Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health

by William Davis

Judging by research findings of agricultural geneticists, such assumptions may be unfounded and just plain wrong. Analyses of proteins expressed by a wheat hybrid compared to its two parent strains have demonstrated that, while approximately 95 percent of the proteins expressed in the offspring are the same, 5 percent are unique, found in neither parent.5 Wheat gluten proteins, in particular, undergo considerable structural change with hybridization. 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.

So this is your brain on wheat: Digestion yields morphinelike compounds that bind to the brain’s opiate receptors. It induces a form of reward, a mild euphoria. When the effect is blocked or no exorphin-yielding foods are consumed, some people experience a distinctly unpleasant withdrawal. 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.13 At the University of Michigan, binge eaters were confined to a room filled with food for one hour. (There’s an idea for a new TV show: The Biggest Gainer) Participants consumed 28 percent less wheat crackers, bread sticks, and pretzels with administration of naloxone.14

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.

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Weight grew at the fastest pace once the USDA and others got into the business of telling Americans what to eat. Accordingly, while obesity grew gradually from 1960, the real upward acceleration of obesity started in the

Visceral fat is different. While it might be useful as “love handles” grasped by your partner, it is also uniquely capable of triggering a universe of inflammatory phenomena. Visceral fat filling and encircling the abdomen of the wheat belly sort is a unique, twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week metabolic factory. And what it produces is inflammatory signals and abnormal cytokines, or cell-to-cell hormone signal molecules, such as leptin,

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resistin, and tumor necrosis factor.4,5 The more visceral fat present, the greater the quantities of abnormal signals released into the bloodstream. All body fat is capable of producing another cytokine, adiponectin, a protective molecule that reduces risk for heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension. However, as visceral fat increases, its capacity to produce protective adiponectin diminishes (for reasons unclear).6 The combination of lack of adiponectin along with increased leptin, tumor necrosis factor, and other inflammatory products underlies abnormal insulin responses, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.7 The list of other health conditions triggered by visceral fat is growing and now includes dementia, rheumatoid arthritis, and colon cancer.8 This is why waist circumference is proving to be a powerful predictor of all these conditions, as well as of mortality.9 Visceral fat not only produces abnormally high levels of inflammatory signals but is also itself inflamed, containing bountiful collections of inflammatory white blood cells (macrophages).10 The endocrine and inflammatory molecules produced by visceral fat empty (via the portal circulation draining blood from the intestinal tract) directly into the liver, which then responds by producing yet another sequence of inflammatory signals and abnormal

proteins. In other words, in the human body, all fat is not equal. Wheat belly fat is a special fat. It is not just a passive repository for excess pizza calories; it is, in effect, an endocrine gland much like your thyroid gland or pancreas, albeit a very large and active endocrine gland. (Ironically, Grandma was correct forty years ago when she labeled an overweight person as having a “gland” problem.) Unlike other endocrine glands, the visceral fat endocrine gland does not play by t...

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High blood insulin provokes visceral fat accumulation, the body’s means of storing excess energy. When visceral fat accumulates, the flood of inflammatory signals it produces causes tissues such as muscle and liver to respond less to insulin. This so-called insulin resistance means that the pancreas must produce greater and greater quantities of insulin to metabolize the sugars. Eventually, a vicious circle of increased insulin resistance, increased insulin production, increased deposition of visceral fat, increased insulin resistance, etc., etc., ensues.

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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. So gluten-free foods are not

problem-free. Gluten-free foods are the likely explanation for the overweight celiac sufferers who eliminate wheat and fail to lose weight. In my view, there is no role for gluten-free foods beyond the occasional indulgence, since the metabolic effect of these foods is little different from eating a bowl of jelly beans.

Think about that for a moment: 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.2 That’s as much as a quarter of a million dollars and half the time spent watching your children grow up that you sacrifice to this disease, a disease caused in large part by food—in particular, a specific list of foods.

The economic costs of such trends are staggering. Gaining weight is exceptionally costly, both in terms of health care costs and the personal toll on health.12 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.