Wheat Belly
Listen up, South Beach people. There is a new diet threatening the South Beach stranglehold on the culinary options of the hip and fit in America. It’s gluten-free and promises to have, literally, pounds and pounds of flab melting away from our pathetic, over-nourished, under-exercised forms, plus promising to completely eliminate diabetes from its victims. It is called Wheat Belly, by William Davis. M.D. There is also a cookbook so you can have tasty recipes for eliminating wheat from your diet.
Whereas the South Beach mantra is to avoid all carbohydrates except for a limited amount of whole grains and lots of red wine, the Wheat Belly theory bans ALL wheat and wheat-containing products. When you really get into this book, you learn about all the ‘hidden’ wheat that is in today’s products – like the glue on envelopes and stamps, lipstick and lip balms, prescription drugs, soy sauce, oyster sauces, soups, salad dressings, Teriyaki sauce, soups, Jelly Beans and Starburst candies, packaged seasonings, deli meats, and on, and on. Start fly-speccing labels and you will find wheat in an unbelievable number of products that you’d never suspect. (Jelly beans, REALLY?) Yes!
When I was in pre-op at our hospital waiting for my knee surgery, the anesthesiologist came in to talk with me about my imminent surgical procedure. He saw on my chart that I was a long-term, insulin-dependent diabetic and on the “heavy” side. So he asked me if I had heard of the ‘wheat belly’ syndrome. I had not heard of it, but now I had a name for the bulge that I have been hauling around on the front of my belly since I mysteriously became diabetic and went on insulin He briefly explained the book’s philosophy and I asked him to write the name of it down on my surgical instructions because in my gauzy, hazy pre-anesthesia state, I might not remember it.
Paul and I have been noticing the crush of products cropping up on the grocery store shelves proclaiming to be “gluten-free.” Since less that 5% of humans have Celiac Disease and require a stringent gluten-free diet, we were surprised that so much attention was being paid to products being gluten-free. I even saw a sticker on a watermelon proclaiming it to be gluten-free, for Heaven’s sake! After reading about the Wheat Belly diet theory, it is now more understandable. HOWEVER. You need to beware that a lot of products proclaiming to be gluten-free are, in fact, full of lots of other stuff you want even less than wheat glutens – specifically sugars. Many of these products have replaced wheat gluten with things like potato starch, rice starch, tapioca starch and corn starches. These cause blood sugars to skyrocket and you will not lose the promised weight replacing wheat with these substitutes.
I ordered both the Wheat Belly book and the companion Wheat Belly Cookbook. So, I was off on a new discovery that promised to utterly change my life – I would ditch both my own ‘wheat belly’ and my diabetes.
I began by reading the book first. It was interesting, but pretty quickly slipped into tedium. How many ways can you tell people to stop eating all wheat and wheat-containing products. The beginning discussion about how the wheat we eat today is nothing like the wheat our cave-man predecessors ate was instructive. Hunter gatherers began gathering einkorn wheat and included many wild grasses and eventually began saving some of the seeds and planting them closer to their homes making harvesting them easier. Over the millennia, people hybridized this crop until we ended up with what we call ‘wheat’ today. Today’s ‘wheat’ is a super-hybridized and genetically modified product which is way different that the wheat Pillsbury marketed even 50 years ago.
Our bodies treat today’s wheat just like pure sugar. It exacerbates putting on pound after pound and causes our blood sugars to rocket up and down. The Wheat Belly goal is to replace everything ‘wheat’ with flax and nut flours, etc. This is where the cookbook is terribly useful. For instance, I made their recipe for meatloaf, and instead of using bread crumbs as a binder, I used ground golden flaxseed which is also super-rich in healthy omega threes. It turned out absolutely delicious and I ended up with no hidden wheat in our meatloaf. Ta-DA.
Next I made their recipe for the Kansas City-Style Barbecue Sauce which only uses a little stevia for sweetness. Paul and I have decried modern bottled barbecue sauces because they are often sickeningly sweet. Not only that, but if you read the labels on bottled sauces, high-fructose corn syrup is often the NUMBER ONE ingredient – coming in way ahead of tomatoes, or any other ingredients. These sauces are a chemical stew of things you really don’t want or need on your food. I tried cooking some pork spare ribs using the Wheat Belly version of the sauce and it was actually quite good.
So far, the recipes I’ve tried in the cookbook have been very good and we haven’t missed the wheat at all. In reality, you could keep all your South Beach books and just eliminate ALL the wheat and wheat-containing things listed in them. Its just basically good, healthy unprocessed foods. You would probably benefit from the Wheat Belly Cookbook because it shows you how to substitute the wheat in regular recipes with other kinds of things that will work the same. For instance, you’d need to substitute almond flour and coconut flour for regular white flour plus adjust the leavening to make a decent cake. The cookbook shows you how to do this and adjust the leavening so that you actually end up with a recognizable cake.
Except for the wheat products, this Wheat Belly diet is pretty much just like the Mediterranean Diet that is being touted by researchers as producing the best long-term health outcomes. You do have to completely give up pasta and bread, though. That can be a deal-killer. However, you can drink all the red wine your little heart desires and you don’t need to worry so much about fats. Healthy artery-clearing fats such as olive oil can be used liberally.
The book does become repetitive and boring after the first half. Paul and I both found that to be true. We quickly grew tired of the same things repeated over and over again sixty different ways. We came away from reading the book with a better understanding about the role wheat plays in contributing to obesity and diabetes and it made a lot of sense. However, you need to have time to shop for and cook all your meals from scratch. There are no pre-packaged, frozen, boxed, or restaurant meals that meet the stringent requirements for a ‘Wheat Belly’ diet.
So on Saturday night, we are having company for dinner and I am cooking an Italian Tuscan Chicken dinner, and yes I am serving lemony orzo pasta, and I will serve an Italian boule of Pane Toscano bread with it. We have not made the complete transition to no wheat whatsoever in our diet, and we probably never will, but we are substituting and cutting back where we can without giving up wheat entirely.
I am hoping over time my own little ‘wheat belly’ gets less and less. I’ll let you know, or maybe you’ll just notice.
Whereas the South Beach mantra is to avoid all carbohydrates except for a limited amount of whole grains and lots of red wine, the Wheat Belly theory bans ALL wheat and wheat-containing products. When you really get into this book, you learn about all the ‘hidden’ wheat that is in today’s products – like the glue on envelopes and stamps, lipstick and lip balms, prescription drugs, soy sauce, oyster sauces, soups, salad dressings, Teriyaki sauce, soups, Jelly Beans and Starburst candies, packaged seasonings, deli meats, and on, and on. Start fly-speccing labels and you will find wheat in an unbelievable number of products that you’d never suspect. (Jelly beans, REALLY?) Yes!
When I was in pre-op at our hospital waiting for my knee surgery, the anesthesiologist came in to talk with me about my imminent surgical procedure. He saw on my chart that I was a long-term, insulin-dependent diabetic and on the “heavy” side. So he asked me if I had heard of the ‘wheat belly’ syndrome. I had not heard of it, but now I had a name for the bulge that I have been hauling around on the front of my belly since I mysteriously became diabetic and went on insulin He briefly explained the book’s philosophy and I asked him to write the name of it down on my surgical instructions because in my gauzy, hazy pre-anesthesia state, I might not remember it.
Paul and I have been noticing the crush of products cropping up on the grocery store shelves proclaiming to be “gluten-free.” Since less that 5% of humans have Celiac Disease and require a stringent gluten-free diet, we were surprised that so much attention was being paid to products being gluten-free. I even saw a sticker on a watermelon proclaiming it to be gluten-free, for Heaven’s sake! After reading about the Wheat Belly diet theory, it is now more understandable. HOWEVER. You need to beware that a lot of products proclaiming to be gluten-free are, in fact, full of lots of other stuff you want even less than wheat glutens – specifically sugars. Many of these products have replaced wheat gluten with things like potato starch, rice starch, tapioca starch and corn starches. These cause blood sugars to skyrocket and you will not lose the promised weight replacing wheat with these substitutes.
I ordered both the Wheat Belly book and the companion Wheat Belly Cookbook. So, I was off on a new discovery that promised to utterly change my life – I would ditch both my own ‘wheat belly’ and my diabetes.
I began by reading the book first. It was interesting, but pretty quickly slipped into tedium. How many ways can you tell people to stop eating all wheat and wheat-containing products. The beginning discussion about how the wheat we eat today is nothing like the wheat our cave-man predecessors ate was instructive. Hunter gatherers began gathering einkorn wheat and included many wild grasses and eventually began saving some of the seeds and planting them closer to their homes making harvesting them easier. Over the millennia, people hybridized this crop until we ended up with what we call ‘wheat’ today. Today’s ‘wheat’ is a super-hybridized and genetically modified product which is way different that the wheat Pillsbury marketed even 50 years ago.
Our bodies treat today’s wheat just like pure sugar. It exacerbates putting on pound after pound and causes our blood sugars to rocket up and down. The Wheat Belly goal is to replace everything ‘wheat’ with flax and nut flours, etc. This is where the cookbook is terribly useful. For instance, I made their recipe for meatloaf, and instead of using bread crumbs as a binder, I used ground golden flaxseed which is also super-rich in healthy omega threes. It turned out absolutely delicious and I ended up with no hidden wheat in our meatloaf. Ta-DA.
Next I made their recipe for the Kansas City-Style Barbecue Sauce which only uses a little stevia for sweetness. Paul and I have decried modern bottled barbecue sauces because they are often sickeningly sweet. Not only that, but if you read the labels on bottled sauces, high-fructose corn syrup is often the NUMBER ONE ingredient – coming in way ahead of tomatoes, or any other ingredients. These sauces are a chemical stew of things you really don’t want or need on your food. I tried cooking some pork spare ribs using the Wheat Belly version of the sauce and it was actually quite good.
So far, the recipes I’ve tried in the cookbook have been very good and we haven’t missed the wheat at all. In reality, you could keep all your South Beach books and just eliminate ALL the wheat and wheat-containing things listed in them. Its just basically good, healthy unprocessed foods. You would probably benefit from the Wheat Belly Cookbook because it shows you how to substitute the wheat in regular recipes with other kinds of things that will work the same. For instance, you’d need to substitute almond flour and coconut flour for regular white flour plus adjust the leavening to make a decent cake. The cookbook shows you how to do this and adjust the leavening so that you actually end up with a recognizable cake.
Except for the wheat products, this Wheat Belly diet is pretty much just like the Mediterranean Diet that is being touted by researchers as producing the best long-term health outcomes. You do have to completely give up pasta and bread, though. That can be a deal-killer. However, you can drink all the red wine your little heart desires and you don’t need to worry so much about fats. Healthy artery-clearing fats such as olive oil can be used liberally.
The book does become repetitive and boring after the first half. Paul and I both found that to be true. We quickly grew tired of the same things repeated over and over again sixty different ways. We came away from reading the book with a better understanding about the role wheat plays in contributing to obesity and diabetes and it made a lot of sense. However, you need to have time to shop for and cook all your meals from scratch. There are no pre-packaged, frozen, boxed, or restaurant meals that meet the stringent requirements for a ‘Wheat Belly’ diet.
So on Saturday night, we are having company for dinner and I am cooking an Italian Tuscan Chicken dinner, and yes I am serving lemony orzo pasta, and I will serve an Italian boule of Pane Toscano bread with it. We have not made the complete transition to no wheat whatsoever in our diet, and we probably never will, but we are substituting and cutting back where we can without giving up wheat entirely.
I am hoping over time my own little ‘wheat belly’ gets less and less. I’ll let you know, or maybe you’ll just notice.
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