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Book Review: Wheat Belly

wheatbelly“Did you know that eating two slices of whole wheat bread can increase the blood sugar more than 2 tablespoons of pure sugar can?”

Wheat Belly is a provocative book by William Davis, MD, a preventive cardiologist. He describes the extraordinary results his patients have achieved by giving up wheat and explains complicated science in simple terms, with a generous dollop of humour, making this book an easy read.

Davis begins by exploding the term “beer belly” attributing our record girths to wheat, rather than beer. He explains the long history of wheat, especially the last thirty years when wheat, without any tests of its effects on humans, was hybridized so it barely resembles wheat our ancestors ate.

Davis makes some amazing claims, based on years of research on his patients. He says, “ Wheat, because of its unique blood glucose-increasing effect, makes you age faster…..wheat accelerates the age at which you develop signs of skin aging, kidney dysfunction, dementia, atherosclerosis and arthritis.” He proposes, therefore, that going wheat-free is anti-aging.

He claims whole grains, including and especially wheat, mess with the brain, causing dementia and physical brain damage in many people. He explains how wheat wrecks havoc with our immune systems.

Dr. Davis writes about the pervasiveness of grains in our diets. He points out that several aisles in the supermarket are devoted to grain products. He reveals the power of the companies that manufacture and promote grain products and their profit potential.

My favourite quote: “One thing is clear: There is no nutritional deficiency that develops when you stop consuming wheat and other processed foods.”

The food industry and its cohorts (USDA, American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, etc.) suggest that grains are somehow necessary for health. Not true. For example, we don’t need grain to access B vitamins (added to baked products) because they are ample in meats, vegetables and nuts.

Davis claims that eliminating wheat makes it easier for people to fast, the ability of which is natural. When people eat wheat they need to eat every few hours due to their ride on the glucose rollercoaster and other factors. Eliminating wheat may be inconvenient but it is not unhealthy.

I have been virtually wheat-free since 2005 and my own experience is remarkable. I lost 30 pounds in two months. Acne breakouts that had plagued me for 30 years magically disappeared, never to return.

I continued to eat substitute grains like rye for a while. I soon noticed I felt better avoiding grains altogether. I do still eat some brown rice, about twice a month.  When I want to “cheat” I will have a slice or two of ciabatta bread; I am immediately bloated, gaining five to eight pounds after eating just two slices. This typical outcome makes it easy for me to avoid bread.

Avoiding wheat means foregoing most processed foods, which allows me to avoid other food culprits like hydrogenated oils, salt, sugar and artificial sweeteners, and chemical preservatives.

If you suffer from inexplicable medical conditions or the inability to control your weight, I encourage you to try eliminating wheat from your diet for a month. You may notice no difference, but I believe Dr. Davis’s book provides plenty of evidence that you will most likely feel better.

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Head-Lies: Headlines that Mislead

headliesLast week a friend sent me some links to a story trumpeting that vegetarians are not healthier than carnivores. She felt this story justified her meat consumption. I disagree.

I am not against eating meat. But I am against misleading information.

This story is a classic example of a Head-lie, a misleading headline: one that rings true but upon further investigation, it’s fishy.

First there are many significant studies that show otherwise, that vegetarians have lower rates of modern diseases like cancer and heart disease. In light of dozens of studies showing that reducing meat consumption brings health benefits, I would not change my life because of this one study.

In fact it wasn’t a study but a survey. Big difference. A study has a chance of following good scientific protocol, not that it automatically does; but a survey has little chance of being accurate.

Then there is the ambiguous definition of vegetarian. I once worked with a man whose wife was a “vegetarian”. When I met her I was surprised to see she was overweight and looked unhealthy in general, unlike the vegetarians I know.

I asked him about her diet. It turns out she was a vegetarian who hated vegetables. She lived on vegetarian pizza (hold the veggies!), cereal, Kraft dinner, frozen dinners, chips, crackers, soft drinks, milkshakes, ice cream and French fries.

No meat. But no nutrition. Grain-heavy, like feedlot cattle. Not “vegeta”rian, but simply a person who doesn’t eat meat! If the vegetarians surveyed ate like she did I don’t doubt the “study” is accurate.

I know vegans who shun animal products but they eat “fake“ meats like hot dogs and luncheon “meats” and fake cheese made with vegetable oils. They are full of chemical fillers, artificial flavours and colours. I call this stuff “unfood”.

I do eat meat. I know my meat. I know my farmer. My small servings of grass-fed beef and lamb are far healthier than a vegan hotdog or most veggie burgers in restaurants or in the freezer aisle.

I’m not a great fan of labels like vegan, vegetarian, or carnivore. If I have to choose a label for myself it is “flexitarian”. I eat a variety of foods, as I believe our bodies were designed to secure nutrients from many available sources.

Apparently there are 80,000 edible real foods (I don’t think of processed foods as real or edible in the sense of nutrition). About 3000 of those foods are commonly eaten.

Sadly the average North American’s diet is derived 90% from only twelve foods, including wheat, corn, soy, and milk, incidentally some of the most modified and processed of foods.

Consequently we are deficient in micronutrients: vitamins, minerals, phyto-nutrients. The ensuing malnourishment leads to all kinds of mysterious conditions and diseases.

Because mainstream medicine refuses to see the food-health connection they blindly treat symptoms with drugs. Many people still are in god-like awe of their doctors, despite their ignorance of food and any “medicine” other than what they prescribe.

Media collaborates by running head-lies like this one. People don’t know what to believe and eventually give up trying to understand. My advice is:

1. Broaden your sources of information. We live in the Internet age. Snoop around. Go beyond the first Google page! Sign up for a variety of health newsletters. Find opposing views and information and weigh it yourself.

2. Don’t ever change your life or your diet based on one news story. Investigate.

3. Read widely about both (or many) sides of issues. Coconut oil was once vilified as a heart-disease-causing-saturated-fat. When evidence began to emerge that coconut is actually more beneficial than so-called-healthy-processed-vegetable-oils, I was skeptical. I began to research it for myself and found much evidence supporting the use of coconut oil.

4. Remember that there is no single right way to do anything. What works for me may not work for you. In fact pharmaceutical medicines are allowed on the market if as few as one third of patients realize desired results, often regardless of side effects. (The other two-thirds may have no benefit, but still suffer from side effects.)

5. Try things. Nothing crazy. But if you’ve been plagued with something and tried everything the doctor suggests, what have you got to lose by removing gluten or dairy or sugar from your diet for a month?

I tried coconut oil. Now I use it in my cooking and baking, on my skin and to oil pull (swishing oil in mouth to improve mouth/teeth health). I stopped using all processed oils like corn, sunflower and canola, regardless of their health claims, which I’ve learned are simply marketing tactics.

Articles like the one heralding unhealthy vegetarians are often designed to get out a message, an agenda, propaganda for a product or industry. In fact, they mention that the study authors are suspected of working for the meat industry.

Be cautious. Don’t believe the head-lies!

Besides eating does not have to be so complicated. Food writer, Michael Pollan says: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

I like that.

My policy is:

Eat the Food, the Whole Food and Nothing but the Food.

Links:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/vegetarians-are-less-healthy-and-have-a-lower-quality-of-life-than-meateaters-scientists-say-9236340.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan

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The Real Estate of Your Plate

realestateoriginally posted October 27, 2011, Revised Oct 2013

Think about your usual dinner. Look closely at the food on your plate.

How would you describe the real estate of your plate?

Is your plate one big ghetto of factory food?

Or is it an estate of whole real food?

Food is a huge issue in our society. Billions of dollars are made manufacturing food.

Basic commodities are heavily subsidized. We all would like to think those subsidies are going towards ensuring small family farms avoid what seems inevitable: extinction.

The truth is huge corporations receive most subsidies because they run most of the farming operations in Canada and the USA. The small independent farmer is an anomaly and the few left aren’t making a living on the farm nor can they compete with the large companies.

Heavily subsidized commodities like sugar, wheat, corn, and vegetable oils cost very little so they are ideal ingredients in factory food. What little nutrition these foods have is stripped in the manufacturing process. Synthetic vitamins are added but they’re usually not as effective as vitamins from natural sources.

Machines spit out food products en masse. In the end the packaging is often the most expensive part of factory food, and truth be told, often as tasty and nutritious as what’s inside.

Then there’s the marketing. Words like “light” and “natural” and even, alarmingly, “organic”, have been rendered impotent by food companies using every trick in the book to fool their customers into believing their food is good for them and that it is good value. Sadly most people believe their hollow claims.

If people only thought about what goes into that box of cereal and what they’re getting out of it for $6 or $7 a box, they would be outraged! So many products are nothing more than a handful of different sugars with chemical flavourings and colours.  So-called “kids” cereal is almost pure garbage; you might as well feed them candy for breakfast.

Then we have the diet industry, also worth billions, that strives to convince us their products will help us not be fat. Their food makes us sick and sick leads to fat. The body, in its desperation to partition itself from all the toxins, stores those toxins in fat cells. I also think that’s why we feel so terrible when we’re losing weight. It’s part of the reason diets don’t work; it’s hard to stay on them when you feel so toxic.

Back to the plate. For me learning how to eat healthy food has been a lifelong process, requiring basic knowledge of food, what’s in it and where it comes from, how food affects the body, and how the body feels.

When I was young I was ignorant of the impact food has on the body. I scoffed when people said eating candy could make me sick. I had a stomach of steel and thankfully, a young healthy body that could recover from the abuse of a candy binge.

I remember confiding to the older ladies at my first job that I routinely had Rice Krispie squares and root beer for breakfast. I argued I was getting cereal into my body and I wondered why they were horrified. (I haven’t had root beer or Rice Krispies in my house in decades.)

As I grew older, I figured out that certain foods caused certain outcomes. My first daughter was borderline ADHD so I educated myself and found the most probable contributors were reactions to sugar and chemicals, including colours, flavours, and preservatives.

Without being too much of a food nazi I limited my children’s intake of those substances and therefore I was more conscious of my own consumption. My children grew up to shun fake food.

The real estate of my plate has evolved to a minimum footprint of three-quarters plant- derived foods including at least one raw vegetable.

I’ve found I feel better when I don’t have many grains. The grains I do eat are always whole, never white or processed. I’ve eaten brown rice for over three decades. To me, white rice is tasteless, like eating the box and about as nutritious.

The older I get the more important it is for me to ensure that my portions are smaller than they were when I was 20. The fact is if you don’t change your portions, you’ll gain a pound a year after age 30.

Paying attention to how I feel is also an important part of assessing the real estate of my plate.  I like peppers but they don’t like me. When I eat wheat I bloat like a balloon. A quarter glass of wine puts me into a coma-like state. So I avoid these foods, rather than taking drugs to handle my indigestion, as we are so often encouraged to do by drug-pushing television commercials.

I often consume meat-free meals. My plate used to always include a huge portion of meat; growing up in a meat-and-potatoes family will do that. We only need 30 to 70 grams of protein each day but most people in the western world eat far more. A hamburger patty is 115 grams; many people consume two or three in one sitting.

While there’s no question that having adequate amounts of protein is beneficial, for some reason we think more is better. It’s not. Too much protein triggers minerals to leach from bones and stresses kidneys and adrenal glands.

Animal protein is a good source of concentrated protein but it is hard for our bodies to digest, with many unfavourable “side effects” including making our body’s natural pH more acidic.  Some theorize that an acidic environment in our bodies contributes to many of our modern chronic diseases, like cancer, diabetes and heart disease. High protein diets may even increase the risk of osteoporosis and kidney disease.

Contrary to popular belief, there is protein in grain and vegetables. (All living cells are constructed of protein). They also contain fibre, vitamins and minerals, essential components of a healthy diet. Table of Protein Content in Vegan Foods

I urge you to pay close attention to the real estate of your plate. Hopefully it is dominated by a meadow of fresh raw plant food with no more than tiny enclaves of simple carbs (sugars and starches), meats and processed foods.

My observation is that unhealthy food or “Unfood” catches up with the human body eventually and that many aches, pains, diseases and conditions are preventable, treatable or manageable with improved lifestyle, including revolutionizing the real estate of your plate.

Believe me; living on an estate beats living in the slums!

 

Recommended Reading:  These are just some of the books about food I recommend.

Body for Life                              Harvey and Marilyn Diamond
Living Foods for Optimum Health            Brian R. Clement
Food Inc.                                  Karl Weber
Fast Food Nation                           Eric Schlosser
The Thrive Diet                            Brendan Brazier
The End of Overeating                     David A. Kessler MD
The Botany of Desire                       Michael Pollan
In Defense of Food                         Michael Pollan

 

Other sources:

 

http://exercise.about.com/cs/nutrition/a/protein.htm

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.htm

http://www.cornucopia.org

www.NaturalNews.com

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Book Review: In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

indefenceoffoodRevised July 2013

This New York Times best seller is a book that everybody should read but most probably won’t.  So as a public service, I decided to write a summary of it.  Here are some of the most profound ideas in the book.

 

Pollan starts by sharing this mantra: “Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants”.

 

He then describes “Nutritionism”: our idea of food broken down as individual nutrients and why that has become a problem for modern eaters.  We have begun to think of food as its parts: carbs, fats and proteins, totally missing the completeness of food and even its social implications.

 

Scientists typically study the individual components of food and are constantly baffled (or happy to report, depending on who is funding the study), that these parts are rather insignificant on their own.  Studies often totally miss the wonderful things that nutrients can do because they insist on studying them as if they exist in a vacuum.  Furthermore, when industry funds nutritional research, conclusions find favourable results for their products.

 

Some interesting facts:

 

  • ¼ of Americans suffer from metabolic syndrome (a combination of medical disorders that increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes).
  • 2/3 of Americans are overweight and diet-related diseases kill most people.
  • The more we worry about nutrition the less healthy we have become.
  • Despite our poor eating habits, western medicine is keeping us alive.  We haven’t reduced heart disease; we’re just surviving it because of the progress we’ve made in emergency rooms and developing certain drugs and surgeries that prolong our lives, but not necessarily the quality of life.
  • An estimated 80% of diabetes can be prevented by diet and exercise.
  • There is little will to prevent diabetes because tons of money is made selling diabetes gadgets and drugs and eventually, heart surgery; 80% of diabetics get heart disease.
  • When people from around the world come to North America and adopt our diet they begin to suffer from the same diseases that kill us: diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

 

The overriding message is to stop eating a western diet. Pollan offers this advice:

 

  • In general, avoid foods that make health claims.  (No matter how you look at them Froot Loops are NOT part of a healthy diet!)
  • Don’t eat anything your grandma or great-grandma would not recognize as food.
  • Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting.
  • Avoid food with ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than five in number and contain High Fructose Corn Syrup.
  • Shop the peripheries of the supermarket; stay out of the middle.
  • More radically, stay out of supermarkets, whenever possible. Shop at farmer’s markets or CSA’s (community supported agriculture).
  • Shake the hand that feeds you. Seek shorter food chains. It is most desirable to have direct links between growers and eaters. More middlemen equal more problems. Shopping this way takes more time, money, and effort, but provides more nutrition.
  • Eat food in season for more taste and nutrition.
  • Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.  Pollan describes how the proliferation of grains in our diet is killing us.
  • You are what you eat and what you eat eats.  Pay attention to the diets of the animals you eat and the way the soil is fed. Eat well-grown food from healthy soils. Pollan quotes Wendell Berry regarding the problem of monoculture, which dominates modern agriculture: “…as scale increases, diversity declines, as diversity declines, so does health, as health declines, the dependence on drugs and chemicals necessarily increases.”
  • We are omnivores. We need variety. Try new things for biodiversity.  The author claims that one of the problems we suffer in our modern society is lack of diversity. There are 80,000 or more edible foods on earth. Of those, 3000 are widely used to provide us with the roughly 100 chemicals we need to survive and thrive.
  • The average North American derives 66% of calories from just four foods: corn, soy, wheat and rice. Sugar is also significant in the diet, leaving little room for other foods. Billions of dollars are spent subsidizing corn, soy, wheat and sugar and billions more are spent on advertising products made primarily from those products.

 

More of Pollan’s advice:

 

  • Eat wild foods when you can, like lambs quarters and purslane, common “weeds”.
  • Be the kind of person who takes supplements. These people are more health conscious, better educated, they exercise and take multivitamins and fish oil after age 50.
  • Eat traditional, ethnic diets. Beware of non-traditional foods. For example: the way North Americans eat soy is not healthy. We eat too much and we eat it unfermented. Soy is also fed to cattle; they re incapable of properly digesting it.

 

How to eat:

 

  • Eat slowly. Stop before you’re full. Use a smaller plate.
  • Spend more; eat less. Americans spend a smaller percent of income on food than any industrialized society.  (Canadians are not far behind them).  Pollan says it is no coincidence that as spending on food drops, spending on health care soars.
  • Eat at a table.
  • Have a glass of wine with dinner.
  • Don’t get your fuel from the same place as fuel for your car (at a gas station). The same fuel (corn) is used in bio-fuels and most packaged foods.

 

There is no magic bullet.

 

If you never get the chance to read In Defense of Food, you now know the basics.  I hope you’ve found this information as interesting and useful as I have.

 

Eat well!