Easy Eats - March/April 2012

Discussing the dangers of wheat with a gluten-free audience is like preaching to the choir. Most of us feel healthier since cutting out the wheat. But what’s next?

» Gluten-free foods as they are currently manufactured, i.e., made by substituting wheat flour with cornstarch, rice starch, potato starch and tapioca starch are poor alternatives to wheat.

Let me explain: The only other foods that increase blood sugar higher than wheat are dates, figs — and these powdered starches. The gluten-free foods made with those ingredients therefore increase blood sugar to very high levels, leading to insulin resistance, accumulation of visceral fat, diabetes and glycation.

In my view, eating gluten-free foods containing those ingredients is no better than avoiding wheat gluten by eating jelly beans sprinkled with some B vitamins and fiber— sure, there are some healthy ingredients, but you’ve got a pile of jelly beans underneath it all.

We need to minimize our exposure to foods that lead to high blood sugar and weight gain. This means looking at gluten-free foods as indulgences. It also means trying to reconfigure your gluten-free foods differently so that high blood glucose does not result. You can do this by replacing high-glycemic index flours with ground almonds or other nut or coconut flour, adding more oils and replacing sugars with the most benign of sweeteners, like stevia.

You believe not only in eliminating wheat, but also in an overall reduction in carbohydrates. Why?

» If the Wheat Belly message were being delivered to slender, athletic, pre-menopausal females with normal blood sugars, then there wouldn’t be a need to limit carbohydrates after elimination of the most destructive of carbohydrates, wheat. But that isn’t what we have in the U.S. Instead, we have an overweight or obese, diabetic or pre-diabetic population. And the ones who don’t fall into any of these categories, more often than not, show early changes that lead to the pre-diabetic and overweight “stage.”