What Is The Problem With Wheat?

Let us remind ourselves as to what this new series is about.

This new series is devoted to helping you make better food choices in order to live a long and healthy life.

In the previous article, we looked at how to eat for your age.

Before we get to what a gluten-free lifestyle looks like, let’s talk about the problem with wheat.

A little history lesson…

Wheat is a grass that has been around for thousands of years. Our ancestors crushed the fresh wheat kernel (the seed) in order to bake bread. This old wheat was called “Einkorn”.

But then…

In the 1960s and 1970s, people began to realize that the wheat they were eating was making them sick. The roots of this issue were to be found in what we could describe as “progress”.

In the 1960s, however, the goal for hybridizing wheat was to end world hunger. The modern wheat was developed in a lab so it could grow faster and be easier to harvest.

It is important to note that modern wheat is a hybrid; it is not a genetically modified organism (GMO). The scientists probably thought they would give Nature a helping hand with the hybridization process that was Her domain to begin with.

Industrialization, with its mass production techniques, has been useful in giving us many things to make our lives easier and better. Healthy food doesn’t appear to be one of those things.

Did you know that in 1870, the steel roller mill allowed wheat to be separated and refined into a white powder, namely, white flour? This new processed food was considered to be fancy. The trouble was, and still is, it was completely devoid of any nutrition.

Fast forward 50 or so years later, and you find out that the number of people diagnosed with coeliac disease has quadrupled. One percent of the population suffers from the disease and the number is rising.

So what is the problem with wheat?

More and more people are becoming sensitive or intolerant to modern wheat.

The problem with modern wheat is that besides our eating so much more of it, the amount of concentrated gluten in modern wheat has increased. The gluten is stripped of all the good nutrients and the rest is bleached. Not to mention being sprayed with pesticides before harvest!

Registered Dietitian Anne Buzzelli identifies three problems with modern wheat:

Problem #1: “Rogue” proteins

I am all for including protein in your daily food intake – it is a must.

However, it seems that not all proteins are good for us. Gluten is indeed one of those. One particular protein is very difficult to digest. It goes a specific name: gliadin.

By the way, modern wheat has been shown to contain unfamiliar proteins. A whopping 5% of proteins are not found in either of its parents brought together through hybridization.

The result is a brand new “food” which, technically speaking, cannot really be called “wheat”.

The human body has never come across these proteins in all of its evolution. They were introduced into the food chain about 50 or 60 years ago. That is not enough time for the body to adapt if necessary.

Problem #2: Toxic compounds

Speaking of proteins that are bad for the human body, Buzzelli tells us that there are 60 toxic forms of gluten, the most toxic being a common coeliac trigger called “Alpha-gliadin”.

Problem #3: We eat so much more of it nowadays

Wheat is everywhere. We have been sold the idea that eating whole wheat products is good for us.

Remember the marketing push about 20 years ago with that lovely-tasting waxy yellow substance called – “margarine”?

We do know better now, don’t we? It’s a trans fat…

Can a gluten-free diet benefit you?

A gluten-free diet can be tried for different reasons (including weight loss) by some, while it is an absolute necessity for others. If you have been diagnosed with coeliac disease or if you are gluten sensitive/intolerant, it would be necessary to change your diet completely.

Whether you have gluten sensitivity/intolerance, coeliac disease or not, you will benefit from eliminating wheat and gluten from your diet.

Some additional points you might wish to consider:

• wheat has a high glycemic index (GI),
• wheat is addictive (contains gluteo-morphin!!! [hyphenation and emphasis is mine]),
• wheat causes hunger every 2 hours,
• wheat is inflammatory.

One final point to consider. The gluten in wheat (usually) has been shown to be responsible for over 200 health issues related to the body and mind. One of those issues is a leading cause of death in the US and affects more than 23 million people.

It is referred to as “Autoimmune Disease”.

In the next article we will look at what a gluten-free diet looks like.

Meanwhile, do check out this docuseries to learn more about being the healthiest you can be!

Food, Health, & You will teach you how to potentially reverse many lifestyle diseases while feeling great and having more energy.

PS: As an aside, have you noticed that when you search online for nutrition-related topics, most of the results on the first page point you to a “registered dietitian”?

Is it me, or have the search algorithms changed?

PPS: Buzzelli describes what she teaches in her online course as “heresy”.

The Greek word for “heresy” is hairesis, which means choice. Naturally her use of the word relates to the way in which it is used by the orthodoxy.

You CAN choose.

Sources:

Anne Buzzelli MS RD, Get Out of the Gluten Glut (Part 1): Get to Know Gluten. Located at Udemy.com (online), https://www.udemy.com/course/glutenglut/ [accessed July 25, 2022] (Note: I do not get any financial compensation for mentioning Ms. Buzzelli in this article)