William Davis's Blog: Dr. Davis Infinite Health Blog, page 69

Mrs. Sprat got it right

(Image by Frederick Richardson via Wikimedia Commons.)

Jack Sprat could eat no fat.

His wife could eat no lean.

And so between the two of them,

They licked the platter clean.

If Jack Sprat could eat no fat . . . well, he’s going to be one sick, hungry guy. Fats, unlike carbohydrates, are essential, as necessary as water or oxygen.

If we are, at the core, hunting carnivorous creatures, a product of our unique evolutionary past, it’s easy to recognize that consuming the fat of animals is also part of our natural physiology. You and your hungry clan spear a wild boar, but no one declares “Just cut off a piece of lean meat for me and throw the fat, brain, and liver away.” Humans consumed everything from snout to tail, all but the squeal, and fat was savored.

Yet we’ve been told over the last 50 years that fats, especially animal fats, are the worst for health. Conventional wisdom tells us that fat, particularly the saturated fat of animal flesh and organs, makes us fat, causes diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. While grain consumption was a mistake we made 10,000 years ago, limiting fat consumption was a mistake we made starting 50 years ago, a manmade blunder based on misinterpretation, misrepresentation, the leanings of dietary zealots, and politics. The evidence used to advance the low-fat message was incomplete, epidemiological (which should almost never be used to generate firm conclusions, only hypotheses), and riddled with methodological flaws, none of which stopped overenthusiastic dietary fanatics sold on the low-fat message in the 1970s and 1980s. Such fanatical leanings reached the ear of Senator George McGovern, Chair of the Committee on Nutrition in America, who decided that all Americans should engage in a low-fat lifestyle. (The drama of this entire tragic episode has been recounted in meticulous detail by journalists Gary Taubes in Good Calories, Bad Calories and Nina Teicholz in The Big Fat Surprise, both “must” reading if you wish to understand the history of how this awful situation got so awful. The documentary film, Fat Head by independent filmmaker Tom Naughton, genius for educating while entertaining, provides a lighter version of the history, as well.) The McGovern committee pushed through legislation, written by a staff member with no background in health or nutrition, that charged the USDA, an agency whose mission had been to support the agriculture industry and monitor food safety, to lead the charge in providing dietary advice to the public. This created an odd collision of responsibilities: regulate an industry while also promoting consumption of the industry’s products.

Despite resistance from the scientific community over the potential hazards of government-driven dietary advice, the USDA proceeded to fulfill its charge. In addition to adhering to McGovern’s pet agenda of limiting fat consumption, the grain and processed food lobby were allowed to weigh in on the details of the USDA’s official stand, doubling grain intake over that recommended by USDA nutritionists.

The low-fat movement gained further momentum when the processed food industry recognized what a financial bonanza had been thrown into their laps, paving the way to create thousands of foods to suit the reduction in fat created by government advice. Revenue growth at Kraft, General Mills, and companies represented by the Corn Refiners’ Association leapt to double-digit annual rates as they introduced low-fat cookies, low-fat yogurt, margarines made with corn, soybean, and other processed oils—-you’d better believe it’s not butter. It made the 1980s and 1990s an era of unprecedented growth in Big Food. Low-fat products proliferated, even gaining health endorsements from the FDA, the American Heart Association, and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. It meant that products that contained liberal quantities of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup but low in fat could acquire the appearance of health with, for example, the American Heart Association (AHA) “heart healthy” Heart CheckMark endorsement affixed to Berry Kix, Count Chocula, and Cocoa Puffs breakfast cereals—for a fee, of course.

Any trip to a neighborhood mall or supermarket will quickly reveal the consequences of 50 years of misguided dietary advice, compounded by food manufacturers: the worst epidemic of overweight and obesity ever witnessed in the history of the world. The world of Big Food was built on the bellies—and lives—of Americans, now a contagion shared by increasing numbers in the rest of the developed world.

Government advice, industry profiteering, coupled with human frailty in its innate love of anything sugary, all combined to create epidemics of disease that go beyond weight gain with conditions such as diabetes (both type 1 and 2), autoimmune diseases, joint deterioration, and dementia. Incredibly, even while the USDA and other agencies continue to promote the low-fat, plenty-of-grains message and food companies continue to sell tens of thousands of low-fat products, the science has become clear: there are no clinical trials demonstrating that limiting fat or saturated fat provides any health benefits nor reduces cardiovascular risk (Hession 2009; Siri-Tarino 2010). Likewise, red meat consumption has no relationship to cardiovascular risk if the effects of cured processed meats (salami, sausage, lunch meats, hot dogs) are factored out (Micha 2010). Recent pronouncements that red meat is a “carcinogen”? Yet another unfounded conclusion suggested by epidemiological observations, but far from conclusive, much as horse estrogens were believed to promote female health.

And, as this experiment in cutting fat and increasing grains and carbohydrates has played out on a worldwide stage, the data revealing how destructive this advice has been are now overwhelming. But, as in many things in healthcare, this scientific revelation has not yet graced the ears of John Q. Primary Care, who still manages to obtain most of his ongoing medical education from the drug industry. Even in the face of societal and scientific evidence that contradicts the low-fat message, most of the medical community still sends their patients to the dietitian, i.e., the dietary professional whose “education” was largely subsidized with support from Big Food, for counseling on cutting fat and eating more “healthy whole grains”—you know, a “balanced” diet, all in “moderation.”

This dietary pyramid has begun to crumble. After decades of dietary misinformation, the latest 2015 Dietary Guidelines concede that restricting total fat and cholesterol is not beneficial, thereby removing that woefully outdated and destructive advice, though the saturated fat limitation remains in guidelines (Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2015). The number of servings of grains recommended every day were also reduced from the 6-11 servings per day to 6 servings per day. (Such a slow and step-wise backpedaling on previous bad advice, by the way, is how you manage damage control and avoid the liability that could result. Imagine all guilty agencies admitted that, not only did their dietary advice not work to provide health or reduce cardiovascular risk, but contributed to the nationwide epidemics of obesity and diabetes? Liability, loss of credibility, and loss of revenues would be huge.) How much faith can you put, however, in advice that has been flawed for so long, having made substantial contributions to the deteriorating health of the public? Should we suddenly accept that they were wrong on such a colossal scale, only now to have finally gotten it right? I think you’d have to be nuts, or at least incredibly naive, to believe anything they say.

Beyond exposing the political shenanigans and unscientific manipulations of a nutritional message, my litmus test for considering whether a nutritional strategy makes sense is to ask: How have humans approached this aspect of diet over eons of adaptation to life on this planet? If humans have been doing it ever since we abandoned life in the trees, then it is highly likely that we are well adapted to this aspect of lifestyle. If it was added only recently and, even worse, because a few authorities said so, then we need to question that advice, with intolerance to a new strategy potentially showing as various disease conditions.

With animal fats, the answer is obvious: hungry, desperate humans would enthusiastically eat the entire kill of a hunt and not waste a moment being concerned about fat intake. The fats we know that humans are adapted to consuming are therefore the components of animal fat: monounsaturates, saturates, and some polyunsaturates such as linolenic acid. Throw in the added fats and oils from nuts, seeds (non-grass), shellfish and fish, and modest quantities of linoleic acid from vegetables and fruits. Natural fats and oils do not include fats created by modern humans such as hydrogenated (“trans”) fats. They also do not include replacing monounsaturates and saturates with large quantities of polyunsaturates from corn, or oils that require extreme processing that alter fatty acid structure such as canola (O’Keefe 1994).

Fats are satiating. They provide a feeling of long-lasting freedom from hunger. Inadequate fat intake is a common reason for people just starting out on the Wheat Belly lifestyle to complain of hunger, since many people struggle to get beyond deeply-ingrained fat phobia. Well, get over it. And I mean that quite seriously. Don’t buy lean cuts of meat; buy fatty cuts. If you eat a steak, eat the fat. Pork? Eat the fat. With poultry, eat the dark meat and skin. Have liver, liver sausage (uncured), and other organ meats. (Consider choosing organs and meats from sources that employ humane practices, don’t rely on antibiotics or hormones, and allow their animals to graze freely rather than penned in large factory farms.) Choose healthy oils such as coconut, olive oil, avocado, and, should you choose to consume dairy products, organic butter or ghee.

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“Rice” Pudding

Every once in a while, I missing having some rice pudding.

Even though rice does not contain a damaging prolamin protein like the gliadin protein in wheat or the zein in corn, it still contains a mixture of unhealthy components. Wheat germ agglutinin, for instance, the very same protein in wheat, is also in rice, ready to exert its gastrointestinal toxic effects such as direct inflammatory injury to the intestinal lining, blocking the hormone cholecystokinin and thereby causing bile stasis that leads to gallstones, and blocking release of pancreatic enzymes and thereby disrupting the process of normal digestion. Rice also contains an amylopectin carbohydrate that sends blood sugar and insulin sky-high. One cup of cooked rice contains 44 grams of net carbs, more than enough to send your blood sugar skyward. And then there’s the arsenic issue that is proving to be worse than everyone feared.

Nonetheless, I miss a bowl of warm rice pudding swimming in cream or whipped cream. So I thought I’d give it a try with riced cauliflower that shares none of the problems of rice. I found the flavor profile a bit different but, because the cauliflower tends to take on the flavors of the ingredients, such as cinnamon and nutmeg, it still yields those familiar flavors. To save time and effort, I started with Trader Joe’s pre-riced cauliflower. You can, of course, do it yourself and pulse the cauliflower in a food processor or chopper.

Recipes for rice pudding typically use either a saucepan/stovetop method or an oven method. I found that a combination of the two yielded a better result with the cauliflower, though added a bit more work. Serve pudding topped with heavy cream, whipped cream, or “as is.” If kids are in the vicinity, you can sprinkle a few raisins over the top, but just go lightly—at 110 grams net carbs per cup or 7 net carbs per tablespoon, the raisins pile up the sugar exposure pretty quickly. Without raisins, the entire recipe yields 16 grams net carbs, or less than 3 grams net carbs per serving.

Makes 6 servings

1 13.5-ounce can coconut milk

16 ounces riced cauliflower

2 tablespoons Virtue Sweetener or other sweetener equivalent to 1/2 cup sugar (or to taste)

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon (additional for sprinkling on top, if desired)

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Dash sea salt

2 eggs

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

In a medium oven-safe saucepan over high heat, bring coconut milk to a boil. Stir in cauliflower and turn heat down to medium. Cook for approximately 10 minutes or until cauliflower softened.

Stir in sweetener, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Taste for sweetness and adjust, if necessary. Remove from heat and allow to cool for 5 minutes.

In small bowl, whisk eggs, then add to cauliflower mixture and mix thoroughly. Sprinkle with additional cinnamon over top, if desired.

Transfer saucepan to oven and bake for 30 minutes.

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Pickles like pickles are supposed to be

In the Wheat Belly (and now Undoctored) lifestyles, we include plentiful quantities of fermented foods such as fermented vegetables, kimchi, kombucha, yogurts, and kefirs. This is part of our effort to “seed” and maintain our colons with the various Lactobacillus, Bifidobacteria, Leuconostoc and other bacterial species, as well as fungal species such as Saccharomyces (kefir, kombucha). This is one of the strategies we follow to reverse the harm done to our bowel health and flora by grains, sugars, and other modern intestinal insults.

While lactate fermentation is really a very simple process to accomplish in your kitchen, it is still nice to be able to purchase some fermented foods for convenience. While I ferment tons of yogurt (to specifically cultivate L. reuteri, for instance, for oxytocin augmentation that thereby yields extravagant skin, bone, and hormonal health), I also purchase some fermented products.

The majority of pickles sold in supermarkets, including most other Kosher pickles, are not fermented, but simply pickled in brine and vinegar. They are therefore essentially sterile and provide no Lactobacillus or other healthy probiotic organisms.

Bubbie’s lactate-fermented Kosher dill pickles are therefore worth knowing about. Bubbie’s pickles are fermented. You can see immediately that the brine is thick and murky, representing the dense probiotic organisms floating around. Here is a jar after agitating, sitting in my kitchen window:

In addition to the organisms, they are fermented with their (secret and proprietary) mix of herbs and spices that yields a very tasty end-product. You will pay a premium (I paid $6.99 for a jar, compared to non-fermented brands that typically run about a third of this price), but the convenience and taste are worth it.

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“I have a wheat intolerance”

I hear this comment with some regularity when, for instance, someone recognizes me as the author of the Wheat Belly series. This is a step in the right direction.

But saying that you have a wheat intolerance is like saying “I have a tobacco intolerance.” The impact of tobacco smoking on health ranges from mild impairment, to incapacitating diseases such as chronic lung disease and abdominal aortic aneurysms, to death. A rare person escapes the ravages of years of smoking, but most people develop at least one, if not half-a-dozen, health problems from cigarettes.

And so it goes with wheat: It’s a rare person who escapes its effects. But many people don’t recognize health problems caused by wheat consumption and think, for example, that their acid reflux, fibromyalgia, type 2 diabetes, lupus, or Barrett’s esophagitis are just a combination of bad luck and bad genes. Likewise, many people don’t realize that cataracts, plantar fasciitis, eczema, toe fungus, gallstones, and fatty liver are largely a result of the bagel or bran breakfast cereal you have every morning, the pasta salad for lunch, or rolls with dinner.  In other words, thinking that intolerance to wheat and related grains only shows up as celiac disease or gluten sensitivity is like believing that, if you don’t have an aneurysm in your abdominal aorta, then you must therefore be healthy despite smoking two packs a day.

There are also many silent processes that you are unaware of that develop with wheat and grain consumption. These silent processes can eventually catch up to you in the form of a heart attack, an autoimmune condition, dementia or other disease that develop over decades. Among the silent processes that develop with each pretzel, sandwich, or wrap you eat are:

Intestinal leakiness–The gliadin protein of wheat and related grains has been shown to initiate the process of intestinal leak, i.e., a physical separation of the intercellular barrier (“tight junctions”) between intestinal cells that allows various substances to enter the bloodstream, such as the lipopolysaccharide of dead microbes, or microscopic fragments of food. This leads to inflammation and autoimmune diseases. Recall that inflammation alone underlies numerous diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s dementia.
Provocation of small LDL particles–One sandwich on Monday provokes formation of small, oxidation-prone LDL particles that are not cleared from the bloodstream until Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. In other words, small LDL particles are unusually persistent in the bloodstream and add cumulatively to development of atherosclerotic plaque in the heart’s coronary arteries, the carotid arteries and small vessels to the brain, and other arteries. Large LDL particles, on the other hand, provoked by fat consumption, last only 24 hours. This is why, if you quantify total and small LDL particles via advanced lipoprotein analysis, not crude, outdated, and generally useless cholesterol testing, you see profound reductions with wheat/grain elimination and carb limitation, results that far exceed that achieved with silly statin drugs.
Liver de novo lipogenesis–Eating wheat, grains, and sugars cause the liver to convert the carbohydrates/sugars to triglycerides. Some triglycerides are released into the bloodstream (explaining why grain-consuming people have high triglycerides), others accumulate in the liver and lead to fatty liver, the condition that can precede cirrhosis. Both phenomena occur without reaching conscious awareness.
Postprandial lipoprotein distortions—It’s a mouthful, but all this means is that wheat/grain consumption, via the amylopectin A carbohydrate, caused prolonged and sustained after-meal (postprandial) digestive byproducts (especially VLDL particles) to persist. It is not uncommon, for example, for Wednesday’s waffles or pancakes to be measurable in the bloodstream on Friday (as high triglycerides and VLDL particles). This is a powerful cause for heart disease, stroke, and insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.

That’s just a sample—there are many more silent effects of wheat and grain consumption that brew beneath the surface. I hope you can therefore see the dangers of thinking that some people are intolerant of wheat and grains, while others can consume them willy-nilly without ill-effect. Eat wheat and grains and it will catch up with you in some form at some time, even if it tastes good going down.

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Maybe it’s time to check your ketone level

Achieving ketosis is not required for most people to succeed on the Wheat Belly lifestyle. However, this can be an important issue to know about. Achieving ketosis is not just a means of accelerating weight loss, but also of enhancing mental and physical performance. You’ll experience this yourself, with heightened mental clarity, energy, and endurance in a ketotic state.

The grain-free lifestyle eliminates junk carbohydrates from the diet. Some individuals find their weight loss efforts seem to plateau after some time on this diet. The occasional person will need to go the full low-carb mile and require a ketogenic state to achieve weight loss.

To achieve a ketogenic state, virtually all carbohydrates will have to be eliminated in order to metabolize fats. An effective ketogenic diet is composed of near-zero (less than 20g net carbohydrates per day) intake of carbohydrates. This is combined with a higher than usual fat intake to quell hunger and divert the metabolism toward mobilization of body fat.

You can detect ketosis by the fruity odor on the breath. This being said, there are more accurate ways to confirm a ketogenic state.

Urine can be tested using a dipstick for ketones, such as Ketostix. However, these can only detect ketones in the higher range, as are experienced by type 1 diabetics during diabetic ketoacidosis, a life-threatening state. Urine monitoring is therefore less sensitive for identifying the subtler levels of ketosis experienced physiologically, which makes urine testing inadequate for weight-loss purposes.

The most assured and precise method to assess blood levels of ketones is with a finger stick, just like checking blood sugar. The only difference is in the timing. Unlike the after-meal checks for blood sugar, ketone checks can be performed at any time.

To maintain a ketogenic state to accelerate weight loss or break a weight-loss plateau, aim for a ketone level of 1.0 to 3.0 mmol/ L, and maintain that for as long as you desire accelerated weight loss. If you fall below this cutoff, it means that continuing carbohydrate consumption is preventing conversion to a ketogenic state.

Physicians and dietitians often warn people that ketosis is dangerous and can lead to kidney damage. This is not true. The clinical data does not demonstrate any deterioration in kidney function with high intakes of protein in people with normal kidneys.

They are confusing ketosis, a natural adaptation to periods when carbohydrates are unavailable, with diabetic ketoacidosis. Diabetic ketoacidosis is a dangerous condition that develops in type 1 diabetics who, when deprived of insulin, develop extremely high levels of blood glucose and a high level of ketones sufficient to generate a life-threatening drop in blood pH. None of this occurs in physiological ketosis generated by carbohydrate restriction in people without type 1 diabetes.

Additionally, ketosis does not necessarily require an increase in protein intake over the usual levels, but rather an increase in fat intake, which has no effect on kidney health.

Attention should still be paid to the intake of prebiotic fibers, which do not impact blood sugar or ketosis. In my view, making sure that you obtain sufficient prebiotic fibers is crucial to maximizing the benefits of a ketogenic state.

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Mr. and Mrs. Wheat Belly

Men and women follow the Wheat Belly lifestyle and can undergo important and sometime startling hormonal changes. Though results vary with stage of life—young adults, middle-aged, older—there are a variety of hormonal changes that women and men typically experience, some in concert, others independently. Such hormonal shifts can be powerful and part of the health-restoring menu of changes that develop with this lifestyle. They can even improve a relationship in a number of ways, both physically and emotionally, especially if we weave in some of the newer Wheat Belly/Undoctored concepts and practices such as oxytocin enhancement. (Note that I am talking about the Wheat Belly dietary lifestyle combined with additional strategies we add to compensate for nutritional deficiencies of modern life, such as vitamin D supplementation to correct for living indoors without daily sun exposure, magnesium supplementation to compensate for magnesium removal from water filtration, efforts to re-cultivate healthy bowel flora distorted by multiple modern habits and others. These additional strategies are the basis for the conversations provided in the Wheat Belly Total Health and Undoctored books.)

What sorts of hormonal/health/life changes can you expect living the Wheat Belly lifestyle? Let’s start with the ladies.

Ladies:

With the Wheat Belly lifestyle, ladies can expect to:

Lose visceral fat–Lose the fat that encircles abdominal organs (and heart), reflected on the surface by a reduction in waist size and “love handles,” and massive changes in health unfold: reduced inflammation, reduced triglycerides, reduced insulin resistance, reduced testosterone (especially in women with polycystic ovarian syndrome, PCOS).
Reduce insulin–As insulin drops, salt and water retention reverses, weight loss proceeds as it is no longer blocked by high insulin levels, inflammatory phenomena recede, blood sugar drops, acne recedes. Insulin resistance is further reduced by removal of wheat germ agglutinin and the increased butyrate of cultivating healthy bowel flora species.
Reduce estrogen–Women with visceral tummy fat will experience a drop in abnormally high estrogen levels, an effect that can bring on the “hot flashes” of receding estrogen.
Reduce testosterone–In ladies with PCOS, the reduction in testosterone means that excessive body and facial hair recede, acne is reduced, high blood pressure recedes, and infertility can reverse and allow pregnancy to proceed.
Reduce cortisol–As cortisol surges become less marked, sleep improves, circadian rhythms drift back towards normal, and risk for diseases such as type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s dementia are reduced.
Reduce prolactin–Because the A5 pentapeptide that comes from partial digestion of the gliadin protein of wheat that abnormally stimulates breast tissue is removed, abnormal stimulation of breast tissue reverses. This, coupled with a drop in abnormally high estrogen levels in overweight women, explains why breast size is reduced by about one cup size with this lifestyle (high estrogen is a risk factor for breast cancer).

Men:

With the Wheat Belly lifestyle, men can expect to:

Lose visceral fat–As with women, loss of visceral fat allows hormones to shift back towards normal. Low testosterone and high estrogen present in overweight men normalize with a rise in testosterone and reduction in estrogen. Likewise, leptin, insulin, and cortisol also shift towards normal. This all adds up to improved mood, greater energy, less facial flushing, reduced appetite, reduced inflammatory hormones.
Reduce estrogen–The loss of visceral fat reduces the abnormal expression of the aromatase enzyme that converts testosterone to estrogens, allowing testosterone to rise to normal, estrogen to fall back to normal.
Reduce prolactin–Because the A5 pentapeptide that comes from partial digestion of the gliadin protein of wheat that abnormally stimulates breast tissue is removed, abnormal stimulation of breast tissue reverses. This, along with the reduction in estrogen, reverses “man breasts.”
Increase testosterone–Combine the above with addition of vitamin D and testosterone levels often increase dramatically. As testosterone increases, so does libido and mood, as well as muscle mass.
Reduce insulin–As insulin drops, salt and water retention reverses, weight loss proceeds as it is no longer blocked by high insulin levels, inflammatory phenomena recede, blood sugar drops. Insulin resistance is further reduced by removal of wheat germ agglutinin and the butyrate of cultivating healthy bowel flora species.
Reduce cortisol–As cortisol surges become less marked, sleep improves, circadian rhythms drift back towards normal, and risk for diseases such as type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s dementia are reduced.
Reduce prolactin–Men with large breasts will experience reduction in breast size with reduced prolactin from removal of the A5 pentapeptide of wheat.

In other words, many of the benefits of living this lifestyle develop because of the loss of visceral inflammatory fat, while other effects develop specific to wheat/grain elimination and the supplement program we follow. In our more advanced programs, we have now added strategies to increase oxytocin that results in even more benefits including increased skin thickness and accelerated healing, reduced appetite, increased bone density, and probably increased testosterone in males.

I hope that you can appreciate that there is so much more to the Wheat Belly lifestyle than just cutting calories or eating smaller portions, certainly a more than the awful and misguided world of “gluten-free.” The hormonal benefits that emerge with living the Wheat Belly lifestyle are profound, literally often life-changing, certainly health- and appearance-changing.

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No Soup For You!

You may remember this phrase from the popular 90’s American TV series “Seinfeld.” This phrase caused so many of us to chuckle as the fictional character “The Soup Nazi” refused to serve certain customers in his restaurant. His quick dismissal of these individuals was often for reasons known only to him, leaving his victims feeling dejected and hungry. They lived in fear of provoking his hidden sources of frustration, which would cause him to blurt out the famous phrase, “No Soup For You!”

Many people fear that in living the Wheat Belly lifestyle they will encounter similar scenarios. The imaginary “Grain-free Nazi” who will say “No This and No That” causing them to feel alienated, frustrated, and again hungry.

Have no fear! This will not be the case. This does not mean that you will never again be able to enjoy a piece of pizza, a salad with dressing, or a delicious bowl of soup. I would like to show you how you can safely purchase or even better yet, make your own grain-free delicious soups.

Living the Wheat Belly Lifestyle means being diligent about knowing exactly what ingredients are in the foods you choose. Examine all labels and avoid any food that contains grains in any shape or form. This can be tricky because wheat and corn, in particular, come in some tough-to-recognize names. Panko, textured vegetable protein, and farro are all forms of wheat, and hominy, modified food starch, and zein are all forms of corn. You may be shocked at how many processed food products contain grains— the majority of foods filling the aisles in supermarkets. It is testimony to the cleverness of Big Food that various combinations of wheat flour, cornstarch, inexpensive oils, sugar, food colorings, flavorings, and preservatives can be presented as breakfast cereal for kids, fiber-rich bran cereals, “heart healthy” products, ready-to-eat frozen dinners, instant soup mixes, canned soups, seasoning mixes, salad dressings, and thousands of other products which are all created from the same ingredient list. By avoiding them, you are really just avoiding the thousands of variations on the same theme. One great example is Campbell’s Healthy Request Tomato Soup.

Here is a short list of hidden sources of grains/grain byproducts commonly found in soups and dry soup mixes:

Barely
Boulion
Dextrimaltose
Miso
Modified food starch
Ramen
Roux (wheat-based sauce or thickener)
Vegetable Protein or Starch

You will find more a more detailed list of the hidden aliases for wheat and corn that can be found in so many processed foods in my book, Undoctored.

There is something to be said for sage wisdom. Who knew?

Our grandparents understood that saving bones, leftover pieces of meat, fat, skin, and vegetables (even if they were past their peak) to create delicious soup stock was just part of a good diet. Consuming the stock made with bones is excellent for joint, hair and nail health. The health benefits of using leftover bones have only recently come to be appreciated by modern society. They also knew better than to trim the fat off of poultry, beef, pork, or fish. They did not skim the gelatin and fat off of their soup or stock, even when using fats like lard and tallow in their cooking. Maybe our grandparents instinctively knew a few things after-all.

So why not give it a try? Try saving bones or purchasing them from the butcher or meat section of the grocery store. Oftentimes the butcher will simply give them to you. If you don’t have the time or need for soup/broth right now… no problem, you can freeze them to make it later.

Here’s a basic recipe to get you started.

Simply boil bones for delicious soup. Three pounds of bones and a pound of inexpensive meat, add chopped onions, carrots, celery (basically any vegetables you choose), a little tomato paste, season to taste and voilà you have delicious homemade soup.

My Wheat Belly and Undoctored books provide you with several easy and delicious soup recipes and guideline to help you avoid hidden grains. Here’s just a taste…

 

Wheat Belly Cream of Broccoli Soup is a wonderfully filling and simple variation on traditional cream of broccoli soup, which can be whipped up in just a few minutes. We put coconut milk to use to take advantage of its satiating and other health effects; it also makes this soup so tasty that you’ll want to lick the spoon.

 

Cream of Mushroom Soup with Chives: wheat/grain and dairy-free!

With this seemingly never-ending winter, here’s a dish that will warm you up! Wheat-free and dairy-free, this thick and creamy mushrooms soup makes a filling meal by itself or a substantial accompaniment to pork, chicken, or beef dishes.

 

Wheat Belly Curried Chicken Soup is a variation on chicken soup that’s rich with the flavors of curry, shiitake mushrooms, and cilantro. It’s thickened with coconut milk to induce satiety. The best results are obtained by using homemade chicken broth, though store-bought versions can still produce delicious soups. Be sure to look for brands without wheat flour, cornstarch, or other grain derivatives. You will find this an many other great recipes in my Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox Book.

 

Tomato-Lentil Soup

Along with the rich flavors of poblano peppers and chorizo sausage, this dish packs a prebiotic bowel flora wallop by including lentils, a source of galactooligosaccharide prebiotic fibers. You will find this an many other great recipes in my newset book: Undoctored.

 

With all of the health benefits and great grain–free options available, have no fear. Yes, there are many soups for you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Curried Chicken Soup

Here is a variation on chicken soup that’s rich with the flavors of curry, shiitake mushrooms, and cilantro. It’s thickened with coconut milk to induce satiety. The best results are obtained by using homemade chicken broth, though store-bought (look for brands without wheat flour, cornstarch, or other grain derivatives) still yields a delicious end result. Makes 6 servings.

¼ cup coconut oil

1 pound chicken breasts, cubed

4 ounces shiitake mushrooms, sliced

1 quart chicken broth

2 cans (14 ounces each) coconut milk

¼ cup curry powder

2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

¼ teaspoon sea salt

¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, heat the coconut oil. Cook the chicken until lightly browned and no longer pink on the inside. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring, for 1 to 2 minutes, or until softened.

Stir in the chicken broth and coconut milk. Add the curry powder, cinnamon, cilantro, salt, and pepper. Stir until well mixed. Bring to a low simmer to heat through.

Per serving: 463 calories, 20 g protein, 10 g carbohydrates, 41 g total fat, 34 g saturated fat, 5 g fiber, 795 mg sodium

You will find more great recipes like this in my  book: Wheat belly 10-Day Detox: Reprogram Your Body for Rapid Weight Loss and Amazing Health

 

 

 

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How to use the Wheat Belly and Undoctored books for maximum benefit

There are 6 books in the entire Wheat Belly series dating back to September, 2011. It’s been a glorious few years watching so many people experience spectacular health and weight transformations doing the opposite of conventional dietary advice, with many of their stories highlighted here on the pages of the Wheat Belly Blog, as well as the Official Wheat Belly Facebook page.

Seasoned Wheat Belliers already know a lot about navigating the different content of the Wheat Belly books. But we’ve had so many newcomers that I thought it would be helpful to discuss how and when each of the Wheat Belly books can be used to derive maximum benefit. Know how to put the Wheat Belly, as well as most recent Undoctored, concepts to work maximizes your chances of a magnificent success in achieving your goals of weight loss, age reversal, regaining health, being freed from prescription drugs and the ignorance of doctors and the healthcare system, and looking and feeling wonderful.

This is the original Wheat Belly book that upset dietitians, caused doors to be slammed in the corridors of Big Food companies, and the USDA commissioner to pop Tums every couple of hours because it picked on wheat, the grain held in highest regard among food manufacturers and providers of conventional dietary advice. Wheat Belly introduced the world to modern high-yield, semi-dwarf wheat, the man-made 18-inch tall plant that wreaks extraordinarily harmful effects on humans consuming it.

Read this book if you want to understand what has happened to modern wheat at the hands of geneticists and agribusiness to take something not good for health (traditional wheat) and convert it into the most destructive component of the modern diet.

30 recipes are included.

 

Wheat Belly Total Health took the Wheat Belly arguments further, rejecting all seeds of grasses–“grains”–and discussing why consuming them was a dietary disaster of the largest order. A little heavier on the science, reading this book provides the scientific rationale to explain why the Wheat Belly lifestyle achieves such incredible benefits.

This is the book to read if you also want to stack the odds in your favor of fully reversing health conditions such as autoimmune diseases, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol or triglycerides, neurological diseases, skin rashes, and many others. This is also the book that includes an extensive discussion of how to break a stubborn weight plateau.

There is a section on what I call “functional recipes,” i.e., recipes not for everyday foods but to create specific foods that provide health advantages, such as magnesium water, fermented vegetables, yogurts, and kefirs, and bone broths and soups.

 

 

I wrote the Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox for people who don’t really care to hear the rationale and science but just want to get up and running on their Wheat Belly lifestyle ASAP. It is also designed to help anyone who has fallen off the bandwagon to get back on as quickly and confidently as possible. Step-by-step, meal-by-meal, the 10-Day Grain Detox provides the menu plan and strategies to easily incorporate the nutritional supplements that are part of the program. There are also recipes (the Great Persuaders) that can be used to persuade any naysayers in the household.

We have been launching periodic 10-Day Grain Detox Challenges so that readers can join groups of people all detoxing at the same time. There is also an online e-course for anyone wishing to have more support through their Wheat Belly Detox program.

 

 

The Wheat Belly Slim Guide is a portable reference to help navigate grocery stores, restaurants, health food stores, and your day-to-day life to help answer all those little questions that crop up like “What ingredients will I need to make a Wheat Belly Pizza?” or “What could I use to safely thicken my sauce for dinner tonight?”. Small enough to carry along in your purse, the Wheat Belly Slim Guide can come to your rescue whenever you need it.

The Slim Guide includes a summary of the Wheat Belly approach to cultivating bowel flora, including a list of prebiotic fiber sources; a list of Wheat Belly safe sweeteners and flours; a  7-day Menu Plan; handy shopping lists; Wheat Belly Happy Hour: a list of Wheat Belly-safe alcoholic beverages; and more. 

 

 

 

The Wheat Belly 30-Minute (Or Less!) Cookbook helps make the Wheat Belly lifestyle as quick and easy as possible. In addition to easy recipes for breakfast, lunch, main courses, and snacks, there are recipes for baking mixes, basic breads, pita chips, wraps, and tortillas. There is also an entire section devoted to recipes for sauces (barbecue, marinara, Thai red curry, tartar and others), salad dressings (Sun-Dried Tomato, Creamy Tomato Cilantro, Spicy Cajun Mayo, others), and jams and butters.

There are also menus for special occasions such as Movie Night, Pub Night, and Romantic Evening.

 

 

 

 

The original Wheat Belly Cookbook is packed with 150 recipes for breakfast, lunch, main courses, snacks, and desserts. There is an extensive section called The Wheat Belly Bakery that helps you recreate the baked products, such as Rye Bread, Soft Pretzels, Walnut Raisin Bread, Strawberry Shortcake, and Mocha Walnut Brownies so that you can meet any need such as entertaining friends, pleasing kids, or filling out a holiday menu.

 

 

 

 

 

Undoctored, as its name suggests, puts personal control over health back in your hands. We continue many of the strategies of the Wheat Belly lifestyle but expand them with lessons learned through this worldwide experience, while adding new dimensions and practices:

The Undoctored Wild, Naked, and Unwashed program causes you to revert back to the way humans were supposed to be eating and living all along to mimic the behavior and health of primitive people who have virtually no modern diseases such as diabetes, colon cancer, and obesity (still lived to old age if they did not succumb to injury or infection)
How to obtain reliable health information by learning to distinguish good health information from unreliable
How to collaborate on answering important health questions
We discuss how to incorporate new health tools (apps, devices) into tracking health measures to obtain even greater levels of health. There are also Undoctored Protocols that address health conditions that do not fully respond to the Wild, Naked, Unwashed program, such as osteoporosis/osteopenia, coronary disease, migraine headaches, and calcium oxalate kidney stones.

I won’t kid you: Undoctored is a more serious read. It may anger you, it may shock you. But you will never look at healthcare the same. And, if you follow its ideas, you may just rediscover what it feels like to be fabulously healthy in ways your doctor simply won’t comprehend.

The post How to use the Wheat Belly and Undoctored books for maximum benefit appeared first on Dr. William Davis.

Why grains make you fat

How is it that a blueberry muffin or onion bagel can trigger weight gain? Why do people who exercise, soccer Moms, and other everyday people who cut their fat and eat more “healthy whole grains” get fatter and fatter? And why weight gain specifically in the abdomen, the deep visceral fat that I call a “wheat belly,” that is inflammatory, worsens insulin resistance and blood sugars, disrupts hormones like testosterone and estrogens, and is associated with greater risk for heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s?

There are several fairly straightforward ways that wheat in all its varied forms–-whole wheat bread, white bread, multigrain bread, sprouted bread, sourdough bread, pasta, noodles, bagels, ciabatta, pizza, etc.–-lead to substantial weight gain, with other grains sharing some of these effects. As I often have to point out, it is NOT just a matter of avoiding “gluten,” but an entire menu of effects that include:

High glucose and high insulin–This effect is not unique to wheat, but shared with other high-glycemic index foods (yes: whole wheat has a high-glycemic index) like cornstarch and rice starch (yes, the stuff used to make gluten-free foods). The high-glycemic index means high blood glucose triggers high blood insulin. This occurs in 90- to 120-minute cycles. The high insulin that inevitably accompanies high blood sugar, over time and occurring repeatedly, induces insulin resistance in the tissues of the body. Insulin resistance causes fat accumulation, specifically in abdominal visceral fat, as well as diabetes and pre-diabetes. The more visceral fat you accumulate, the worse insulin resistance becomes; thus the vicious cycle ensues.

Cycles of satiety and hunger–The 90- to 120-minute glucose/insulin cycle is concluded with a precipitous drop in blood sugar. This is the foggy, irritable, hungry hypoglycemia that occurs a couple hours after your breakfast cereal or English muffin. The hypoglyemia is remedied with another dose of carbohydrate, starting the cycle over again . . . and again, and again, and again. (This is why the solution for hypoglycemia is not carbs and sugar, but not allowing the rise in blood sugar in the first place, discussed here.)

Gliadin proteins–The gliadin proteins unique to wheat, now increased in quantity and altered in amino acid structure from their non-genetically-altered predecessors, act as appetite stimulants. This is because gliadins are degraded to exorphins, morphine-like polypeptides that enter the brain. Exorphins can be blocked by opiate-blocking drugs like naltrexone. (This is among the reasons why the prescription weight loss drug, Contrave, works–yes, Big Pharma found yet another way to monetize grain consumption and absurd conventional dietary advice.) Overweight people given an opiate blocker reduce calorie intake 400 calories per day. But why? There’s only one food that yields substantial quantities of opiate-like compounds in the bloodstream and brain: wheat gliadin. (The casein protein of dairy also yields an opiate, casomorphin, but it is too weak to yield much effect in most people.)

Leptin resistance–Though the data are preliminary, the lectin in wheat, wheat germ agglutinin, has the potential to block the leptin receptor, an effect amplified by gliadin-derived peptides. Leptin resistance is increasingly looking like a fundamental reason why people struggle to lose weight. This might explain why eliminating, say, 500 calories of wheat consumption per day yields 3500 calories of weight loss. (Those of you who have been engaged in the Wheat Belly lifestyle and have plateaued in weight but wish to lose more, see the Wheat Belly Blog and Undoctored Blog discussions about the oxytocin-raising effects of L. reuteri and the yogurt we ferment with it; this is an effective way–after wheat/grain elimination–to reverse leptin resistance.)

And, as in many things wheat, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Despite all we know about this re-engineered thing called wheat, eliminating it yields health benefits, including weight loss, that seem to be larger than what you’d predict with knowledge of all its nasty little individual pieces. Follow the Wheat Belly conversations, such as those on the Wheat Belly Facebook page, and just marvel at all the people who lose substantial quantities of weight without cutting calories, without reducing fat, without extreme exercise, often no exercise at all.

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