One of my Facebook friends linked an interesting article about the harms of wheat and I knew I had to share it with my readers.  I mentioned in this post why I decided to go gluten free, but I didn’t really dive deep into the toll wheat can take on your body.  Dr. Mark Hyman does a great job of outlining how wheat and gluten can not only make you fat, but are a major contributor to illnesses like diabetes and heart disease.  Dr. Hyman also discusses how the wheat we know today differs from the wheat of our ancestors.

The Super Starch

The Bible says, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Eating bread is nearly a religious commandment. But the Einkorn, heirloom, Biblical wheat of our ancestors is something modern humans never eat.

Instead, we eat dwarf wheat, the product of genetic manipulation and hybridization that created short, stubby, hardy, high-yielding wheat plants with much higher amounts of starch and gluten and many more chromosomes coding for all sorts of new odd proteins. The man who engineered this modern wheat won the Nobel Prize — it promised to feed millions of starving around the world. Well, it has, and it has made them fat and sick.

The first major difference of this dwarf wheat is that it contains very high levels of a super starch called amylopectin A. This is how we get big fluffy Wonder Bread and Cinnabons.

Source: Three Hidden Ways Wheat MakesYou Fat by Mark Hyman, MD

Overall the article is very eye opening about what you are really putting into your body.  Gluten contributes to bad gut flora, weight gain, crazy cravings, and even diabetes.  This article, along with other readings, have led me to consider an ancestral diet, much like the one followed by The Food Lovers’ Primal Pilate.  I received their cookbook from the library and cannot get over how beautiful it is as well as delicious sounding.  We’ve tried a few of their recipes and enjoyed them all.  More on this topic in the near future. Thank you Stacy for linking to this awesome article!