Wheat Threatens All Humans, New Research Shows

[Cora McGuire]

Bread lovers beware! Gluten-free diets may not just be a trendy choice but something everyone should follow. New research reveals that proteins in wheat may be detrimental to all humans.

“Gluten-free” seems to be appearing just about everywhere these days, from restaurant menus to grocery store shelves and even on cosmetics labels. And with good reason. The gluten-free market is exploding. Packaged Facts, a market research company estimated that the gluten-free market in the United States was $4.2 billion last year and predicts an expansion to $6.6 billion by 2017.

In a recent Time Magazine article entitled: “Why We’re Wasting Billions on Gluten-Free Foods,” business writer Martha C. White puzzled over this seemingly baseless trend, stating: “As food fads go, though, this one’s not only enormous: It’s enormously expensive—and many of us paying a premium to avoid gluten are doing so without any legitimate medical reason.”

The article goes on to describe how less than 1% of Americans suffer from celiac disease, an autoimmune disease triggered by gluten consumption and how as many as 1 in 16 Americans may have a significant sensitivity to gluten, a disease for which the term “non-celiac gluten sensitivity” was recently developed by an expert panel of gluten researchers and clinicians.

No doubt it is in the best interest of these two groups to avoid consuming gluten, a protein found in wheat as well as barley, rye, and spelt products. But is the statistic that as many as 29% of Americans admit to trying to maintain a gluten-free diet simply an indication of their desire to remain trendy? If in fact only a small fraction of Americans actually have a medical condition exacerbated by gluten consumption, what could explain the overwhelming traction of the gluten-free movement?

A Google search for gluten-free websites produces over 7.5 million returns with many of these sites populated by incredible testimonials of miraculous improvements following the adoption of a gluten-free diet in a wide range of medical issues including headaches, joint pain, skin disorders, epilepsy, depression, insomnia, and ADHD, to name a few. If we are to believe that only a small number of us should avoid gluten, does that relegate these personal triumphs from a dietary change to simply a placebo effect?

Good science would mandate that we should consider the possibility that something else may happen when a person chooses to eliminate wheat that may have nothing to do with reactivity to gluten.

While gluten makes up the lion’s share of protein in wheat, research reveals that modern wheat is capable of producing more than 23,000 different proteins, any one of which could trigger a potentially damaging inflammatory response. One protein in particular is wheat germ agglutinin (WGA). WGA is classified as a lectin—a term for a protein produced by an organism to protect itself from predation.

All grains produce lectins, which selectively bind to unique proteins on the surfaces of bacteria, fungi, and insects. These proteins are found throughout the animal kingdom. One protein in particular for which WGA has an extremely high affinity is N-Acetylglucosamine. N-Acetylglucosamine richly adorns the casing of insects and plays an important role in the structure of the cellular walls of bacteria. More importantly, it is a key structural component in humans in a variety of tissues, including tendons, joint surfaces, cartilage, the lining of the entire digestive tract, and even the lining of the hundreds of miles of blood vessels found within each of us.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...rch-shows.html

[Breanna]

I tried baking gluten free bread for a few months and it never came out right no matter what I did to the recipe. I just don't believe that proper bread can be made without gluten. I use spelt for baking bread now, which is an ancient form of wheat and is supposed to be better for health. It is pretty good, though still not as good as wheat bread. We used to exclusively eat white bread and white pasta (from wheat), but now we only eat that on special occasions. It has been really hard for us, we love traditional Italian bread, which was made from (white) wheat. I don't understand how something that tastes so good can be so bad Now I use spelt flour for loaf bread and brown rice flour for pizza, muffins, pancakes, and waffles. We find that these taste better than whole wheat, but not as good as white wheat.

[MrsHull88]

Originally Posted by Breanna

I tried baking gluten free bread for a few months and it never came out right no matter what I did to the recipe. I just don't believe that proper bread can be made without gluten. I use spelt for baking bread now, which is an ancient form of wheat and is supposed to be better for health. It is pretty good, though still not as good as wheat bread. We used to exclusively eat white bread and white pasta (from wheat), but now we only eat that on special occasions. It has been really hard for us, we love traditional Italian bread, which was made from (white) wheat. I don't understand how something that tastes so good can be so bad Now I use spelt flour for loaf bread and brown rice flour for pizza, muffins, pancakes, and waffles. We find that these taste better than whole wheat, but not as good as white wheat.

I'm going to have to try out the spelt, My family loves their white bread/pasta and is resistant to whole wheat so the spelt may be a happy medium.

[Lucian A.]

I'm confident most people's diets would see a far higher percentage of meat if it weren't so expensive, forcing shitty, cheap, heavily subsidized grain products to be the commoners' food by default, who consequently get fat and sick and don't know why.

BTW, add 'vegan' to the list of word utterances you should get punched for.

[Breanna]

Originally Posted by Lucian A.

I'm confident most people's diets would see a far higher percentage of meat if it weren't so expensive, forcing shitty, cheap, heavily subsidized grain products to be the commoners' food by default, who consequently get fat and sick and don't know why.

BTW, add 'vegan' to the list of word utterances you should get punched for.

Yes, meat is the most expensive part of most people's grocery budgets by far. When we were eating meat twice a day we felt so much more energetic and full of life. We have had to cut back on it because of budget constraints, and now we can only have meat twice a week, getting protein from cheaper sources like milk, chickpeas, beans, eggs, etc. We definitely feel the difference.

[Breanna]

Originally Posted by MrsHull88

I'm going to have to try out the spelt, My family loves their white bread/pasta and is resistant to whole wheat so the spelt may be a happy medium.

Yes, I suggest you try it. My husband and I both love white bread and pasta and we hate the whole wheat. Spelt is pretty good but it's way more expensive than wheat flour. It has a kind of sweeter flavour so don't use much sugar in it (I only put 1/2 tsp to feed the yeast).