The contention is that consumption of wheat-based foods may result in visceral fat build-up, the wheat belly – not everyone is so susceptible – and avoiding those foods can normalise a persons weight, besides bringing good health into play and getting rid of chronically poor conditions which lead to all kinds of complaints and even diseases.
Wheat Belly, by William Davis, Publishers: Rodale
It’s understood that ages ago, Man developed from a hunter-gather lifestyle to a pastoral lifestyle and gradually began cultivating more productive grains but this transition in diet was not transferable to all of the populations, a number of persons could not handle the gluten proteins in such as wheat grain. Likewise with the pastoralists that also learned to depend more and more on milk products and in general this granted life on the plains and in deserts, where vegetation was scant. Again, a certain number of people were lactose (milk sugar) intolerant. Therefore, it is contended, a section of the Earth’s population have difficulties with these items.
To reach for more details about wheat and its origins, we learn from the book that along with Einkorn wheat, Emmer was one of the first crops domesticated in the Near East, widely cultivated in the ancient world, now a relict crop in mountainous regions of Europe and Asia .
Those ancestors of ours harvested indigenous plants and wild grasses and among them cereals, especially the semi-sedentary Natufians (around today’s Palestine region stretching out in the Middle East generally) and eventually a particular strain, einkorn wheat, was produced. As is well understood the development of agriculture, that is from harvesting grain (as wild grass seed heads) to cultivation of grain, proved a turning point for human civilisation.
The main difference between wild and domestic species is that the ripened seed head of the wild species shatters and spreads the seed onto the ground while in the domesticated emmer the seed head remains intact, making it easier for humans to harvest. This advantage was incorporated in the new wheats.
Like Einkorn and spelt wheats, Emmer is a hulled wheat. In other words, it has strong husks (glumes) that enclose the grains, and a semi-brittle rachis. On threshing, a hulled wheat spike breaks up into spikelets. These require milling or pounding to release the grains from the glumes.
Researchers have found that wild emmer wheat spikelets effectively self-cultivate by propelling themselves mechanically into soils with their awns. I quote Wikipedia: “During a period of increased humidity during the night, the awns of the spikelet become erect and draw together, and in the process push the grain into the soil. During the daytime the humidity drops and the awns slacken back again; however, fine silica hairs on the awns act as hooks in the soil and prevent the spikelets from reversing back out again. During the course of alternating stages of daytime and nighttime humidity, the awns’ pumping movements, which resemble a swimming frog kick, will drill the spikelet as much as an inch or more into the soil.”
This fairly simple technique took ages to develop and tells of just one complex instance of the intricacy of the organic mechanisms today’s scientists are grappling with and should speak volumes to those so interested in the cautions that need to be taken in genetic modifications as one change might trigger what result?
As with most varieties of wheat, however, Emmer is probably unsuitable for sufferers from wheat allergies or coeliac disease. “Celiac disease (or coeliac) is a condition that may develop in certain genetically susceptible individuals. People with celiac disease cannot eat wheat, rye, or barley. Proteins in these grains (and peptides derived from the proteins during digestion) initiate pathophysiological processes that may eventually lead to severe damage to the absorptive epithelium lining the small intestine. It appears likely that celiac disease is initiated by a mechanism involving immune response,” says Donald D. Kasarda, of the USA Department of Agriculture.
Mr Kasarda provides the following list:
– Spelt or Spelta and Kamut are wheats. They have proteins toxic to celiac patients and should be avoided just as bread wheat, durum wheat, rye, barley, and triticale should be avoided.
– Rice and corn (maize) are not toxic to celiac patients.
– Certain cereal grains, such as various millets, sorghum, teff, ragi, and Job’s tears are close enough in their genetic relationship to corn to make it likely that these grains are safe for celiac patients to eat.
American wild rice is sufficiently closely related to normal rice that it is likely also to be safe.
There is no reason for celiac patients to avoid plant foods that are very distantly related to wheat. These include buckwheat, quinoa, amaranth, and rapeseed oil (canola).
Some celiac patients might suffer allergies or other adverse reactions to these grains or foodstuffs made from them, but there is currently no scientific basis for saying that these allergies or adverse reactions have anything to do with celiac disease. A celiac patient may be lactose intolerant or have an allergy to milk proteins, but that does not mean that all celiac patients will have an adverse reaction to milk.”
It took many generations before bread was leavened with yeasts and in time the common bread wheat was given the term Triticum aestivum – today’s wheat seed.
Whereas at the beginning of the 20th century this wheat would be four feet tall grass, later, this similar grain had been changed to give emphasis to merits of increased yield, decreased production costs, large-scale production of a consistent commodity – all this in the period of fifty years till now.
“Small changes in wheat protein structure can spell the difference between a devastating immune response to wheat protein versus no immune response at al,” says the writer of Wheat Belly William Davies. Rice and corn are apparently harmless.
However, Davies contends, these tendencies dramatically increased in modern times, since about two generations ago, and the author places blame on the grain produced by over ambitious genetic modifications. This is contentious.
“Wheat strains have been hybridized, crossbred, and introgressed to make the wheat plant resistant to environmental conditions, such as droughts, or pathogens, such as fungi. But most of all, genetic changes have been induced to increase yield-per-acre. Also, production is geared in line with applications of a variety of synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and so on and there are varieties that have inherent capabilities to resist particular weed killers which allows application of weed killers that kill everything but the intended crop, the well know Roundup being one such. ( Monsanto product).
Therein lies the danger of unregulated genetic mutations of foodstuff brought into daily life by huge industries that are such big money earners their very size in terms financial reach and hold over agribusiness gives them a near monopoly on how farming is executed, and over what we eat.
The book Wheat Belly becomes something more than a guide to how some people can lose belly fat, to a criticism of how big businesses have wrested control over our lives to the extent we are just pushed along a path that they have cleared, another case of accumulated power overriding the little man, the man-in-the-street by the encroachment of large-scale multinationals.
The threshold of negative reactions appears to have heightened due to grains bred for productivity rather than quality content that relates to health. That grasp for profits is bringing into an unknown zone more people that are sensitive to gluten protein, as only one example. This seems to be indicated.
The human immune system is over-taxed these days. We’re more sensitive to pollens bringing hay fever, our own bacteria giving inflammatory bowel disease and even our own tissues bringing about multiple sclerosis.
More than that though, science has to look at the effect of the numerous inputs into modern diets and from pharmacy because the increased emergence of asthma and autism and the like among the young and the upsurge in elderly diseases so regularly reported in the media point at fundamental shifts away from sound health practices and the common denominator needs to be found.
Are we seeing indications of the problem here as exampled in the book Wheat Belly? Is the basic problem the complex mess and mix of hitherto little ingressed foodstuffs and additives and drugs that are having such a widespread negative effect on modern health? That would take us beyond the wheat problem but that, the milk problem and such as peanut reactions among the susceptible can be taken as pointers to the way through, which is a thumbs up for a closer look at how we ate and drank fifty years ago in times when we were content with a more earthly lifestyle.
