Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health / William Davis

I can’t remember where I saw the review for this. Somehow it caught my eye, but in retrospect I’m not sure why. I've already had the sermon on the ubiquity of corn in our diet from Michael Pollan. In the opening chapters of Wheat Belly, William Davis explains how wheat has been so radically hybridized and modified in the last half of the twentieth century, that it little resembles the grain that our grandparents consumed and used as flour. The “wonder wheat” that grows with tremendous yields worldwide is a gen-modified stubby dwarf variety that is resistant to disease, winds and stormfall (no amber waves of grain anymore) and will not grow without generous allotments of chemical fertilizer (no surprise there). No studies have ever been conducted on this superwheat’s compatibility with human digestion, since its fundamental makeup is radically different from its forebears. Davis suggests that eliminating wheat, all wheat, from our diet has manifold benefits, even for those who are not suffering from celiac disease or pronounced gluten intolerance. He gives some stunning examples of people with grim health profiles who were cured by eliminating wheat from their diet.

Reading this after overindulging in Christmas cookies, I started to contemplate what it would take to purge wheat from my diet. Ultimately I think this title is more of a diet book than a scientific study. Parts were interesting, but some was too technical for my liking, and it was repetitive. I think the best advice I’ve gleaned from books on food and nutrition is the first line from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” Perhaps after reading this I should add “eat plants your grandmother would have recognized”. Or, just eat your vegetables! We've all heard that before.

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