Wheat-free Lifestyle

[zylon]

Excellent review of Wheat Belly by William Davis, M.D. here:

http://www.proteinpower.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8483

[brad]

New study provides the strongest evidence yet that red meat consumption leads to cancer and cardiovascular disease, based on a study of 37,000 men and 83,000 women over a total of 2.6 million person-years.

http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/con...nmed.2011.2287

Even after controlling for other risk factors (e.g., smoking, sedentary behaviour), the researchers found the relationship held up. "We estimated that substitutions of 1 serving per day of other foods (including fish, poultry, nuts, legumes, low-fat dairy, and whole grains) for 1 serving per day of red meat were associated with a 7% to 19% lower mortality risk. We also estimated that 9.3% of deaths in men and 7.6% in women in these cohorts could be prevented at the end of follow-up if all the individuals consumed fewer than 0.5 servings per day (approximately 42 g/d) of red meat."

"The strengths of the present study include a large sample size, high rates of long-term follow-up, and detailed and repeated assessments of diet and lifestyle. All the participants were health professionals, minimizing potential confounding by educational attainment or differential access to health care."

[zylon]

"Bakers, restaurants and a prince prize a grandmother’s organic, heritage wheat"

Are people going crazy over Hastings’ Red Fife wheat flour just because it tastes different?

Its taste and texture are prized by bakers — bread bakers I know are particularly passionate about the Heritage Hard Red Spring Wheat.

But there’s another factor that’s making people seek out the heritage grain: a new book, Wheat Belly, by U.S. cardiologist William Davis, which zoomed to top of bestseller lists just before Christmas and which is still in the Top 20 on Amazon.ca.

In Wheat Belly, Davis makes the argument that everything from unattractive stomach bulges to diabetes, heart disease and stroke can be attributed to modern wheat, which, he says, has been hybridized into what he calls a “Frankengrain” that’s so bad for us, it should carry a surgeon general’s warning. The only way around the unhealthy outcome is to avoid wheat altogether, or to seek out the rare heritage breeds, such as Red Fife, that have not been altered, Davis says.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/...#ixzz1pEXrSBeb

[brad]

Zylon, that's interesting -- I've been using hard red wheat flour for my bread for several years now, and I love it -- I just am not sure whether "hard red wheat" is automatically different from dwarf wheat or whether dwarf wheat comes in different varieties, one of which is red wheat?

I can get organic red-wheat bread flour here, so that's what I use for bread, along with whole-wheat and some spelt flour these days. It makes a really nice tasting loaf.

[zylon]

Just off the top of my head, dwarf wheat is a softer "white" wheat; favoured by growers because of it's higher yield, shorter stalk, and shorter growing season.

I'll google around to see what I can find, and will edit this post if I'm mistaken.

Added: From what I've been reading, it isn't clear if the “dwarfing” gene can be applied to hard red spring wheat without altering the characteristics of the grain, changing only the stem. It appears that the process of “dwarfing” any variety, results in the creation of yet another variety. If that is correct, then any flour made from “hard red spring” would not have been altered genetically.

• Durum – Very hard, translucent, light-colored grain used to make semolina flour for pasta and bulghur.
• Hard Red Spring – Hard, brownish, high-protein wheat used for bread and hard baked goods. Bread Flour and high-gluten flours are commonly made from hard red spring wheat. It is primarily traded at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange.
• Hard Red Winter – Hard, brownish, mellow high-protein wheat used for bread, hard baked goods and as an adjunct in other flours to increase protein in pastry flour for pie crusts. Some brands of unbleached all-purpose flours are commonly made from hard red winter wheat alone. It is primarily traded by the Kansas City Board of Trade. One variety is known as "turkey red wheat", and was brought to Kansas by Mennonite immigrants from Russia.
• Soft Red Winter – Soft, low-protein wheat used for cakes, pie crusts, biscuits, and muffins. Cake flour, pastry flour, and some self-rising flours with baking powder and salt added, for example, are made from soft red winter wheat. It is primarily traded by the Chicago Board of Trade.
• Hard White – Hard, light-colored, opaque, chalky, medium-protein wheat planted in dry, temperate areas. Used for bread and brewing.
• Soft White – Soft, light-colored, very low protein wheat grown in temperate moist areas. Used for pie crusts and pastry. Pastry flour, for example, is sometimes made from soft white winter wheat.

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

[brad]

That's interesting! If so, it would imply that most good breads (at least breads made from bread flour) wouldn't be made from dwarf wheat. I certainly always use bread flour (which has more gluten) when I make bread, and I assume most artisan bakeries do as well...probably the big commercial bakeries and supermarket bakeries are using plain all-purpose type white flour.

[zylon]

Dr Davis addresses some of the counterarguments from the wheat lobby.

• “Wheat is not genetically-modified.”
• “Grains have been eaten by humans for thousands of years.”
• “Healthy whole grains have repeatedly been shown to reduce risk for diabetes, heart disease, and colon cancer.”

I won't quote any of his comments, as the text inside quote boxes is ducedly difficult to decifer after the forum upgrade.

Full blog post here:
http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/0...y-smokescreen/

[brad]

“Wheat is not genetically-modified.”

Dr. Davis admits that wheat is not, in fact, genetically modified in the modern sense of the term, since there hasn't been any gene-splicing involved. But then he says "But that does not mean that the genetics of wheat have not been changed. Its genetics, in fact, have been extensively changed using techniques that include hybridization, repeating backcrossing (to winnow out specific characteristics like short height or seed head size), embryo rescue (to rescue otherwise fatal mutations), and chemical, gamma ray, and x-ray mutagenesis (induction of mutations, used for instance to create the popular Clearfield strain of wheat that is herbicide-resistant). These techniques, as any geneticist will tell you, are far less predictable, less controllable . . . far worse than the act of inserting or removing just one gene."

Apart from the mutagenesis, I'd like to see an example of ANY cultivated vegetable, or livestock for that matter, that hasn't been subjected to these types of genetic modification. Tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, broccoli, cabbage, kale, etc. as we know them today are not found in nature. All of the cultivars we rely on for food have been genetically modified for centuries through human selection to preserve the characteristics we want and repress the characteristics we don't want. The cultivars used to produce supermarket tomatoes, for example, have been bred to maximize their ability to survive shipping, at the expense of flavour, which is why heirloom varieties usually taste much better.

I really don't think he has much of a case on this point, and I tend to agree with the critics who say that there's nothing about wheat that makes it addictive, it's the products like cinnamon buns, cupcakes, brownies, etc. that the food industry has made from wheat that are hard to resist.

[zylon]

{quote}My doctor has prescribed a low fat diet due to a barrage of tests that ended up showing I have a very fatty liver. I am overweight, have high blood pressure, IBS and acid reflux. In all the reading I have done on here, I keep seeing to add fats . . . healthy ones . . . to your daily eating. How do I eat these and also stick to a low fat diet to please my doctor? I am 59, female, and really need to try to get healthier.

Thanks, Denise

The reply with comments from readers here:
http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/0...-liver-is-fat/

~~~~~//~~~~~

The reason I think this “wheat-free” topic isn't going to go away anytime soon, is because of the experiences of those who do try this lifestyle.

It's likely the case that a healthy person under the age of 30 won't notice any difference if s/he stops eating food made from or containing wheat. By the time most people reach 40, chances are good that some slippage has occurred. I'm in reasonably good health for “an old guy”, recently had a full medical with all kinds of tests being done, so I was pleasantly surprised to notice changes for the better when I beat the wheat.

Some changes are noticeable quite soon; the first thing I noticed was that the craving for stuff in the bakery corner disappeared within a few days. Shortly after that, I noticed that I could once again go 5 to 6 hours between meals without snacking, and without symptoms of weakness, trembling hands, pain in legs; - which had been common before, if I didn't have some kind of snack every two hours.

According to the extensive studies done by the authors of “Life Without Bread”, the more serious conditions show gradual improvement over months and years. As I recall from reading the book, patients with full blown Crohn's disease were still showing improvement after 8 years of being grain-free and low carb.

[steve41]

While we are in the mood (i.e. trashing carbs), 60 minutes has a 'Sugar is Evil' segment on tonite.