Wheat Belly

[groovedaddy]

At his wit’s end because of his severe reactions to eating wheat, William Davis, MD decided to become the guinea pig in a simple experiment. The question was whether his body would react differently to bread baked from modern organic whole wheat or to bread baked from einkorn, the first cultivated wheat and an original source of our current crop of 100,000 modern wheat varieties. From wheat kernels found in tombs near the Sea of Galilee, we know that humans have been eating the hard-hulled einkorn unchanged for nearly 20,000 years. We have also been crossbreeding wheat and grasses for almost as long. Compared to einkorn, which now is mostly raised for animals, the whole wheat we buy today tends to have stronger and shorter supporting straws, larger kernels, and dramatically higher yields. These huge advancements have put wheat (breads, cereal, and pasta) at the base of the American food pyramid, and we are told to eat six to eleven servings each day.

But as Dr. Davis has learned the hard way, the ubiquity of modern wheat has also created a host of potential problems. Most obvious is that if you are sensitive to wheat, it can be very difficult to find food to eat. Davis also knew that einkorn is sold in health food stores because it lacks the gluten of modern wheat and is said to be tolerated by people with wheat sensitivities. So Dr. Davis’s first goal was to find out if going back to the source would make bread safe for him.

Davis’s plan was to eat four ounces of einkorn bread on one day and four ounces of organic whole wheat bread the next. To begin, he hand-ground two pounds of the einkorn into flour and made a simple dough with water and yeast. He describes the einkorn dough as stickier and less stretchy than any he had seen before. It barely rose after a period of proofing. After baking, Davis nervously prepared for his first bite, but the nutty, denser bread caused him no problems — and a blood sugar test revealed only a modest rise from 84 mg/dl to 110 mg/dl, similar to consuming any carbohydrate. In his new book, Wheat Belly, he writes, “Afterwards … I felt no perceptible effects — no sleepiness, no nausea, nothing hurt. In short, I felt fine. Whew!”

The next day he baked a loaf of modern organic whole wheat bread and repeated the experiment. Before eating the four ounces, his blood sugar registered the same 84 mg/dl; afterward, it spiked to 167 mg/dl. “Moreover, I soon became nauseated, nearly losing my lunch. The queasy effect persisted for thirty-six hours, accompanied by stomach cramps that started almost immediately and lasted for many hours. Sleep that night was fitful, though filled with vivid dreams. I couldn’t think straight, nor could I understand the research papers I was trying to read the next morning, having to read and reread paragraphs four or five times; I finally gave up.”

http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/articles/wheat-belly

[MADem]

1. The guy has celiac disease. It's common in people of European ancestry, and

more common the further north you go. Whole aisles of the supermart cater to celiacs in UK and Eire.

[Warpy]

3. It was that way here until stores decided to "mainstream"

the gluten free stuff. Now I have to sprint through the stores on a scavenger hunt to find food I can eat.

I still consider myself lucky, mine is an allergy and not celiac. If I eat wheat, I wheeze and get an itchy rash but it's not life threatening. For celiacs who might pick up the wrong thing, it can be.

Fortunately, there is a lot of stuff out there now. I breakfasted on a gluten free donut this morning. Tomorrow it might be half a gluten free bagel. Both are quite good.

[MADem]

10. If you have one of those Trader Joe's near you, try them for those sorts of foodstuffs.

They don't "group" the gluten free stuff, but the place is so small it doesn't matter. Easy to find what you need!

[Warpy]

12. I have a Sunflower Market

and it's small enough to cope with, too.

[Tumbulu]

2. I grow and have helped increase the seed of an heirloom wheat that

is a tall low yielding of grain and high yielding of root mass and stems- ie good carbon sequestering plants. All sorts of people that I know can eat the things made from it (cakes, cookies, flatbreads, noodles) who normally have problems with regular wheat. No true celiac sufferer will try it- the consequences being so severe, but there are lots of people who just feel bad after eating regular wheat products.

The woman who increased the seeds from the seed bank of this landrace paid for some gels to be run on the proteins that form the gluten (two proteins join to form gluten) and one of them had a completely different gel pattern than the protein of the same name from a modern dwarf high yielding wheat.

I think that the leap to high yielding dwarfed grains carried some risks to a good part of the population and it seems reasonable to grow these old landraces up and offer them to people who cannot tolerate the new high yielding varieties. The yield of the wheat that I grow is between 700-1000 lbs per acre and on organic ground near me the normal yield of a modern variety of the same kind of wheat averages 4000 lbs/acre. So, the price needs to be 4X higher....which is quite significant.

[Warpy]

4. Wheat grown in Europe tends to be lower in gluten, overall

even if it's the same strain of wheat grown in the US. I know people with wheat allergy (not celiac) who have gone over there and managed to eat pasta in Italy and breads elsewhere and not reacted badly to it.

I would very much like to see the old wheat strains become more available and I'd gladly pay a premium price for them if I could once again bake without having to mix premium flours with gums to get something with flavor that rises.

[hedgehog]

5. That explains why the whole wheat pasta imported from Italy

tastes so much better than any of the domestic brands I've bought! Now I don't feel so guilty for buying imported pasta!

[Tumbulu]

6. well just to add a little confusion....

the wheat that is grown for pasta making in the US is generally exported to Italy. These are the durham wheats grown in the southwestern US. Perhaps in Italy they mix durham wheats grown all over the world, but most of the US produced durham gets exported.

[Warpy]

9. Depends on whether it's durum or semolina pasta

or a mixture of both. I suspect the latter is true.

[Tumbulu]

7. More and more of the small farmers around me are growing them now.

Not sure what part of the country you are in, but I have sent seeds to New Mexico and Texas and my largest single customer bought tons of wheat from me and gave it to First Nations groups throughout the southwest.

He has his own stone mill and sells many heirloom grain products on his website ansonmills.com. He has personally revived a number of heirloom grains from the southeast and is both a farmer and a miller. His wife is a pastry chef. His prices are very high, but he gives so much away to various sustainable groups in the hopes that more and more people will grow the heirloom varieties again.

I wonder why the gluten is lower when grown in Europe, how interesting.

[Warpy]

8. It has a lot to do with soil differences

After all, Europe has been intensively farmed for a couple of thousand years, at least; the US, not so much.

[hedgehog]

11. It occurs to me that when American cooks try to reproduce French bread,

they jump through all kinds of hoops mixing various flours. Another measure of the difference between European wheat and American wheat.

[Warpy]

13. Exactly. There are a few niche bakeries, especially in the northeast

that import their flour for baguettes because there is no way to duplicate the texture using US flours. Their baguettes are different from anything else available here.

Baguettes using US flour tend to be heavy and rubbery, in comparison. It's not the baker, it's the flour.

[drokhole]

14. Amazing book, removing wheat/grains can clear up a whole host of health problems...

..."celiac" or not. My little sister - who is not celiac - suffered from chronic allergies and asthma, has been wheat-free for four months and, during a time that is supposed to be "One of the Worst Allergy Seasons Ever", has been completely allergy (and asthma) free. She used to have to take a Claritin everyday to keep her allergies barely in check. There are plenty of other ailments that removing wheat can alleviate. Check out the testimonies in the Wheat Belly reviews on Amazon. Obesity, high-blood pressure, chronic joint pain, arthritis, diabetes, mental fatigue, rosacea, acid reflux, ADHD...just to name a few. Tons of followers of the "Paleo" diet (which removes grains entirely) report much of the same.

[sense]

16. Absolutely.

Not eating grains, soy, processed foods and very little sugar (just in 85% dark chocolate) cured me of diabetes and high blood pressure. It also caused weight to simply fall off with no effort. I no longer suffer from allergies or depression and I have a lot more energy. You don't need to limit your calories or portion size, just don't eat the crap that we weren't meant to eat! Paleo! Gotta love it.

Eat good fats like real butter from grass-fed cows, coconut oil and lard. Eat grass fed beef and lots of fish. Those are the biggies, but there are plenty of other things to eat too.

Grains are fed to cows at the huge factory farms to fatten them quickly. Why would we eat them? They do the same thing to us. If we allowed the cows to live longer on their artificial diet of grains, we'd see just how sick it actually makes them. Instead, because we slaughter them very young, we never see the reality of their eating a diet that they have not evolved to digest.

Just google paleo or primal diet and you'll be amazed at all you'll find.

[drokhole]

17. And this doctor cured her MS...

Yes, her multiple sclerosis!

I agree with everything you said, and follow Paleo myself. Ultimately, society needs to rethink our relationship with food.

I'd say that even goes for the "food as fuel" metaphor, as well (which even some of the most health conscious among us frequently use). While that's partially correct, it really is so much more. In reality, food is you. What you eat is the raw material for your hair, your organs, your blood, your teeth, your skin...every single cell of your body. "Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone." I'd say it's the "building" material of your body, but that still has that separate, parts-oriented, fragmented, mechanistic viewpoint implied/attached to it. It'd be more appropriate to say food "grows" you. It may not seem that way when we look down at our plates, but it's the absolute truth.

It's a matter, too, of how that food itself is grown. Compost-grown, non-GMO, pesticide/herbicide/fungicide/chemical fertilizer-free crops have a much more optimum and denser nutrient profile than their "conventional/industrial" counterparts, the benefits of which get passed on to both us and the earth (and its soil fertility). Exact same goes for grass-fed vs. grain/soy/corn-fed, antibiotic, growth hormone cows. Grass-fed beef isn't only good for us, but it's a healthier and more humane (not to mention the natural) way to raise the cows, and management-intensive grazing can be incredibly beneficial for the environment:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112713328

And, most importantly, congratulations on your health and well being!

[SheilaT]

15. The gluten in regular flour

is crucial to making bread rise, so a flour made from a low-gluten grain isn't going to rise well at all.
That's why cornbread recipes call for at least as much wheat flour as cornmeal.

I love to bake, and I pay attention to these things.