News Taffy

Every few years, scientists and doctors declare that some food has been found to be bad for your health. Despite ongoing research, Americans are becoming more obese and unhealthy than ever. I approached the book “Wheat Belly” with great skepticism even though my husband found it very enlightening.

After a couple of chapters, I began to identify with some of Dr. Davis’ claims. While I don’t think I suffer from an extreme wheat addiction, I experience gnawing hunger a couple of hours after eating cereal for breakfast and I know that a breakfast of pancakes or biscuits leaves me feeling tired and blah for several hours. I also realized snacks like pretzels or crackers didn’t satisfy my hunger. I now eat eggs most mornings and I seldom get hungry before noon. I’ve cut out most wheat based snacks and I have to admit I don’t miss them nor do I feel hungry all the time. I did all that long before reading this book.

Lets have a simple explanation of how foods raise blood sugar and how that affects your body. When you eat carbohydrates, like bread or cereal, the body converts the carbs into glucose or blood sugar. Your body then releases insulin which helps the cells to use the glucose for energy or to store it in the liver and muscles for later use. The insulin allows your blood sugar to return to normal. However, if you eat a diet high in carbohydrates, your blood sugar will go up and down all day, eventually wearing out your body’s ability to make insulin, leading to diabetes. The excess glucose is stored as fat causing weight gain and further impairment of your body’s ability to manage the excess sugar. It doesn’t matter whether you are eating whole grains or refined white breads and pastas; the fact is that carbohydrates or wheat products raise blood sugar more than simple table sugar!

I certainly never knew that fact. I checked several glycemic indexes to see. (A glycemic index is a chart showing how much a particular food affects blood sugar. The lower the index, the less it raises blood sugar and insulin levels.) A plain white baguette has an index of 95, whole wheat bread is 71, a Coke is 63, an apple is 39, broccoli is 0, most meats and nuts are 0 while table sugar is 59. Therefore it seems obvious that eating a diet high in carbohydrates, even whole grains, is not the way to go to achieve better health. I have said all along that a diet filled with plenty of vegetables, fruits and leaner meats that you actually cook yourself is the way to go.

Dr. Davis reports that many of his patients who came to him for heart problems also had digestive problems like acid reflux, frequent bouts of cramping and diarrhea which cleared up after eliminating wheat from their diet. He admits that replacing white flour with whole grains does lead to a reduction in colon cancer, heart disease and diabetes but that we should take things a step further and remove wheat altogether as the best treatment.

Next week I will reveal our experiment with eliminating wheat from our diet.