The average American consumes nearly 133 pounds of wheat each year. And new evidence suggests that cutting back has its benefits for your health beyond gluten sensitivities, the environment, and small farmers.
1. Lower Your Blood Sugar
The big message from the bestseller book Wheat Belly Total Health is that eating two slices of whole wheat bread can increase your blood sugar more than consuming two tablespoons of pure sugar can. “There’s just no way to deny that wheat raises your blood sugar to high levels,” says William Davis, M.D, author of forthcoming Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox. Over time, it raises insulin and creates visceral fat—the kind around your middle that’s hard to get rid of. The results are on a spectrum, depending on what other complicating health factors exist, but here’s what he can say, with certainty: “All pre-diabetics who drop wheat become non-pre-diabetic and the majority with type-2 diabetes can reverse or at least minimize their disease.”
2. Reduce Your FODMAPS
Some people have learned through process of elimination that they are sensitive to FODMAPS, short for Fermentable Oligo-Di-Monosaccharides and Polyols. They’re found in a variety of foods—honey, dairy, wheat, garlic, and onion, to name a few. According to Barry Sears, M.D., author of The Mediterranean Zone, other than true celiacs, 99 percent of the population doesn’t have a problem with wheat protein. It’s the FODMAPs in wheat that are often what set off gastrointestinal distress. Sears isn’t necessarily advocating we eliminate all FODMAPS, though. We need some of them for microbial diversity in the gut. “The easiest thing is to cut bread from the diet, which dramatically reduces the glycemic carb load that can cause increases in insulin levels, which makes some people feel sick.
3. Support Small Farms
If wheat is high on the list of what you consume, it’s possible you’re relying too much on processed foods—wheat lurks in some of the most unlikely places, such as salad dressings and soy sauce. “Wheat is a top three monoculture plant, along with corn and soy, and the more that we can introduce variety into the types of grains we buy, the more we support subsistence and small farmers and local producers,” says chef Richard Jones of Green Door Gourmet, an organic farm in Nashville, Tennessee. Jones suggests subbing wheat for some other grains with promising nutritional profiles, such as oats, amaranth, millet, quinoa, or sorghum—all of which are available as flours, too.
4. Give Your Thyroid A Break
Thyroid dysfunction stems from a number of causes, among them endocrine disruptors, iodine deficiency, and wheat consumption, says Davis. “We know that 50 percent of people who have auto-immune Hashimoto’s thyroiditis have antibodies to the gliadin protein in wheat. There’s good circumstantial evidence that this condition is triggered by consumption of grains,” says Davis. “Humans lack the capacity to digest the proteins in wheat, so the gliadin remains intact, which then increases intestinal permeability, initiating an autoimmune response,” says Davis. When the gliadin goes haywire through the bloodstream, the immune system produces antibodies that are tricked into attacking your thyroid.
5. Avoid GMOs
If you’re concerned about the safety of genetically modified foods, it might be smart to consume fewer wheat products. Here’s why: Wheat is found in many processed foods, which likely also contain refined starches and sugars. And since sugar, soy, and corn are top offenders in the genetically modified food category, this, in turn, means you’re simultaneously avoiding GMOs in your food. (For the record, the USDA maintains that no genetically modified wheat is in production.) So it’s not necessarily the wheat itself but everything else that it gets mixed up with that we should be worried about.
6. Improve The Soil
Organic farming emphasizes biodiversity. “Planting the same crop year after year—namely, wheat—in the same place may seem efficient, but in fact you’re inviting pests to make a long-term habitat,” says Eric Skokan, farmer and chef-owner of Black Cat Bistro and Bramble & Hare in Boulder, Colorado. “If you put a different plant family in place of wheat the following year, those same pests won’t come back,” he explains. You can also reduce weed growth, which is a drain on the soil’s nutrient profile. “Different weeds grow at varying times throughout the season. By rotating crops that don’t have the same growing season every year—wheat one year, quinoa the next—you disrupt the weed cycle,” he says.
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