After you’ve removed wheat from your diet, what’s left? Remove wheat and you’ve removed the most flagrant problem source in the diet of people who follow otherwise healthy diets. Wheat is really the worst of the worst in carbohydrates. But other carbohydrates can be problem sources as well, though on a lesser scale compared to wheat. I believe that we’ve all survived a forty-year period of excessive carbohydrate consumption. Reveling in all the new processed food products that hit supermarket shelves from the seventies onward, we indulged in carbohydrate-rich breakfast foods, lunch, dinner, and snacks. As a result, for decades we’ve been exposed to wide fluctuations of blood sugar and glycation, increasingly severe resistance to insulin, growth of visceral fat, and inflammatory responses, all of which leads us to have tired, beaten pancreases that are unable to keep up with the demand to produce insulin. Continued carbohydrate challenges forced on flagging pancreatic function leads us down the path of prediabetes and diabetes, hypertension, lipid abnormalities (low HDL, high triglycerides, small LDL particles), arthritis, heart disease, stroke, and all the other consequences of excessive carbohydrate consumption. For this reason, I believe that, in addition to wheat elimination, an overall reduction in carbohydrates is also beneficial. It helps further unwind all the carbohydrate-indulgent phenomena that we’ve cultivated all these years. If you wish to roll back the appetite-stimulating, insulin-distorting, and small LDL-triggering effects of foods beyond wheat, or if substantial weight loss is among your health goals, then you should consider reducing or eliminating the following foods in addition to eliminating wheat. • Cornstarch and cornmeal—cornmeal products such as tacos, tortillas, corn chips, and corn breads, breakfast cereals, and sauces and gravies thickened with cornstarch • Snack foods—potato chips, rice cakes, popcorn. These foods, like foods made of cornstarch, send blood sugar straight up to the stratosphere. • Desserts—Pies, cakes, cupcakes, ice cream, sherbet, and other sugary desserts all pack too much sugar. • Rice—white or brown; wild rice. Modest servings are relatively benign, but large servings (more than ½ cup) generate adverse blood sugar effects. • Potatoes—White, red, sweet potatoes, and yams cause effects similar to those generated by rice. • Legumes—black beans, butter beans, kidney beans, lima beans; chickpeas; lentils. Like potatoes and rice, there is potential for blood sugar effects, especially if serving size exceeds ½ cup. • Gluten-free foods—Because the cornstarch, rice starch, potato starch, and tapioca starch used in place of wheat gluten causes extravagant blood sugar rises, they should be avoided. • Fruit juices, soft drinks—Even if they are “natural,” fruit juices are not that good for you. While they contain healthy components such as flavonoids and vitamin C, the sugar load is simply too great for the benefit. Small servings of two to four ounces are generally fine, but more will trigger blood sugar consequences. Soft drinks, especially carbonated, are incredibly unhealthy mostly due to added sugars, high-fructose corn syrup, colorings, and the extreme acid challenge from the carbonic acid carbonation. • Dried fruit—dried cranberries, raisins, figs, dates, apricots • Other grains—Nonwheat grains such as quinoa, sorghum, buckwheat, millet, and possibly oats lack the immune system and exorphin consequences of wheat. However, they post substantial carbohydrate challenges, sufficient to generate high blood sugars. I believe these grains are safer than wheat, but small servings (less than ½ cup) are key to minimize the blood sugar impact. In terms of mitigating wheat’s adverse effects, there is no need to restrict fats. But some fats and fatty foods really should not be part of anyone’s diet. These include hydrogenated (trans) fats in processed foods, fried oils that contain excessive by-products of oxidation and AGE formation, and cured meats such as sausages, bacon, hot dogs, salami, etc. (sodium nitrite and AGEs).
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 07:31:37 +0000
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