getting increasingly worse every year. Almost none of the recommended medications helped, and the ones that did I had to discontinue due to serious side-effects. I even underwent an ablation, but it didn’t help. This past November, my symptoms got so bad that my doctors recommended that I undergo an AV Node Ablation, which would make me entirely pacemaker dependent.

All the while, my daughter has been encouraging me to give up wheat and see if I saw any improvement. But I always answered “I hardly eat any wheat. Maybe a slice of bread a day.” But she encouraged me to try going 100% anyway, stating that a “renowned heart doctor had seen many improvements in his patients by eliminating wheat.”

So on Jan 1, 2014, I took the plunge and went entirely gluten-free, thinking “What’s to lose, maybe I’ll even lose some weight?”

On January 2nd, I had my standard pacemaker interrogation. It showed that, from October 3, 2013 through Jan 2, 2014 I had gone in and out of high-rate episodes [A Fib] 2,944 times in 3 months, at heart rates as high as 208 bpm, the longest lasting 03:50. I could feel most of these episodes over those 3 months, and they were extremely scary. I was breathless and had very little energy to do anything. I was very seriously considering having the surgery.

On Jan. 2, I told my heart doctor I went gluten-free. He replied “Now just what do you expect to accomplish by that?”

But, interestingly, it seemed it did me good almost immediately! From that day on, until my next pacemaker interrogation, I only felt 1, yes just 1 episode of A-fib! So I was convinced that eliminating wheat was helping, but I couldn’t know for certain until I had my next pacemaker interrogation, which I just had on May 1, 2014.

The interrogation on May 1 showed that, between Jan 2 and May 1, 2014, I had only 185 high-rate episodes in 4 months, verses the 2,944 episodes in the 3 months prior.

This is just amazing to me. The only change I made was going gluten-free. I am not scheduled to see my heart Dr. until August; it will be interesting to note his reaction.

Why might wheat elimination yield a reduction in A Fib? As there are no formal explorations of this phenomenon, I can only speculate. Could it work through some reduction in inflammatory signals or reduction in glycation? Is it a consequence of blood-borne wheat germ agglutinin? Might gliadin-derived opiate peptides play a role? I don’t know. Having spent a couple of years in A Fib research during my cardiovascular training fellowship many years ago, I cannot conceive of just how a change in electrical activity can be achieved by this lifestyle change.

Nonetheless, wheat- and gluten-elimination do indeed seem to exert some pretty darned substantial effects on A Fib, as Pearl’s experience suggests. And, as I often remind people, NOTHING is lost in trying!

Bad Things Come in Small Packages, Trust Me

It’s 1961. Jack Kennedy has been inaugurated as President, the Cuban missile crisis dominates headlines, and Hostess cupcakes and Twinkies are the rage in school kid’s lunch boxes.

I was 4 years old, playing with toys on the floor while my mother ironed shirts, Divorce Court droning on the television, the scent of bread baking in the oven wafts through the living room.

Let’s try and recast this common domestic scene in 2014. Well, I might be surfing on my computer while my wife deals with the teenagers, Jay Pritchett from Modern Family lamenting Claire’s lack of business savvy on the TV in the background. New faces, new technology. But, beneath the surface, human life hasn’t changed all that much in 50 years. But if bread baking remained part of the picture, it would yield something different than the stuff our mothers used to make. The bread would look much the same with brown crust on the outside, the same alluring scent, the same texture, though ours might be a darker, heavier, fiber-rich variety than mom’s white flour product. But probe beneath the surface and you will find something entirely different than mom’s proud loaves.

How different?

In the late 1960s, a valiant agricultural breeding effort was launched in then Third World nation, Mexico, complete with noble intentions of feeding the world’s hungry. Dr. Norman Borlaug, an agricultural scientist with the moral commitment of a Minnesotan Lutheran and the work ethic of a Norwegian farmer, understood that grains, in particular, could be genetically manipulated into the service of providing calories for hungry humans.

Thousands of genetic experiments, mating different breeds of plants, coupling wheat with other grasses, and Borlaug’s prize creation resulted: high-yield, semidwarf wheat, a plant that required enormous quantities of nitrogen fertilizer to flourish, with fewer nutrients required to grow the short, 18-inch long stalk (unlike the 4-foot or longer traditional stalk) and more nutrients diverted to grow the unusually bulky seeds. But flourish it did, yielding more per acre than any wheat strain preceding it.

Introduced into India and Pakistan, and yield doubled within the first year. In Mexico, yield-per-acre quadrupled over the first few years after its introduction, yields climbing higher every year over the next 10 years in cultivation.

Borlaug, who vocally preached a better-life-through-science message, became the hero of Big Agribusiness, persuading governments and farmers that, though it looked different and had unique needs, this creation of genetics research could save the world by casting crop diversification aside in favor of vast monoculture fields of grains. Borlaug did have to repeatedly answer criticisms over the greater nitrogen requirements and herbicide and pesticide inputs, but he defended such practices as necessary evils in the quest to feed the world’s hungry.

Borlaug’s semi-dwarf wheat delivered on his promise of greater yields, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the World Health Organization estimating that as many as one billion people were saved from starvation by more readily available and inexpensive chapati, himbasha, Barbari and other breads, variant ethnic staples on the wheat product theme. Starvation was replaced by surplus in some regions of the world, earning Borlaug the Nobel Peace Prize for his creation.

Borlaug’s success whetted the appetite of agribusiness to continue the quest to “improve” on nature’s design. Demand for greater and greater yields, coupled with increased susceptibility to pests and diseases, paved the road to the methods of genetic modification, or gene splicing to insert specific genes, with promises of solving such issues with targeted genetically programmed features. The world of agriculture and nutrition has never been quite the same.

Though Dr. Borlaug’s efforts now seem primitive in light of new technologies that create, for instance, strains of corn that express their own pesticide (Bt toxin) and are resistant to herbicides such as glyphosate, his vision of a world surviving on agribusiness generated fare of high-yield grains, millions of tons deliverable wherever and whenever needed, has materialized. It has proven a catalyzing force in allowing continued human population growth. Indeed, world population of 3 billion people inhabiting the world in Borlaug’s time has now expanded to 7 billion in ours, U.N. projections of 10 billion by 2050, permitted in large part by the proliferation of high-yield monoculture grains to yield plentiful inexpensive calories. It is politically incorrect to talk about world overpopulation and so we talk about it as its proxies, such as overfishing and acidification of the world’s oceans, soil erosion and salinization, endocrine disruption via industrial chemicals in food and water, even global climate change.

Back to mom’s bread. Noble intentions or no, the stuff of modern wheat today not only looks different with it’s short knee-high stature, large seeds, and large seed head, but it is different.

If I mate a goldfish with a piranha, I will surely obtain an entire range of unique hybrids, some deformed, some viable, some docile, some deadly, given the unpredictability of such an unnatural convergence. The offspring of this peculiar theoretical mating would likely look different than either parent, behave differently than either parent, likely have genetic and biochemical idiosyncrasies of either, both, or neither parent. Such an experience, repeated over and over again, introducing the seed of other fish species, repetitive mating to select for specific characteristics, such as large carnivorous teeth or bright orange color, will, over time, yield something a genetically far cry from our original and naturally-selected two fish.

This is precisely what Borlaug and his successors have done, creating new breeds using methods that extend beyond the traditional farming methods of choosing, say, a tastier or hardier cucumber from the patch to save for next year’s seeds. While conducting such genetics manipulations may raise accusations of God-playing or unnatural engineering when animals, even fish, are involved, such responses are less likely when it comes to plants, including ones we eat. What might be the effects of such never-before-consumed-by-humans sorts of grains such as high-yield, semidwarf wheat?

Well, we certainly can’t ask agribusiness nor the geneticists who continue to tweak, mate, and genetically manipulate such things, as they adhere to the USDA’s loose policy of don’t ask, don’t tell: create a new strain using traditional techniques, or even using extreme and bizarre techniques—it makes no difference in the USDA’s book—sell it as the newest ciabatta at the supermarket tomorrow, no questions asked.

Such a laissez-faire policy is paralleled at the EPA, an agency that puts the burden of proof of the safety of industrial chemicals on the public, not on industry, allowing chemical and other manufacturers to introduce hundreds or thousands of new chemical creations every year without having to demonstrate safety first. As it goes at the EPA, so it also goes at the USDA.

In the cause of unrestrained free enterprise, we now have exposure to an impressive array of industrial compounds in drinking water, produce, livestock, toiletries, cosmetics, even baby formula, just as we have exposure to unique components of newly created grains with allergenic, immunogenic, digestive, and neurological effects, all occupying the widest part of the USDA MyPyramid, largest segment of MyPlate.

Yes, Dr. Borlaug deservedly received the title of Father of the Green Revolution, a revolution from which we may never recover.

The post Bad Things Come in Small Packages, Trust Me appeared first on Dr. William Davis.

Bad things come in small packages

It’s 1961. Jack Kennedy has been inaugurated as President, the Cuban missile crisis dominates headlines, and Hostess cupcakes and Twinkies are the rage in school kid’s lunch boxes.

I was 4 years old, playing with toys on the floor while my mother ironed shirts, Divorce Court droning on the television, the scent of bread baking in the oven wafts through the living room.

Let’s try and recast this common domestic scene in 2014. Well, I might be surfing on my computer while my wife deals with the teenagers, Jay Pritchett from Modern Family lamenting Claire’s lack of business savvy on the TV in the background. New faces, new technology. But, beneath the surface, human life hasn’t changed all that much in 50 years. But if bread baking remained part of the picture, it would yield something different than the stuff our mothers used to make. The bread would look much the same with brown crust on the outside, the same alluring scent, the same texture, though ours might be a darker, heavier, fiber-rich variety than mom’s white flour product. But probe beneath the surface and you will find something entirely different than mom’s proud loaves.

How different?

In the late 1960s, a valiant agricultural breeding effort was launched in then Third World nation, Mexico, complete with noble intentions of feeding the world’s hungry. Dr. Norman Borlaug, an agricultural scientist with the moral commitment of a Minnesotan Lutheran and the work ethic of a Norwegian farmer, understood that grains, in particular, could be genetically manipulated into the service of providing calories for hungry humans. Thousands of genetic experiments, mating different breeds of plants, coupling wheat with other grasses, and Borlaug’s prize creation resulted: high-yield, semidwarf wheat, a plant that required enormous quantities of nitrogen fertilizer to flourish, with fewer nutrients required to grow the short, 18-inch long stalk (unlike the 4-foot or longer traditional stalk) and more nutrients diverted to grow the unusually bulky seeds. But flourish it did, yielding more per acre than any wheat strain preceding it.

Introduced into India and Pakistan, and yield doubled within the first year. In Mexico, yield-per-acre quadrupled over the first few years after its introduction, yields climbing higher every year over the next 10 years in cultivation. Borlaug, who vocally preached a better-life-through-science message, became the hero of Big Agribusiness, persuading governments and farmers that, though it looked different and had unique needs, this creation of genetics research could save the world by casting crop diversification aside in favor of vast monoculture fields of grains. Borlaug did have to repeatedly answer criticisms over the greater nitrogen requirements and herbicide and pesticide inputs, but he defended such practices as necessary evils in the quest to feed the world’s hungry.

Borlaug’s semi-dwarf wheat delivered on his promise of greater yields, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the World Health Organization estimating that as many as one billion people were saved from starvation by more readily available and inexpensive chapati, himbasha, Barbari and other breads, variant ethnic staples on the wheat product theme. Starvation was replaced by surplus in some regions of the world, earning Borlaug the Nobel Peace Prize for his creation.

Borlaug’s success whetted the appetite of agribusiness to continue the quest to “improve” on nature’s design. Demand for greater and greater yields, coupled with increased susceptibility to pests and diseases, paved the road to the methods of genetic modification, or gene splicing to insert specific genes, with promises of solving such issues with targeted genetically programmed features. The world of agriculture and nutrition has never been quite the same.

Though Dr. Borlaug’s efforts now seem primitive in light of new technologies that create, for instance, strains of corn that express their own pesticide (Bt toxin) and are resistant to herbicides such as glyphosate, his vision of a world surviving on agribusiness generated fare of high-yield grains, millions of tons deliverable wherever and whenever needed, has materialized. It has proven a catalyzing force in allowing continued human population growth. Indeed, world population of 3 billion people inhabiting the world in Borlaug’s time has now expanded to 7 billion in ours, U.N. projections of 10 billion by 2050, permitted in large part by the proliferation of high-yield monoculture grains to yield plentiful inexpensive calories. It is politically incorrect to talk about world overpopulation and so we talk about it as its proxies, such as overfishing and acidification of the world’s oceans, soil erosion and salinization, endocrine disruption via industrial chemicals in food and water, even global climate change.

Back to mom’s bread. Noble intentions or no, the stuff of modern wheat today not only looks different with it’s short knee-high stature, large seeds, and large seed head, but it is different. If I mate a goldfish with a piranha, I will surely obtain an entire range of unique hybrids, some deformed, some viable, some docile, some deadly, given the unpredictability of such an unnatural convergence. The offspring of this peculiar theoretical mating would likely look different than either parent, behave differently than either parent, likely have genetic and biochemical idiosyncrasies of either, both, or neither parent. Such an experience, repeated over and over again, introducing the seed of other fish species, repetitive mating to select for specific characteristics, such as large carnivorous teeth or bright orange color, will, over time, yield something a genetically far cry from our original and naturally-selected two fish.

This is precisely what Borlaug and his successors have done, creating new breeds using methods that extend beyond the traditional farming methods of choosing, say, a tastier or hardier cucumber from the patch to save for next year’s seeds. While conducting such genetics manipulations may raise accusations of God-playing or unnatural engineering when animals, even fish, are involved, such responses are less likely when it comes to plants, including ones we eat. What might be the effects of such never-before-consumed-by-humans sorts of grains such as high-yield, semidwarf wheat? Well, we certainly can’t ask agribusiness nor the geneticists who continue to tweak, mate, and genetically manipulate such things, as they adhere to the USDA’s loose policy of don’t ask, don’t tell: create a new strain using traditional techniques, or even using extreme and bizarre techniques—it makes no difference in the USDA’s book—sell it as the newest ciabatta at the supermarket tomorrow, no questions asked. Such a laissez-faire policy is paralleled at the EPA, an agency that puts the burden of proof of the safety of industrial chemicals on the public, not on industry, allowing chemical and other manufacturers to introduce hundreds or thousands of new chemical creations every year without having to demonstrate safety first. As it goes at the EPA, so it also goes at the USDA. In the cause of unrestrained free enterprise, we now have exposure to an impressive array of industrial compounds in drinking water, produce, livestock, toiletries, cosmetics, even baby formula, just as we have exposure to unique components of newly created grains with allergenic, immunogenic, digestive, and neurological effects, all occupying the widest part of the USDA MyPyramid, largest segment of MyPlate.

Yes, Dr. Borlaug deservedly received the title of Father of the Green Revolution, a revolution from which we may never recover.

Deglutenize Your Brain

A recent study from Monash University in Australia has the media declaring that gluten is good for everybody, harmful only to those with celiac disease.

Is this true? Has gluten from wheat, rye, and barley been exonerated? Should we go back to the supermarket and resume buying bread, rolls, bagels, and pasta?

In this small study, 37 people with presumed “non-celiac gluten sensitivity,” NCGS, or celiac disease-like symptoms in the absence of the intestinal destruction or antibody abnormalities (e.g., transglutaminase antibodies), demonstrated no unique response to purified gluten protein. The investigators, followed by various hand clapping media, declared that NCGS was non-existent, a placebo effect and that gluten avoidance was therefore of no benefit.

Oh, boy. Remember my low-tar cigarette analogy? Because tar in cigarettes, the brown residue left over after burning tobacco, has been associated with cancers, cigarette manufacturers developed both filters and low-tar varieties of cigarettes. Well, by George, if tar is removed, this must mean that cigarettes are now healthy to smoke!

This is absurd, of course.

Reducing or removing tar has virtually no effect on the carcinogenicity or heart disease causing potential of smoking. Remove tar, but mercury, cadmium, arsenic, formaldehyde and a multitude of other harmful compounds remain.

Likewise, wheat is far more than just the gluten protein. Among the most important of the tens of thousands of other components in wheat:

Phytates–that disrupt digestion and block iron and zinc absorption by 90%. Grain consuming societies thereby experience excess iron deficiency anemia, along with impaired immunity, skin rashes, and other health effects from zinc deficiency. No gluten is required for these effects.
Lectins–Wheat germ agglutinin, the lectin of wheat, rye, barley, and rice, is indigestible. It is thereby free to exert disruptive effects in the gastrointesinal tract and gain access to the bloodstream, where it yields potent inflammatory effects. It also underlies bile stasis and gallstone formation and blocks pancreatic enzyme release. No gluten is required for these effects.
D-amino acids–Mammals, Homo sapiens included, have the digestive apparatus to break proteins down into L-amino acids, the “left-handed” versions. But many amino acids in grains are the mirror image D-versions, the “right-handed” versions. This means that proteins with grain-sourced D-amino acids yield a “stop” signal to digestive enzymes, causing incomplete protein digestion. Undigested protein fragments are toxic to intestinal tissue and exert other adverse effects, such as dysbiosis. The full impact of this peculiar clash between incompatible species-–non-ruminant humans and the seeds of grasses — are just starting to be appreciated. No gluten is required for these effects.
Amylopectin A–The carbohydrate of grains that is responsible for its extravagant potential to raise blood sugar, explaining why 2 slices of whole wheat bread raise blood sugar higher than 6 teaspoons of table sugar. No gluten is required for this effect.
Allergens–Modern wheat, essentially created in a laboratory, possesses an array of proteins that are changed from that in traditional wheat: alpha amylase inhibitors, trypsin inhibitors, serpins, thioreductases, etc. The altered sequence of amino acids in these proteins are responsible for allergic reactions such as asthma, eczema and other skin rashes, and gastrointestinal distress. No gluten is required.

That’s only a sampling — there’s more.

In other words, wheat and related grains are still quite terrible for health, with or without gluten.

Viewing wheat as nothing more than a vehicle for gluten is hazardous. Conducting a small study in which purified gluten is administered but elicits abdominal distress no different than whey or placebo possibly tells us that this group of 37 people do not have a specific intolerance to gluten–period. It does not exonerate wheat, any more than any apparent reduction in adverse health effects of smoking filtered, low-tar cigarettes exonerates smoking.

Let’s not also forget that there is more to the effects of the gliadin protein within gluten than gastrointestinal distress, such as appetite stimulation via exorphin opiate effects on the brain, mind “fog,” impaired learning and attention in children, anxiety, paranoia and hallucinations in people with schizophrenia, mania in bipolar illness, and food obsessions in people with binge eating disorder and bulimia. By the way, the same Monash University group recently demonstrated that purified gluten, but not whey protein, induced depressive symptoms in people with NCGS.

A breath of fresh air was provided in an editorial to the Monash study entitled Non-celiac wheat sensitivity is a more appropriate label than non-celiac gluten sensitivity highlighting the fact that wheat is a whole lot more than just gluten.

Unfortunately, gluten-on-the-brain has even caused otherwise intelligent people like Michael Pollan to put the bagel in his mouth with awful statements such as the one he made in this interview, calling the gluten-free movement “a social contagion.”

Yes: Some people have problems with gluten. But EVERYBODY has problems with wheat.

The healthcare system, nutritionists, dietitians, physicians, and the media need to get deglutenized: get rid of the notion that the only problem with modern wheat is gluten. It ain’t so.

The post Deglutenize Your Brain appeared first on Dr. William Davis.

Deglutenize your brain

A recent study from Monash University in Australia has the media declaring that gluten is good for everybody, harmful only to those with celiac disease.

 

Is this true? Has gluten from wheat, rye, and barley been exonerated? Should we go back to the supermarket and resume buying bread, rolls, bagels, and pasta?

In this small study, 37 people with presumed “non-celiac gluten sensitivity,” NCGS, or celiac disease-like symptoms in the absence of the intestinal destruction or antibody abnormalities (e.g., transglutaminase antibodies), demonstrated no unique response to purified gluten protein. The investigators, followed by various hand clapping media, declared that NCGS was non-existent, a placebo effect and that gluten avoidance was therefore of no benefit.

Oh, boy. Remember my low-tar cigarette analogy? Because tar in cigarettes, the brown residue left over after burning tobacco, has been associated with cancers, cigarette manufacturers developed both filters and low-tar varieties of cigarettes. Well, by George, if tar is removed, this must mean that cigarettes are now healthy to smoke!

This is absurd, of course. Reducing or removing tar has virtually no effect on the carcinogenicity or heart disease causing potential of smoking. Remove tar, but mercury, cadmium, arsenic, formaldehyde and a multitude of other harmful compounds remain.

Likewise, wheat is far more than just the gluten protein. Among the most important of the tens of thousands of other components in wheat:

Phytates–that disrupt digestion and block iron and zinc absorption by 90%. Grain consuming societies thereby experience excess iron deficiency anemia, along with impaired immunity, skin rashes, and other health effects from zinc deficiency. No gluten is required for these effects.

Lectins–Wheat germ agglutinin, the lectin of wheat, rye, barley, and rice, is indigestible. It is thereby free to exert disruptive effects in the gastrointesinal tract and gain access to the bloodstream, where it yields potent inflammatory effects. It also underlies bile stasis and gallstone formation and blocks pancreatic enzyme release. No gluten is required for these effects.

D-amino acids–Mammals, Homo sapiens included, have the digestive apparatus to break proteins down into L-amino acids, the “left-handed” versions. But many amino acids in grains are the mirror image D-versions, the “right-handed” versions. This means that proteins with grain-sourced D-amino acids yield a “stop” signal to digestive enzymes, causing incomplete protein digestion. Undigested protein fragments are toxic to intestinal tissue and exert other adverse effects, such as dysbiosis. The full impact of this peculiar clash between incompatible species-–non-ruminant humans and the seeds of grasses–-are just starting to be appreciated. No gluten is required for these effects.

Amylopectin A–The carbohydrate of grains that is responsible for its extravagant potential to raise blood sugar, explaining why 2 slices of whole wheat bread raise blood sugar higher than 6 teaspoons of table sugar. No gluten is required for this effect.

Allergens–Modern wheat, essentially created in a laboratory, possesses an array of proteins that are changed from that in traditional wheat: alpha amylase inhibitors, trypsin inhibitors, serpins, thioreductases, etc. The altered sequence of amino acids in these proteins are responsible for allergic reactions such as asthma, eczema and other skin rashes, and gastrointestinal distress. No gluten is required.

That’s a sampling–there’s more. In other words, wheat and related grains are still quite terrible for health, with or without gluten. Viewing wheat as nothing more than a vehicle for gluten is hazardous. Conducting a small study in which purified gluten is administered but elicits abdominal distress no different than whey or placebo possibly tells us that this group of 37 people do not have a specific intolerance to gluten–period. It does not exonerate wheat, any more than any apparent reduction in adverse health effects of smoking filtered, low-tar cigarettes exonerates smoking.

Let’s not also forget that there is more to the effects of the gliadin protein within gluten than gastrointestinal distress, such as appetite stimulation via exorphin opiate effects on the brain, mind “fog,” impaired learning and attention in children, anxiety, paranoia and hallucinations in people with schizophrenia, mania in bipolar illness, and food obsessions in people with binge eating disorder and bulimia. By the way, the same Monash University group recently demonstrated that purified gluten, but not whey protein, induced depressive symptoms in people with NCGS.

A breath of fresh air was provided in an editorial to the Monash study entitled Non-celiac wheat sensitivity is a more appropriate label than non-celiac gluten sensitivity highlighting the fact that wheat is a whole lot more than just gluten.

Unfortunately, gluten-on-the-brain has even caused otherwise intelligent people like Michael Pollan to put the bagel in his mouth with awful statements such as the one he made in this interview, calling the gluten-free movement “a social contagion.”

Yes: Some people have problems with gluten. But EVERYBODY has problems with wheat. The healthcare system, nutritionists, dietitians, physicians, and the media need to get deglutenized: get rid of the notion that the only problem with modern wheat is gluten. It ain’t so.