of the undesirable changes introduced by geneticists into modern wheat, the health changes – health transformations – experienced by most people who say goodbye to wheat are often far greater than we’d predict. It makes for some of the most compelling success stories in weight and health you could imagine.
Gluten-free . . . and Other Blunders
A growing number of people are declaring themselves gluten free, thereby buying and consuming gluten-free foods.
Big mistake. Yes, it’s a very good thing to avoid the gluten from wheat. But this can take you down the path of gluten-free processed foods. Oddly, the majority of manufacturers of gluten-free foods have chosen to base their products – with rare exceptions – on rice starch, cornflour, potato flour and tapioca starch. While they may provide a reasonable facsimile of gluten-containing wheat flour–based products in taste and texture, they are among the few foods that raise blood sugar even higher than the high levels generated by wheat products. In other words, gluten-free multigrain bread or gluten-free pasta, from the perspective of high levels of blood sugar and its consequences, are poor choices as replacements for wheat.
So we should be wheat free and gluten free, but also free of gluten-free foods made with junk carbohydrates.
A bit confusing, yes. This was part of my motivation for adding the Wheat Belly Cookbook to the discussion, to help you re-create delicious foods without wheat and without the rice starch, cornflour, potato flour and tapioca starch of commercial gluten-free foods. The recipes presented herein are tasty, don’t screw with blood sugar, don’t trigger appetite and are truly healthy – a novel concept!
Lettuce and Cardboard?
For many people, the prospect of giving up wheat is daunting, even downright terrifying, especially since wheat comes with its very own withdrawal syndrome. Not only might you be deprived of something that yields an addictive relationship, but what foods will remain? Will you starve? Will you have to live on lettuce, cardboard and tasteless replacement foods?
Not at all. As many wheat-free people will attest, foods minus wheat are actually more enjoyable. A fundamental change occurs when you remove this addictive food: You enjoy food for its own sake, not because there is an appetite stimulant present making you eat anything you can get your hands on. Taste is heightened: You are better able to discern the nuances of foods, but also more sensitive to sweetness, with formerly tasty treats now sickeningly sweet. You are less hungry to the tune of 440 fewer calories per day; what you eat, you enjoy more since you are having less.
Foods can be wonderfully varied without wheat. In addition to beef burgundy and pizza, you can have muffins, biscuits, pies, scones and other former wheat-containing foods, made using truly healthy ingredients. These are among the 150 recipes in the Wheat Belly Cookbook.
What this is not is a gluten-free cookbook. No food manufacturer or author of a gluten-free cookbook I know of yet understands the principles of healthy wheat-free, gluten-free eating sufficiently to craft truly healthy gluten-free food. If you want to get fat and diabetic, develop cataracts and arthritis, and grow a belly full of inflammatory visceral fat, eat gluten-free substitutes sold in shops or follow the recipes in the newest gluten-free cookbook. So the recipes I’ve developed here are indeed free of wheat and gluten, limited in carbohydrate exposure – and truly healthy.
Quit Your Bellyaching!
‘Don’t you miss it?’ and ‘Aren’t you tempted to eat a doughnut?’ are among the common questions from those contemplating a life sans wheat.
If, by the end of these opening chapters, you aren’t eyeing your beloved multigrain bread or onion ciabatta with suspicion or outright horror, then I haven’t done my job. I see my role as exposing these arguments to the light of day for all to see, not just the tarted-up, hunky-dory version presented to us by those who profit from influencing the message. My hope is that, by the time you have finished reading the first few chapters, you will understand that not only is this creation of genetics research awful for weight and health, it is downright deadly. Removing it is . . . liberating. It’s the rainbow after the storm, remission after cancer treatment, viewing bright colours after a lifetime of blindness.
Be sure to read the success stories that I’ve peppered throughout the recipe section detailing many of the compelling tales of health and weight turnarounds that have come my way ever since this message has gained an international audience. Read real stories of dramatic weight loss, relief from crippling health conditions, transformations of children’s behaviours – all from people denying themselves the effects of this creation of modern genetics research called wheat.
Health, Weight and Life the Wheat Belly Way
Let’s begin by surveying the wheat landscape. We find that it is no longer a field of beautiful ‘amber waves of grain’, but a field of something different. It is also a battleground of obesity, diabetes and legions of people who have succumbed to its effects.
We begin the discussion on modern wheat in three parts.
Frankengrain
Agricultural scientists have stitched the genetics of this thing together, concocted from extensive, sometimes bizarre experiments to increase yield-per-acre of wheat.
How has it changed? Just as the Frankenstein monster, the creature created with body parts woven together in a laboratory, terrorized the countryside, so this Frankengrain has worked its way onto your kitchen table, doing its dirty deeds on your health. This gets a bit complicated, but you will discover that the deeper we dig, the worse it gets. You will gain an understanding of just how far off course this thing has been taken from its natural state.
Why does my stomach hurt? And why do my joints ache, and my bowels rumble, and my feet swell and my. . .?
It’s not wheat. At least it’s not the wheat of 1950, and certainly not the wheat of centuries past. It’s no more wheat than rapper Snoop Dogg is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
This creation of the genetics laboratory is different, altered in fundamental ways that increase appetite, ignite inflammation, grow visceral fat, skyrocket blood sugar, destroy intestinal and joint health and wreak a long list of other havoc on health and metabolism.
Welcome to the Wonderful State of Wheatlessness
If consuming modern wheat makes us fat and destroys our health, then removing it should undo the entire mess . . . and it does!
Remove sugar and you lose a few pounds and blood sugar trends down. Remove wheat and joints feel better, acid reflux goes away, rashes disappear, mental ‘fog’ disappears, energy increases, sleep is deeper, food obsessions are gone, asthma improves or disappears, leg swelling shrinks – oh, and you lose a few pounds and blood sugar trends down. Nothing – nothing – matches the health impact of losing the wheat, the ‘healthy whole grains’, in your diet.
We go one step further: If you eliminate wheat, health and weight are not necessarily ideal if you continue to consume soft drinks, gumdrops and their dietary equivalents. So we also discuss why limiting non-wheat carbohydrates is important, too, especially if you are trying
