All corn products: corn, cornflour, cornmeal products (chips, tacos, tortillas), grits, polenta, sauces or gravies thickened with cornflour, corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, breakfast cereals
Rice products: white rice, brown rice, wild rice, rice cakes, breakfast cereals
Oat products: oatmeal, oat bran, oat cereals
Amaranth
Teff
Millet
Sorghum
Then eliminate hidden sources by reading labels
Eliminate hidden sources of grains by avoiding the processed foods that fill the inner aisles of the grocery store. Almost all of these are thickened, flavored, or textured with grain products, or grains are added as cheap filler and/or appetite stimulants.
Living without grains means avoiding foods that you never thought contained grains, such as seasoning mixes bulked up with cornflour, canned and dry soup mixes with wheat flour, soy sauce, frozen dinners with wheat-containing gravy and muffins, and all breakfast cereals, hot and cold. (You will find lists of the hidden aliases for wheat and corn, in particular, that can be found in so many processed foods in Appendix B.)
This does not mean you will never have a crunchy breakfast “cereal” again or a salad topped with delicious dressing. You will learn to either make your own versions with no unhealthy grains to booby-trap your lifestyle or to identify the brands that have no grains or other unhealthy ingredients added.
Go Grain-Free Shopping
You have purged your kitchen of grain-containing foods and need to restock with new, healthy, grain-free alternatives. Go to the supermarket or the stores where you shop for meat, vegetables, and other foods. (Some of our detox panelists observed that they needed to shop at more than one store in their neighborhood to find all the starting ingredients.) One observation you are sure to make as you remove all grains from your life and carefully examine labels is, “This is impossible. Grains are in everything!”
Indeed, grains—especially wheat and corn—are in salad dressings, seasoning mixes, licorice, frozen dinners, breakfast cereals, canned soups, dried soup mixes, rotisserie chickens, soft drinks, whiskies, beers, prescription drugs, shampoos, conditioners, lipstick, chewing gum, and even the adhesive in envelopes. Wheat and corn are in virtually every processed food on grocery store shelves and in many cosmetics and toiletries, as ubiquitous as (how can I resist?) white on rice. (By the way, steal a look at the contents of other shoppers’ grocery carts and you will be amazed at the number of foods that contain wheat and grains. You’ll be hard-pressed to find foods that don’t contain them.)
It also means bearing some greater up-front grocery costs, since you are restocking much of your kitchen with new foods. Don’t be fooled, though: The increased costs of following the Wheat Belly lifestyle will not continue forever. It’s just part of getting started. Recall that, as you progress in your wheat- and grain-free lifestyle, food and calorie consumption will drop naturally. If your family follows suit, multiply the reduced food intake by the number of family members, and it all adds up (in the experience of most people) to reduced long-term costs or no increase—making no dent in your monthly food budget, despite getting rid of all the foods made with cheap filler and replacing them with higher-quality substitutes.
Of the 60,000 or so processed food products that pack the shelves of the average supermarket, your options will be whittled down to about 1,000, but you should never feel deprived. You will discover that the foods you’ve eliminated are nearly all variations on the same processed food theme: wheat flour, cornflour, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and food coloring, whether it was breakfast cereal, a pop-in-the-toaster convenience breakfast, frozen waffles, low-calorie frozen dinners, or crackers. They’re all cheap filler in the modern diet, dolled up with the glitz of modern marketing.
Start by not shopping for obvious sources of wheat, corn, and other grains and avoid the bread aisle, the bakery, frozen food freezers, the breakfast cereal aisle, and the internal aisles stocked with packaged foods. Confine your shopping to the produce section, the butcher counter, and the dairy refrigerator; venture into the inner aisles only for spices, nuts and seeds, laundry detergent and other household supplies, and dog or cat food (though you might consider looking for grain-free pet food, as well). You may wish to consult the day-by-day shopping list for the 10-Day Menu Plan in Appendix A to be sure you have the ingredients on hand to create the plan’s recipes.
You are aiming to achieve a diet filled with foods that are least processed. The most confident means of avoiding foods with grains is to choose foods that are naturally grain-free, such as vegetables, eggs, olives, and meats. That points us toward a solution, a policy that helps you easily navigate your new grainless life: Avoid processed foods that bear labels and return to real, unprocessed, naturally grain-free, single-ingredient foods without labels.
STEP 2: Choose Real, Single-Ingredient Foods
An avocado, intact in its skin, can be chosen with confidence, as no food manufacturer added grains to it. Eggs in their shell likewise. In other words, foods left more or less intact and unmodified by a food manufacturer should top your list of foods to choose from that are safe for your empowering grain-free lifestyle. Avocados and whole eggs are real—not fake, multiple-ingredient marketing conceptions of some food manufacturer—and there’s no chance of exposure to grains, added sugars, high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, or other no-no’s.
You will find the majority of real, single-ingredient foods in the produce section, butcher counter, and dairy refrigerator. Depending on the layout of your supermarket, you may have to venture into those hazardous internal aisles for some of your baking supplies, spices, and nuts, but do so while ignoring all the packaged, processed, glitzy, eye-catching products.
Avoiding foods with labels simplifies the task of label reading. Cucumbers, spinach, and pork chops, for example, don’t come with labels (except to display weight and date). Avoiding labels means you’ll be buying foods in their basic, least modified forms. Sure, the pork chops were sliced from a larger piece of the meat from the animal, but they should not have been changed in any other way.
This simple policy of choosing real, single-ingredient foods has served prior Wheat Belly followers well, served our detox panelists well, and will serve you well, particularly as you are learning to navigate this lifestyle at the start.
Choosing real, single-ingredient foods that are nourishing and don’t yield land mines in your Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox means enjoying unlimited quantities of the following:
VEGETABLES. Enjoy all the fresh or frozen veggies you want, except for potatoes (see “Step 3: Manage Carbohydrates”—unless you’re consuming the potatoes raw, as suggested in Chapter 4). Explore the wonderful range of choices: spinach, chard, kale, broccoli, broccolini, collard greens, lettuces, peppers, onions, mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, courgettes, squash, and so on. It may also be time to revisit vegetables you didn’t previously like because of the change in taste perception you will undergo when grain-free. Don’t be surprised if the Brussels sprouts you once despised now become your favorite. Minimize reliance on canned vegetables, especially tomatoes, due to bisphenol A, an endocrine-disrupting chemical, in the can’s lining.
MEATS. Choose from beef, pork, lamb, fish, chicken, turkey, buffalo, ostrich, and wild game. Consider pasture-/grass-fed, free-range, and organic sources whenever
