The article form macleans.ca - Maclean's Magazine
I
read this article very interesting. The reason why I added to my blog
is that we need to rethink of our staple food. If it is not good, then
it adds up over time and leads to wrong direction, regardless of your
will, while you do not realize.
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On the evils of wheat
Dr. William Davis on why it is so addictive, and how shunning it will make you skinny
by Kate Fillion on Tuesday, September 20, 2011 9:40am - 14 Comments
Jean-Marc Giboux/Getty Images
William
Davis, a preventive cardiologist who practises in Milwaukee, Wis.,
argues in his newbook Wheat Belly that wheat is bad for your health—so
bad that it should carry a surgeon general’s warning.
Q: You
say the crux of the problem with wheat is that the stuff we eat today
has been genetically altered. How is it different than the wheat our
grandparents ate?
A:
First of all, it looks different. If you held up a conventional wheat
plant from 50 years ago against a modern, high-yield dwarf wheat plant,
you would see that today’s plant is about 2½ feet shorter. It’s
stockier, so it can support a much heavier seedbed, and it grows much
faster. The great irony here is that the term “genetic modification”
refers to the actual insertion or deletion of a gene, and that’s not
what’s happened with wheat. Instead, the plant has been hybridized and
crossbred to make it resistant to drought and fungi, and to vastly
increase yield per acre. Agricultural geneticists have shown that wheat
proteins undergo structural change with hybridization, and that the
hybrid contains proteins that are found in neither parent plant. Now, it
shouldn't be the case that every single new agricultural hybrid has to
be checked and tested, that would be absurd. But we've created thousands
of what I call Frankengrains over the past 50 years, using pretty
extreme techniques, and their safety for human consumption has never
been tested or even questioned.
Q: What extreme techniques are you talking about?
A:
New strains have been generated using what the wheat industry proudly
insists are “traditional breeding techniques,” though they involve
processes like gamma irradiation and toxins such as sodium azide. The
poison control people will tell you that if someone accidentally ingests
sodium azide, you shouldn’t try to resuscitate the person because you
could die, too, giving CPR. This is a highly toxic chemical.
Q: Can’t you just get around any potential health concerns by buying products made with organically grown wheat?
A:
No, because the actual wheat plant itself is the same. It’s almost as
if we’ve put lipstick on this thing and called it organic and therefore
good, when the truth is, it’s really hardly any better at all.
Q: A
lot of us have switched to whole wheat products because we’ve been told
complex carbohydrates are heart healthy and good for us. Are you saying
that’s not true?
A:
The research that indicates whole grains are healthy is all conducted
the same way: white flour is replaced with whole wheat flour, which, no
question, is better for you. But taking something bad and replacing it
with something less bad is not the same as research that directly
compares what happens to health and weight when you eliminate wheat
altogether. There’s a presumption that consuming a whole bunch of the
less bad thing must be good for you, and that’s just flawed logic. An
analogy would be to say that filtered cigarettes are less bad for you
than unfiltered cigarettes, and therefore, a whole bunch of filtered
cigarettes is good for you. It makes no sense. But that is the rationale
for increasing our consumption of whole grains, and that combined with
the changes in wheat itself is a recipe for creating a lot of fat and
unhealthy people.
Q: How does wheat make us fat, exactly?
A:
It contains amylopectin A, which is more efficiently converted to blood
sugar than just about any other carbohydrate, including table sugar. In
fact, two slices of whole wheat bread increase blood sugar to a higher
level than a candy bar does. And then, after about two hours, your blood
sugar plunges and you get shaky, your brain feels foggy, you’re hungry.
So let’s say you have an English muffin for breakfast. Two hours later
you’re starving, so you have a handful of crackers,
and
then some potato chips, and your blood sugar rises again. That cycle of
highs and lows just keeps going throughout the day, so you’re
constantly feeling hungry and constantly eating. Dieticians have
responded to this by advising that we graze throughout the day, which is
just nonsense. If you eliminate wheat from your diet, you’re no longer
hungry between meals because you’ve stopped that cycle. You’ve cut out
the appetite stimulant, and consequently you lose weight very quickly.
I’ve seen this with thousands of patients.
Q: But I’m not overweight and I exercise regularly. So why would eating whole wheat bread be bad for me?
A:
You can trigger effects you don’t perceive. Small low-density
lipoprotein [LDL] particles form when you’re eating lots of
carbohydrates, and they are responsible for atherosclerotic plaque,
which in turn triggers heart disease and stroke. So even if you’re a
slender, vigorous, healthy person, you’re still triggering the formation
of small LDL particles. And second, carbohydrates increase your blood
sugars, which cause this process of glycation, that is, the glucose
modification of proteins.
If
I glycate the proteins in my eyes, I get cataracts. If I glycate the
cartilage of my knees and hips, I get arthritis. If I glycate small LDL,
I’m more prone to atherosclerosis. So it’s a twofold effect. And if you
don’t start out slender and keep eating that fair trade, organically
grown whole wheat bread that sounds so healthy, you’re repeatedly
triggering high blood sugars and are going to wind up with more visceral
fat. This isn’t just what I call the wheat belly that you can see,
flopping over your belt, but the fat around your internal organs. And as
visceral fat accumulates, you risk responses like diabetes and heart
disease.
Q: You seem to be saying that aside from anything else, wheat is essentially the single cause of the obesity epidemic.
A:
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all obesity is due to wheat. There
are kids, of course, who drink Coca-Cola and sit in front of video games
for many hours a day. But I’m speaking to the relatively health-minded
people who think they’re doing the right thing by limiting fat
consumption and eating more whole grains, and there’s a clear subset of
people who are doing that and gaining weight and
don’t
understand why. It causes tremendous heartache. They come into my
office and say, “I exercise five times a week, I’ve cut my fat intake, I
watch portion size and eat my whole grains—but I’ve gone up three dress
sizes.”
Q: You write that wheat is “addictive,” but does it really meet the criteria for addiction we’d use when talking about, say, drugs?
A:
National Institutes of Health researchers showed that gluten-derived
polypeptides can cross into the brain and bind to the brain’s opiate
receptors. So you get this mild euphoria after eating a product made
with whole wheat. You can block that effect [in lab animals] by
administering the drug naloxone. This is the same drug that you’re given
if you’re a heroin addict; it’s an opiate blocker. About three months
ago, a drug company applied to the FDA to commercialize naltrexone,
which is an oral equivalent to naloxone. And it works, apparently, it
blocks the pleasurable feelings you get from eating wheat so people stop
eating so much. In clinical trials, people lost about 22.4 lb. in the
first six months. Why, if you’re not a drug addict, do you need
something like that?
And
of course there’s another option, which is to cut wheat out of your
diet. However, and this is another argument for classifying wheat as
addictive, people can experience some pretty unpleasant withdrawal
symptoms.
Q: For how long?
A:
Generally about five days. And once you’re through withdrawal, your
cravings subside, your calorie intake decreases and your alertness and
overall health improve.
Q: So
do you believe food manufacturers are putting wheat into more and more
food products, not just bread and crackers, because it’s addictive and
stimulates appetite?
A:
These are not stupid people. The research showing that wheat stimulates
appetite didn’t come from some little alternative health practitioner.
It comes from the NIH. It stretches credibility to believe they have no
awareness of the evidence.
Q: If there’s all this evidence, why does the government encourage us to “eat healthy” by upping our consumption of whole grains?
A:
That’s the million-dollar question. Wheat is so linked to human habit,
it’s 20 per cent of all calories consumed by humans worldwide, that I
think there was the presumption, Gee, humans have consumed this for
thousands of years, so what’s the problem?” I don’t think the misguided
advice to eat more whole grains came from evil intentions.
Q: Wheat is a huge industry. What do you say to all the farmers who grow it?
A:
To me, it’s reminiscent of tobacco farmers, who would say, “Look, I’m
just trying to make a living and feed my family.” Nevertheless, tobacco
is incredibly harmful and kills people. It could turn out that if we
wind back the clock 100 or 1,000 years, and resurrect einkorn or some of
the heritage forms of wheat, maybe that would be a solution. Of course,
wheat products would then be much more expensive. Instead of a $4 loaf
of bread, maybe it would cost $7 when grown with a heritage wheat. To
me, it’s similar to free range eggs or organic beef 20 years ago.
Everyone said, “No one will pay a premium for those.” But people do. And
when it comes to wheat, my main goal is to inform people, including
farmers, that the prevailing notion that cutting fat and eating whole
grains will make you healthy is not only wrong, it’s destructive.
