"It began, as many misadventures do, innocently enough.
I had baked a loaf of bread. A simple, honest bread made from the
best of simple, honest ingredients. Nonetheless, several dinner guests
declined the bread. My friends, it turned out, were boycotting gluten.
Hadn’t I heard? Gluten was the new great Satan. It was as if I were
offering cocktails of Red Dye No. 2 served with asbestos straws in
leaded crystal tumblers.
I had misguidedly thought that homemade bread had placed me in the
vanguard of healthy living. Apparently I was wrong. I’d inadvertently
played into the hands of the industrial baking complex and their evil
agenda.
This led me to an inquiry into the gluten gripe, that led to poking
about the subject of commercial baking, that led to examining the GMO
debacle that deposited me on a sofa opposite Dr. William Davis, author
of the massively bestselling book, Wheat Belly, and now the Wheat Belly Cookbook.
The simple loaf of bread quickly became a can of worms. Food, it turns out, is really complicated these days.
Are grains helpful or harmful to our health and our waistline? Last week
we took a look at some of the nutritional pluses and minuses that come
with eating whole grains, as well as some of the effects of whole versus
refined grains on our health. This week, we’ll take a closer look at
the role that grains, and especially gluten, play (or don’t play) in
weight loss.
When it comes to weight loss, gluten-free diets are all the rage.
Unfortunately, despite the claims that gluten, a protein found in wheat,
barley, and rye foods promotes weight gain, there are no published
clinical trials to date comparing a gluten-free versus gluten-containing
diets for weight loss.
We do, however, have data on gluten-free diets for those with celiac
disease, an auto-immune condition whereby the small intestine is damaged
by exposure to gluten, and the news might surprise you: patients with
celiac disease actually tend to have higher body mass indexes (BMIs, or a
measure of height versus weight) than those without the disease.
Where to begin? It turns out that bread isn’t what it used to be
because flour isn’t what it used to be because wheat isn’t what it used
to be.
Historically, bread is made from four ingredients: Flour, water, salt
and yeast. Bread is so natural, that by combining just two of these
ingredients — flour and water — bread will sometimes make itself.
Most people buy their bread off a grocery store shelf. Mass produced
store-bought bread is delightfully squishy, uniform and imperishable.
Bread needs time to rise. Time is money so industrial bakers add
enzymes to hasten this process. People like certain appearances so
various colourants are added to appease that aesthetic. The issue of
“fresh” is challenged as bread now has to travel great distances to
market, so preservatives are added. The humble loaf of bread thus morphs
into something much more complex.
Denatured is the word that crops up time and time again when
contemporary wheat flour is mentioned. It used to be that your bag of
all-purpose flour was flecked with brown pips — the germ of the wheat.
That’s milled out now as wheat germ goes rancid quickly. What do they do
with the wheat germ? Millers sell it to vitamin manufacturers who sell
it back to us as Vitamin E. Go figure.
There is, as they say, more grist for this mill but we need to move along.
The core issue here is with wheat. Yes, those amber waves of grain
that comprise the backbone of contemporary agriculture are where things
gets really complicated.
What we call wheat is a distant relative to what our grandparents called wheat
What we call wheat is a distant relative to what our grandparents
called wheat. I’m going to hazard to say that there was no nefarious
agenda to transform wheat into the Franken-grain many believe it’s
become. Instead, it appears that a series of well-intentioned
adjustments were made to address world hunger. If we could increase the
yield per acre of wheat, fewer people might starve to death. A noble
objective, no? The complexity at play between humans and our natural
world, however, isn’t very tolerant of certain changes.
Old wheat was four feet high with seeds that clung to the stem. They
were adaptable and hardy plants. Crop yield was dictated by climate and
natural growing seasons. New wheat, however, is dwarf or semi-dwarf
varieties of about two feet height, relying on a steady diet of
nitrates, irrigation and pest control. This combination means a field
can produce 10-fold the yield. Threshing is easier as the grain is
exposed and engineered for more expedient harvest. I have a postcard in
my office that reads: “Cheap. Fast. Good. Choose two.” Apparently, we
chose cheap and fast. In many ways, it was a defensible choice.
Dr. William Davis sums it up this way: ‘Celiac disease is the canary in the coal mine’
This is the stuff you can see. On a genetic level, new wheat is
different altogether. The evidence is mounting that humans are having an
especially hard time with the new strains of wheat. The hybridized or
genetically modified wheat protein — the infamous gluten — is something
completely new. It’s these new wheat proteins that are associated with
the four-fold upswing in celiac disease over the past half-century. It
can be argued that all this tinkering with wheat is giving rise to the
upswing in gluten intolerances as well as celiac disease. Dr. William
Davis sums it up this way:
“Celiac disease is the canary in the coal mine” where wheat is concerned.
The bestseller Wheat Belly pivots upon these issues. Most
are led to the book by vague complaints associated with ill effects
associated with wheat consumption. Davis, a cardiologist, began his own
inquiry began as he explored ways to manage his patients’ diabetic
issues. Bread, it turns out, has a whopping glycemic index. A glycemic
index is the comparative effect of carbohydrates on blood sugar. Table
sugar has a GI of 59; a slice of whole grain bread has a GI of 72. The
culprit here is the highly digestible carbohydrate, amylopectin A, which
Davis says is more detrimental to the body than white sugar. New
science suggests avoiding blood sugar surges is essential to good
health. A high GI number will spike your blood sugar. Diabetes is
providing the clues here. According to Davis, diabetes is “a proving
ground for accelerated aging.” Mismanaged blood sugar issues take a
hideous toll on diabetics and non-diabetics alike. What you want to
avoid are advanced glycation end-products.
Glucose-protein combinations — useless
debris — muck up the body in just about every way imaginable: Cataracts,
dementia, wrinkles, coronary artery disease, cancer, arthritis
These are the glucose-protein combinations — useless debris — that
muck up the body in just about every way imaginable. Cataracts,
dementia, wrinkles, coronary artery disease, cancer, arthritis: glycemic
index figures are tied to all these. Wheat is uniquely positioned
because of its unique blood glucose-increasing effects to be a catalyst
for this laundry list of nasty developments.
Oh my.
This, I figured, is how heavy smokers must have felt when doctor’s
reversed their opinion on the health benefits of cigarettes. To my mind,
there is no greater love story than that of soup and sandwich. I am
helpless to resist the plain-spoken charms of the humble muffin.
If you go to the gym and wear sunscreen and find a way to hide kale
in just about everything your family eats, all of the foregoing would
set off alarm bells. And it did.
Are grains a nutritional enemy?
According to one increasingly popular line of thinking, grain-based
foods trigger undesirable blood sugar fluctuations, tooth decay and
inflammation in our body, which in turn may lead to heart disease, type 2
diabetes and even cancer. Of the grains we consume regularly, wheat and
its derivatives have been targeted as being particularly harmful,
largely due to the presence of gluten, a protein that is known to
trigger serious health issues in those with celiac disease and in those
who’ve more recently been identified as having non-celiac gluten
sensitivity.
By contrast, a second line of thinking argues that it’s not grains,
but rather the high intake of animal protein that is the issue with the
Western diet, and that a regimen based on whole grains, fruits and
vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans and pulses will pave the road to good
health.
I decided to take up Davis’s challenge. I undertook a season of
living wheatlessly. Toast was toast. I started in mid-September. And
again in late September. Then in October, in earnest. Giving up wheat is
tougher than you might imagine. One miscalculation, one mindless
ingestion, one uninformed choice, and I was off the plan. Wheat is
everywhere!
At this point, it was mostly just elimination. I substituted cucumber
slices for crackers. I abandoned cereal for smoothies. Salads replaced
sandwiches. It was, let me tell you, no fun. I became that person at the
dinner party declining artisanal bread, pasta, crusted halibut steaks,
dessert; the same person I had cursed while clearing the dishes. And
then I got serious. I moved on to the Wheat Belly Cookbook.
This entailed a shopping trip for specific provisions. My pantry filled
up with subtypes of flour that had previously escaped my notice:
chickpea flour, quinoa flour, coconut flour, and others. To address
Davis’s warning about advanced glycation end-products, I carted home
stevia and Splenda as sugar substitutes. I baked Wheat Belly
muffins and thanked God I wasn’t a celiac. One dozen expensive coconut
flour, stevia sweetened banana muffins languished on the counter;
nobody wanted them. We found most of the Wheat Belly Cookbook baked goods far too sweet for our taste.
I experimented with my own coconut flour crusted fried chicken and decided boiled chicken was a better option
I experimented with my own coconut flour crusted fried chicken and decided boiled chicken was a better option. Wheat Belly
pizza, if you divorced yourself from all previously held concepts of
pizza, was a decent vegetarian dish. The cookbook would have you believe
that mashed cauliflower duplicates a biscuit crust of a chicken pot
pie. It doesn’t. Which is not to say that mashed cauliflower topped with
shredded cheddar isn’t tasty, it’s just not chicken pot pie. The Wheat Belly
recipes that don’t hinge on wheat flour are completely acceptable
recipes, but the baked goods were uniformly not to my liking; nut and
seed flours make for leaden baked goods. One way to include allowable
wheat-free baking was to get my hands on some non-GMO wheat. I sent away
to Heritage Wheat Conservancy in Massachusetts for a bag of einkorn
wheat, ground it in my Vitamix and baked a single loaf. Meh. Maybe I
milled it badly? Maybe I need to adjust the recipe? I need to keep
experimenting, I guess.
 |
Ben Nelms for National Post/files
Wheat
Belly author William Davis says the highly digestible
carbohydrate
amylopectin A is more detrimental to
the body than white sugar.
|
It became a matter of having satisfying alternatives on hand. No
doubt you’ll have noticed the gluten-free products flooding the market.
Davis expects to see a spike in diabetes from these products as the
tapioca, rice, corn and potato starches that replace wheat gluten have
sky-high glycemic indexes that will ultimately take their health toll.
He’d also advise you to be skeptical of the purported health benefits of
whole grains. When we met in Vancouver to discuss his work, Davis spoke
of a wide range of food staples that are now subjected to a broad
spectrum of chemical- and radiation-based hybridization techniques that
are “unleashed on an unwitting public.” His account of the “traditional
breeding” methods responsible for Clearfield Wheat had me genuinely
worried. But nothing about Davis suggested a strident alarmist. He
seemed a soft-spoken, reasonable Midwesterner who had backed into some
information he felt the public ought to be aware of, and he was
proposing a way to navigate the mess we’re in.
Wheat Belly spoke of a wheat-induced mental fog that would
lift as wheat cleared my system; unwanted pounds were supposed to fall
off; various physical complaints were expected to subside. This was not
my experience. I wasn’t looking to lose weight, and I didn’t. Mental fog
wasn’t a chronic complaint of mine so I can’t say I was suddenly beset
with clear-thinking punditry. My litany of physical complaints remains
pretty much unchanged. Improvements, however, are dependent upon one’s
personal degree of wheat intolerance and maybe I’m one of the lucky,
tolerant ones. I will say that I found my appetite decreased as Davis
said it likely would.
I haven’t kept up my wheat-less experiment; I miss bread too much
I haven’t kept up my wheat-less experiment; I miss bread too much.
I’ve made several changes, however, but given the complex chemical
issues involved with wheat, half measures offer little benefit. I
learned a lot from the Wheat Belly books. The cookbook can’t be
judged as a traditional cookbook — it fails miserably — but offers
excellent suggestions for navigating what’s starting to look like a very
serious public health issue. I’m keeping an eye on the earnest young
men and women who are trying to bring pre-GMO wheat back into production
and I urge you to support them, too.
And thus ends my Wheat Belly experiment. I’m going to
celebrate with one of the happy adjuncts of my wheatless experience:
sorghum beer! Delicious! Trust me.
