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"Modern Wheat a Perfect, Chronic Poison," Doctor Says


DonRocks

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I usually don't comment on these things, but it really seems to be getting out of hand. Given that the anthropological community recently (finally) decided to debunk the "paleo" diet as severely misprepresenting what our ancestors ate, I'll let the reader consider the difference between someone who publishes scientific research in a peer-reviewed venue, and someone who wants to make money selling books and related products. What ever happened to eat less and exercise? (Full disclosure: I study ancient agriculture and plant food use.) (And gliadin is not "new.")

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I usually don't comment on these things, but it really seems to be getting out of hand. Given that the anthropological community recently (finally) decided to debunk the "paleo" diet as severely misprepresenting what our ancestors ate, I'll let the reader consider the difference between someone who publishes scientific research in a peer-reviewed venue, and someone who wants to make money selling books and related products. What ever happened to eat less and exercise? (Full disclosure: I study ancient agriculture and plant food use.) (And gliadin is not "new.")

He does come across as something of a huckster, doesn't he?

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Alright, he does sound like a huckster, & I have been the first person to 'poo-poo' food sensitivities, because I think my system is iron-clad, & can digest anything, but after trying out a limited food diet (whole30, but I'm not hard core), I can definitely recognize that my body loves carbs(in the form of grains) & sugar, & if I cut them out completely, it's not as difficult to eat a healthy diet. I don't know that I would permanently give up potatoes, rice, or soy, but it hasn't been horrible to restrict them, & I'm sure my body doesn't mind eliminating excess sugar (other than fruit). The worst part has been no wheat in the form of beer, & my favorite is wheat beer...still haven't found a work around....

It's been comparatively easy to think about restricting certain foods for a limited period, compared to how I've been eating almost everything for a long time...

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Alright, he does sound like a huckster, & I have been the first person to 'poo-poo' food sensitivities, because I think my system is iron-clad, & can digest anything, but after trying out a limited food diet (whole30, but I'm not hard core), I can definitely recognize that my body loves carbs(in the form of grains) & sugar, & if I cut them out completely, it's not as difficult to eat a healthy diet. I don't know that I would permanently give up potatoes, rice, or soy, but it hasn't been horrible to restrict them, & I'm sure my body doesn't mind eliminating excess sugar (other than fruit). The worst part has been no wheat in the form of beer, & my favorite is wheat beer...still haven't found a work around....

It's been comparatively easy to think about restricting certain foods for a limited period, compared to how I've been eating almost everything for a long time...

I'm halfway through a whole30 too, and my experience is similar, though I'm not a big beer drinker. Crunchy savory stuff, which is usually grain based, is what I miss most. And booze.

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I feel like there is a difference between ingesting dried ground physical parts of wheat and drinking the yeast processed sugars which are extracted from grains.

I completely agree with you, but do I miss triscuits or tabbouleh? Not like I miss my beer ( but maybe that has to do with the alcohol).

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I completely agree with you, but do I miss triscuits or tabbouleh? Not like I miss my beer ( but maybe that has to do with the alcohol).

I was going to say that your diet is silly, but I just read about it, and its not only the alcohol that would throw you off but the sugar. Seems like a great reset.

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Strangely enough, I don't really miss sugar-I have my morning coffee w/ a spoonful of coconut cream, & when I had a taste of my favorite coffee ice cream (after being w/out sugar for 2 weeks), it tasted very strange- it's just a pain eliminating any processed foods that have added sugar (but I have used Worcestershire, sriracha, & a couple of spoonfuls of commercial mayo).

I don't feel comfortable changing my family's diet yet, I've been living on the standard American diet for years, so they still get rice, pasta, condiments. My son is particularly happy that I'm cooking large hunks of meat much more often (although I still prefer seafood & poultry, & don't know if I could ever embrace offal).

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I was apparently eating wheat before the transformation and was just as addicted to it then as I am now. I remember when our third grade class visited the Wonder Bread factory at 641 S Street, NW. The entire block was engulfed in the most intoxicating aroma I had ever encountered. Before departing, we received miniature loaves, which were good but not as memorable as the Hostess cupcake also tucked into the gift bag. Maybe not the best thing for you nutritionally, but Wonder Bread plus sugar and chocolate was about as good as any meal I had ever eaten. The pasta I was served at a young age in Italy was also habit forming, as was the pounded veal. I don't know what the doctor would have to say about adding sugar to the small shot of champagne served to toddlers on special occasions so that they can cultivate a taste for it, or the sips of beer I received from Germans at the age of four. Personally, I think potato chips are worse for your health than wheat, no matter what they have done to the kernels, but there is always at least one bag of Route 11 in the pantry. I am skeptical that you can cure yourself by pursuing immoderate diets. My health is not perfect, but I am not ready to lay the blame on bread (though I continue to be wary of corn syrup, based on what I have read, and avoid most prepared foods at the grocery store).

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Yay, fellow paleo folks! Interesting that I've never noticed a thread on paleo/primal eating in here before, yet my greyhound thread has one that's been going on for a couple of years now. :P

Strangely enough, I don't really miss sugar-I have my morning coffee w/ a spoonful of coconut cream, & when I had a taste of my favorite coffee ice cream (after being w/out sugar for 2 weeks), it tasted very strange- it's just a pain eliminating any processed foods that have added sugar (but I have used Worcestershire, sriracha, & a couple of spoonfuls of commercial mayo).

I usually eat primally, but I had noticed last month that I was heading down a slippery slope. Suddenly I was buying crumpets from Trader Joe's, or eating granola for breakfast instead of bacon & eggs so I decided to switch fully to paleo until I leave for my trip at the end of the month. I basically do what you do - I'm as close to a Whole 30 as I can be right now, but I don't stress if I throw a little butter in something I'm cooking or use commercial mayo. I thought giving up dairy would be one of the biggest challenges for me, but I haven't missed it (even my beloved cheese!) at all. Coffee has been hard (I don't enjoy it without cream or milk, but I decided to give it up for other reasons as well) and alcohol of course, but I'm allowing myself an occasional bit of wine, which is what I tend to drink anyway. Eventually I'll be a bit more relaxed, will drink coffee occasionally, and will probably work some dairy back in, but I needed something to get me back on track.

But in the meantime, I just feel fantastic. I had forgotten how great eating like this feels. And I'm spending more time in my kitchen and less in front of the TV, which is never a bad thing. More than anything else, I have ENERGY! No swings from caffeine highs to feeling lightheaded and low energy because I'm over hungry. Paleo rocks! :)

And the guy in that article may sound like a wanker, but I believe he's right on. I've seen so many people's lives changed for the better, including people with serious medical issues like the ones he mentions once they've switched to a paleo diet. I think until you've tried a Whole 30 for *at least* a month (more likely as many as 3 if you're older and have been poisoning yourself for longer or have particularly bad eating habits) you really don't know what you're missing. In the end, it's just eating whole foods - meats, vegetables, healthy fats, and fruits and nuts in moderation instead of processed foods, food replacements, refined sugars, processed grains, etc. How can that not be good for you?

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In February I stepped on the scale and was mortified--for the first time in my life, I'd broken the 200 pound barrier, weighing in at a hefty 203.4. At 5'10'', that's well into the "overweight" range and, frankly, I'd been feeling listless and shitty for weeks. My wife and I decided we needed a food plan, so we started something called the Healthy Transitions Diet, which is very much like the Whole30--no wheat, no "white" foods (rice, potatoes, past)", no sugar, no dairy, no alcohol). About the only thing we allowed ourself that Whole 30 would eliminate were a few Sami's Bakery flax and millet chips. The no alcohol thing was hard for this confirmed wino, but at the end of 10 weeks, I'd lost 26 pounds (wife lost 20+) and felt better than I had in years. After a few weeks, my procrastination (of years standing) melted and we finally joined or local health and aquatic club--I now work out at least four time a week and spend 45 minutes on the elliptical each time. It's now over six months later and I've started drinking a glass of wine every couple of days and have gradually been adding things like cheese, breads, and cream. I'm still down 25 pounds--thanks to vigorous workouts--but it's becoming more and more evident that the clarity and easy energy that came from the diet is being compromised by adding these things...so we're going tighten things up and see what happens.

All of this is to say that I'm definitely a believer. We had no idea how much better eating this way could make us feel.

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I don't think anyone is saying that eliminating processed foods and going low carb is bad for people trying to get out of a high processed food / sedentary lifestyle. The lies and misrepresentations are in the marketing, simply because Paleo or Primal sound a whole lot sexier than "eat sensibly and avoid processed food." The reality is that, unless you want to go with more than 70% of your calories from wild, collected plant resources and the remainder from scavenged meats that predators have left behind, eggs stolen from nests, insects, or small animal kills, you are eating like someone in a post-Neolithic agricultural society. What you choose to eat from the suite of human-selected, domesticated plants and animals is what matters.

Edited to mention that you can also go truly paleo with a marine-resource centered diet, but you may not want to do that out of the polluted waters here.

Edited again to mention that those wild-collected plant food resources were heavy on the grass seeds. AKA whole grains.

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Lperry, you're presuming that the paleo diet argues that you should eat exactly like our paleolithic ancestors, but that's not what it's about. It's about looking at what we are (still - because we haven't evolved in this manner from our ancestors) physiologically designed to eat and getting as close to that as possible in our modern day society.

There's also no hard and fast single "paleo" plan. The Whole 30's strict regimen is probably well known becuase so many people who eat paleo will do them at points in their lives and it's often recommended as a starting place to get rid of cravings and heal your body, but it's probably not sustainable for the majority of the population to eat that strictly long-term so even the Whole 30 people suggest if you really want something non-paleo and you feel it will be worth the consequences, you should have it. Primal, a very similar diet, allows even more leniency, including dairy and legumes and suggesting at least 80% of your diet be strictly primal.

JeffC, you hit the nail on your head with your comment about clarity. I intended to do a stricter paleo diet that excludes dairy, coffee, and (most) alcohol this month only to give myself a jumpstart, but now I'm not sure where I'll go. The clearheadedness without coffee and alcohol and my energy levels as a result of eating this way are just striking.

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I usually don't comment on these things, but it really seems to be getting out of hand. Given that the anthropological community recently (finally) decided to debunk the "paleo" diet as severely misprepresenting what our ancestors ate... (Full disclosure: I study ancient agriculture and plant food use.)...

Full disclosure: not my field of specialization, but relevant to something I used to do at least four times a year, FWIW.

One of the oldest objects that Western Europe links to its history of culture and art is the tiny, carved figure of a woman found in Willendorf. While descriptions of the paleolithic artifact interpret the highly regularized pattern on her head as braids or another sort of hairstyle, some scholars point to trace elements of pigmentation to argue more recently that this is a woven hat. Marsh reeds in a hunter-gatherer society, sure, but given other relevant data, this may indicate that the cultivation of grains goes back further in time in this part of the world than previously thought. Even The National Geographic has debunked the whole He-man Hunt Big Bull Eatem Nom Nom approach to the much later wall paintings at Lascaux given nearby piles of fish and bunny bones, seeds from berries, fibers from might have been nets used in traps, etc. In any respect, why we would want to emulate what kept such people alive puzzles me. Hardly a Golden Age. Give me coffee, fresh pasta, penicillan and the vote!

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Full disclosure: not my field of specialization, but relevant to something I used to do at least four times a year, FWIW.

One of the oldest objects that Western Europe links to its history of culture and art is the tiny, carved figure of a woman found in Willendorf. While descriptions of the paleolithic artifact interpret the highly regularized pattern on her head as braids or another sort of hairstyle, some scholars point to trace elements of pigmentation to argue more recently that this is a woven hat. Marsh reeds in a hunter-gatherer society, sure, but given other relevant data, this may indicate that the cultivation of grains goes back further in time in this part of the world than previously thought. Even The National Geographic has debunked the whole He-man Hunt Big Bull Eatem Nom Nom approach to the much later wall paintings at Lascaux given nearby piles of fish and bunny bones, seeds from berries, fibers from might have been nets used in traps, etc. In any respect, why we would want to emulate what kept such people alive puzzles me. Hardly a Golden Age. Give me coffee, fresh pasta, penicillan and the vote!

This is one of my favorite recent posts - so much to learn from it.

The hair apparently may have been "plaited."

There's much to like about aspects of a Paleo diet; more to the point, there's much to *dislike* about what what modern agriculture and chemistry have done to muck it up. Pesticides, herbicides, rodenticides, antibiotics, poisons such as arsenic, ammonia, benzene, BPA, cigarette smoke, carbon monoxide (and I'm still in the ABCs), all coursing through our bloodstreams whether we want them to or not.

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Absolutely....in my case, changing the diet was huge, but starting a regular program of exercise has made the biggest difference. It took a few weeks of eating well to bring me to the point where I was ready to exercise. I really believe that diet and exercise are mutually reinforcing--it's hard to eat a crappy diet and feel good enough to exercise daily, just as being a couch potato can encourages bad eating habits.

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