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April 10 - April 18, 2018
Whole wheat bread (glycemic index 72) increases blood sugar as much as or more than table sugar, or sucrose (glycemic index 59). (Glucose increases blood sugar to 100, hence a glycemic index of 100. The extent to which a particular food increases blood sugar relative to glucose determines that food’s glycemic index.)
despite dramatic changes in the genetic makeup of wheat and other crops, no animal or human safety testing was conducted on the new genetic strains that were created.
In one hybridization experiment, fourteen new gluten proteins were identified in the offspring that were not present in either parent wheat plant.6 Moreover, when compared to century-old strains of wheat, modern strains of Triticum aestivum express a higher quantity of genes for gluten proteins that are associated with celiac disease.7
Test animals fed glyphosate-tolerant soybeans (known as Roundup Ready, these beans are genetically bred to allow the farmer to freely spray the weed killer Roundup without harming the crop) show alterations in liver, pancreatic, intestinal, and testicular tissue compared to animals fed conventional soybeans. The difference is believed to be due to unexpected DNA rearrangement near the gene insertion site, yielding altered proteins in food with potential toxic effects.9
Modern wheat, despite all the genetic alterations to modify hundreds, if not thousands, of its genetically determined characteristics, made its way to the worldwide human food supply with nary a question surrounding its suitability for human consumption.
Aside from some extra fiber, eating two slices of whole wheat bread is really little different, and often worse, than drinking a can of sugar-sweetened soda or eating a sugary candy bar.
The original study showed that the GI of white bread was 69, while the GI of whole grain bread was 72 and Shredded Wheat cereal was 67, while that of sucrose (table sugar) was 59.5 Yes, the GI of whole grain bread is higher than that of sucrose. Incidentally, the GI of a Mars bar—nougat, chocolate, sugar, caramel, and all—is 68. That’s better than whole grain bread. The GI of a Snickers bar is 41—far better than whole grain bread.
pasta has a lower two-hour GI, with whole wheat spaghetti showing a GI of 42 compared to white flour spaghetti’s GI of 50. Pasta stands apart from other wheat products, likely due, in part, to the compression of the wheat flour that occurs during the extruding process, slowing digestion by amylase.
But even the favorable GI rating of pasta is misleading, since it is only a two-hour observation and pasta has the curious ability to generate high blood sugars for periods of four to six hours after consumption, sending blood sugars up by 100 mg/dl for sustained periods in people with diabetes.8,
Therefore, wheat products elevate blood sugar levels more than virtually any other carbohydrate, from beans to candy bars. This has important implications for body weight, since glucose is unavoidably accompanied by insulin, the hormone that allows entry of glucose into the cells of the body, converting the glucose to fat. The higher the blood glucose after consumption of food, the greater the insulin level, the more fat is deposited.
Trigger high blood sugars repeatedly and/or over sustained periods, and more fat accumulation results. The consequences of glucose-insulin-fat deposition are especially visible in the abdomen—resulting in, yes, wheat belly. The bigger your wheat belly, the poorer your response to insulin, since the deep visceral fat of the wheat belly is associated with poor responsiveness, or “resistance,” to insulin, demanding higher and higher insulin levels, a situation that cultivates diabetes.
A Mayo Clinic/University of Iowa study of 215 obese celiac patients showed 27.5 pounds of weight loss in the first six months of a wheat-free diet.11 In another study, wheat elimination slashed the number of people classified as obese (body mass index, or BMI, 30 or greater) in half within a year.
People who eliminate wheat from their diet typically report improved mood, fewer mood swings, improved ability to concentrate, and deeper sleep within just days to weeks of their last bite of bagel or baked lasagna. These sorts of “soft” subjective experiences on our brains, however, are tough to quantify.
Dr. Dohan journeyed down this line of investigation because he observed that, during World War II, the men and women of Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada, and the United States required fewer hospitalizations for schizophrenia when food shortages made bread unavailable, only to require an increased number of hospitalizations when wheat consumption resumed after the war was over.1
There have since even been reports of complete remission of the disease, such as the seventy-year-old schizophrenic woman described by Duke University doctors, suffering with delusions, hallucinations, and suicide attempts with sharp objects and cleaning solutions over a period of fifty-three years, who experienced complete relief from psychosis and suicidal desires within eight days of stopping wheat.5
Another condition in which wheat may exert effects on a vulnerable mind is autism. Autistic children suffer from impaired ability to interact socially and communicate. The condition has increased in frequency over the past forty years, from rare in the mid-twentieth century to 1 in 150 children in the twenty-first.6 Initial small samples have demonstrated improvement in autistic behaviors with wheat gluten removal.7,
It is unlikely that wheat exposure was the initial cause of autism or ADHD but, as with schizophrenia, wheat appears to be associated with worsening of the symptoms characteristic of the conditions.
In lab animals, administration of naloxone blocks the binding of wheat exorphins to the morphine receptor of brain cells. Yes, opiate-blocking naloxone prevents the binding of wheat-derived exorphins to the brain. The very same drug that turns off the heroin in a drug-abusing addict also blocks the effects of wheat exorphins.
What happens if normal (i.e., nonschizophrenic) humans are given opiate-blocking drugs? In a study conducted at the Psychiatric Institute of the University of South Carolina, wheat-consuming participants given naloxone consumed 33 percent fewer calories at lunch and 23 percent fewer calories at dinner (a total of approximately 400 calories less over the two meals) than participants given a placebo.
Common wheat, upon digestion, yields polypeptides that possess the ability to cross into the brain and bind to opiate receptors. • The action of wheat-derived polypeptides, the so-called exorphins such as gluteomorphin, can be short-circuited with the opiate-blocking drugs naloxone and naltrexone. • When administered to normal people or people with uncontrollable appetite, opiate-blocking drugs yield reductions in appetite, cravings, and calorie intake, as well as dampen mood, and the effect seems particularly specific to wheat-containing products.
Revenues for Big Food companies swelled. Kraft alone now generates $48.1 billion in annual revenues, an 1,800 percent increase since the late eighties, a substantial portion of which comes from wheat- and corn-based snacks.
By this measure, whole wheat bread has a GI of 72, while plain table sugar has a GI of 59 (though some labs have gotten results as high as 65). In contrast, kidney beans have a GI of 51, grapefruit comes in at 25, while noncarbohydrate foods such as salmon and walnuts have GIs of essentially zero: Eating these foods has no effect on blood sugar.
Outside of dried sugar-rich fruits such as dates and figs, the only other foods that have GIs as high as wheat products are dried, pulverized starches such as cornstarch, rice starch, potato starch, and tapioca starch. (It is worth noting that these are the very same carbohydrates often used to make “gluten-free” food.
Because wheat carbohydrate, the uniquely digestible amylopectin A, causes a greater spike in blood sugar than virtually any other food—more than a candy bar, table sugar, or ice cream—it also triggers greater insulin release. More amylopectin A means higher blood sugar, higher insulin, more visceral fat deposition . . . bigger wheat belly. Throw in the inevitable drop in blood sugar (hypoglycemia) that is the natural aftermath of high insulin levels and you see why irresistible hunger so often results, as the body tries to protect you from the dangers...
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Surplus estrogen, however, produced by visceral fat adds considerably to breast cancer risk, since estrogen at high levels stimulates breast tissue.11 Thus, increased visceral fat on a female has been associated with an increased risk for breast cancer as high as fourfold. Breast cancer risk in postmenopausal women with the visceral fat of a wheat belly is double that of slender, non-wheat-belly-bearing postmenopausal females.
It might be the lack of exorphins, reduction of the insulin-glucose cycle that triggers hunger, or some other factor, but elimination of wheat reduces total daily calorie intake by 350 to 400 calories—with no further restrictions on calories, fats, carbohydrates, or portion sizes. No smaller plates, prolonged chewing, or frequent small meals. Just banishing wheat from your table.
removing this food that triggers appetite and addictive behavior forges a brand-new relationship with food: You eat food because you need it to supply your physiologic energy needs, not because you have some odd food ingredient pushing your appetite “buttons,” increasing appetite and the impulse to eat more and more. You will find yourself barely interested in lunch at noon, easily bypassing the bakery counter at the grocery store, turning down the donuts in the office breakroom without a blink. You will divorce yourself from the helpless, wheat-driven desire for more and more and more.
gluten-free foods, though they do not trigger the immune or neurological response of wheat gluten, still trigger the glucose-insulin response that causes you to gain weight. Wheat products increase blood sugar and insulin more than most other foods. But remember: Foods made with cornstarch, rice starch, potato starch, and tapioca starch are among the few foods that increase blood sugar even more than wheat products.
Until a few years ago, celiac was believed to be rare, affecting only one per several thousand people. As the means to diagnose the disease have improved, the number of people with it has expanded to 1 per 133. Immediate relatives of people with celiac disease have a 4.5 percent likelihood of also developing it. Those with suggestive intestinal symptoms have as high as 17 percent likelihood.
We therefore have good evidence that the apparent increase in celiac disease (or at least the immune markers to gluten) is not just due to better testing: The disease itself has increased in frequency, fourfold over the past fifty years, doubling in just the past twenty years. To make matters worse, the increase in celiac disease has been paralleled by an increase in type 1 diabetes, autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease, and allergies.
By looking for the gluten protein structures that trigger celiac, researchers found that celiac-triggering gluten proteins were expressed to higher levels in modern wheat, while nonceliac-triggering proteins were expressed less.
The gliadin protein of wheat gluten, present in all forms of wheat from spongy Wonder Bread to the coarsest organic multigrain loaf, has the unique ability to make your intestine permeable. Intestines are not meant to be freely permeable.
I predict that, as the medical world begins to better recognize that immune-mediated gluten intolerance is much more than celiac disease, we will be calling it something like immune-mediated gluten intolerance, of which celiac disease will be a subtype.
Diseases associated with immune attacks against various organs, known as autoimmune diseases, are more common in people with celiac. People with celiac disease are more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, connective tissue diseases such as lupus, asthma, inflammatory bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, as well as other inflammatory and immune disorders. Rheumatoid arthritis, a painful, disfiguring joint arthritis treated with anti-inflammatory agents, has been shown to improve, and occasionally remit entirely, with gluten removal.28 The
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All is not lost if you have celiac disease. Food can be every bit as enjoyable without wheat, even more so. One of the essential but unappreciated phenomena accompanying wheat and gluten elimination, celiac or otherwise: You appreciate food more. You eat foods because you require sustenance and you enjoy their taste and texture. You are not driven by hidden uncontrollable impulses of the sort triggered by wheat.
The personal and societal costs of developing diabetes are substantial. On average, one person with diabetes incurs $180,000 to $250,000 in direct and indirect health care costs if diagnosed at age fifty1 and dies eight years earlier than someone without diabetes.
The adoption of grains into the human diet was followed by archaeological evidence of increased infections, bone diseases such as osteoporosis, increased infant mortality, and reduction in life span, as well as diabetes.
Some estimates show that, over the next twenty years, an incredible 16 to 18 percent of all health care costs will be consumed by health issues arising from excessive weight: not genetic misfortune, birth defects, psychiatric illness, burns, or post-traumatic stress disorder from the horrors of war—no, just getting fat.
The cost of Americans becoming obese dwarfs the sum spent on cancer. More money will be spent on health consequences of obesity than education.
Americans have become helpless wheataholics, with per capita annual consumption of wheat products (white and wheat bread, durum pasta) having increased by twenty-six pounds since 1970.13 If national wheat consumption is averaged across all Americans—babies, children, teenagers, adults, the elderly—the average American consumes 133 pounds of wheat per year. (Note that 133 pounds of wheat flour is equal to approximately 200 loaves of bread, or a bit more than half a loaf of bread per day.) Of course, this means that many adults eat far more than that amount, since no baby or young child included
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One clear-cut connection stands out: Children with celiac disease are ten times more likely to develop type 1 diabetes; children with type 1 diabetes are ten to twenty times more likely to have antibodies to wheat and/or have celiac disease.30, 31 The two conditions share fates with much higher likelihood than chance alone would explain.
Can avoidance of wheat starting at birth avert the development of type 1 diabetes? After all, studies in mice genetically susceptible to type 1 diabetes show that elimination of wheat gluten reduces the development of diabetes from 64 percent to 15 percent33 and prevents intestinal damage characteristic of celiac disease.
Acids that stress the body’s pH can also come through diet. There are obvious dietary sources of acid such as carbonated sodas that contain carbonic acid. Some sodas, such as Coca-Cola, also contain phosphoric acid. The extreme acid loads of carbonated sodas stretch your body’s acid-neutralizing capacity to its limits. The constant draw on calcium from bones, for instance, is associated with fivefold increased fractures in high school girls who consume the most carbonated colas.
Proteins from animal products are meant to be the main acid-generating challenge in the human diet. Meats such as chicken, pork roast, and Arby’s roast beef sandwiches are therefore a major source of acid in the average American diet. Acids yielded by meats, such as uric acid and sulfuric acid (the same as in your car’s battery and acid rain), need to be buffered by the body. The fermented product of bovine mammary glands (cheese!) is another highly acidic group of foods, particularly reduced-fat, high-protein cheeses. Any food derived from animal sources, in short, generates an acid
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The net effect of proteins from animal sources, despite their acid-generating properties, is that of increasing bone health. Children, adolescents, and the elderly, for instance, who increase protein intake from meat show increased bone calcium content and improved measures of bone strength.
Vegetables and fruits, on the other hand, are the dominant alkaline foods in the diet. Virtually everything in your produce department will drive pH toward the alkaline direction. From kale to kohlrabi, generous consumption of vegetables and fruits serve to neutralize the acidic burden from animal products.
Hunter-gatherer diets of meats, vegetables, and fruits, along with relatively neutral nuts and roots, yield a net alkaline effect.
The modern human diet of plentiful “healthy whole grains” but lacking in vegetables and fruit is highly acid-charged, inducing a condition called acidosis. Over years, acidosis takes its toll on your bones.
The higher the ratio of protein intake from vegetables to the protein intake from animal products, the fewer hip fractures occur.8 The magnitude of difference was substantial: While a vegetable-to-animal-protein intake ratio of 1:1 or less was associated with as many as 200 hip fractures per 100,000 population, a vegetable-to-animal-protein intake ratio of between 2:1 and 5:1 was associated with less than 10 hip fractures per 100,000 population—a reduction of more than 95 percent. (At the highest intakes of vegetable protein, the incidence of hip fracture practically vanished.)
Losing weight, and thereby visceral fat, improves arthritis more than can be expected from just the decreased weight load.24 In one study of obese participants with osteoarthritis, there was 10 percent improvement in symptoms and joint function with each 1 percent reduction in body fat.
