A Perfect, Chronic Poison

[_sock puppet]

"The whiter the bread, the sooner your dead"

Sounds like something the KKK Grand Imperial Wizard might have said in warning to some black men in Mississippi.

[_Doctor Lars C Umlaut]

Hola, amigos.

I expect to have the time to address some specific posts in the very near future, but in the meantime I wanted to pass along a YouTube video a fellow MDB'er shared with me. It's an hour-long lecture given by William Davis (Wheat Belly author) that covers a lot of the same ground as this thread. I don't intend this video to serve as my response to anyone or anything like that (an hour is quite an investment of time, I realize); I just thought it was really interesting and thought some of you might, too. If you do take the time to watch it, I'd love to hear your opinion of Davis's presentation.

Wheat: The UNhealthy Whole Grain

Happy New Year's, all!

[_lulu]

Hola, amigos.

I expect to have the time to address some specific posts in the very near future, but in the meantime I wanted to pass along a YouTube video a fellow MDB'er shared with me. It's an hour-long lecture given by William Davis (Wheat Belly author) that covers a lot of the same ground as this thread. I don't intend this video to serve as my response to anyone or anything like that (an hour is quite an investment of time, I realize); I just thought it was really interesting and thought some of you might, too. If you do take the time to watch it, I'd love to hear your opinion of Davis's presentation.

Wheat: The UNhealthy Whole Grain

Happy New Year's, all!

I only listened to about 20 seconds and got turned off.

Does he define what he means by "whole wheat?"

Does he mean the wheat kernels that I boil and eat for a carb with my meal?

He includes "two slices of whole wheat bread," but I would agree that what is being commercially sold as "whole wheat bread" has precious little whole wheat in it.

Would he include the whole wheat bread I made for myself which really does have a whole lot of whole wheat in it?

He gets down to processed wheat pretty darn fast.

Is it processed wheat (genetically modified or otherwise, leaving aside you are going to have to go back thousands and thousands of years to find wheat that has not been genetically modified) the produces the deleterious effects? And I'm open to processed wheat having deleterious effects.

Seriously, if this guy wants credibility with an audience of scientifically aware non-scientists, he needs a way better opening.

[_TrashcanMan79]

Does he define what he means by "whole wheat?"

I don't mind admitting I'm a noob to a lot of what's been discussed in this thread, so pardon what might be a stupid question, but, are there multiple understandings of what constitutes "whole wheat"? I thought it was just wheat with nothing removed (unlike, say, the bran and germ that are removed from wheat to produce white flour), and I guess I've kinda assumed that that's what everyone means when they mention whole wheat. Am I missing something?

[_lulu]

Am I missing something?

Yes.

[_TrashcanMan79]

Am I missing something?

Yes.

Maybe I should have asked, "What am I missing?"

[_lulu]

Am I missing something?

Yes.

Maybe I should have asked, "What am I missing?"

lol.

There's a big difference between boiled wheat kernels (it would be hard to argue that they're not whole wheat, its what's in your food storage only it isn't even ground up when I eat it) and what gets marketed as whole wheat bread which could be as much as 49% (or more if you are a bread marketer who likes to live on the edge) white flour. Here's a website with suggestions on how bread manufacturers can finese the very few regulations about what they can call whole wheat (charge more and sell it to the health conscious crowd) and what can only be marketed as white bread (ever used white bread as a insult?)

http://www.wholegrainscouncil.org/whole ... t-guidance

I would agree that most of what is marketed as whole wheat bakery products are bad for you just like white bread is bad for you, because hey, they damn near are white bread.

I'd even go so far as to say that white flour might well be involved in increased rates of diabetes and cardio-vascular as well as gastrological diseases. Stay away from that stuff, it'll kill you.

But is the bookseller, er, I mean good doctor, saying that I shouldn't eat boiled wheat kernels as one of my carbs? That I'm poisoning myself?

If I make my own wheat bread of say 75% whole wheat flour that I ground myself and 25% white flour, am I poisoning myself? (For chemical reason I don't understand, it is difficult for us laymen to bake a good loaf of 100% whole wheat, you need at least some white flour).

The good doctor starts off by conflating 100% unprocessed wheat with bagels made from 100% white flour.

Not a good beginning IMHO.

[_Droopy]

"All grain is ordained for the use of man... to be the staff of life..."

"All grain is good for the food of man..."

"...wheat for man..."

-D&C Section 89

Modern wheat a "perfect, chronic poison," doctor says ~ CBSNews.com

Davis said that the wheat we eat these days isn't the wheat your grandma had: "It's an 18-inch tall plant created by genetic research in the '60s and '70s," he said on "CBS This Morning." "This thing has many new features nobody told you about, such as there's a new protein in this thing called gliadin. It's not gluten. I'm not addressing people with gluten sensitivities and celiac disease. I'm talking about everybody else because everybody else is susceptible to the gliadin protein that is an opiate. This thing binds into the opiate receptors in your brain and in most people stimulates appetite, such that we consume 440 more calories per day, 365 days per year."

...Davis said a movement has begun with people turning away from wheat - and dropping substantial weight.

"If three people lost eight pounds, big deal," he said. "But we're seeing hundreds of thousands of people losing 30, 80, 150 pounds. Diabetics become no longer diabetic; people with arthritis having dramatic relief. People losing leg swelling, acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome, depression, and on and on every day."

What are your thoughts?

Classic junk science food scare crisis mongering of the type CBS and the rest of the mainstream media has been engaging in for forty years. We've been through it all: eggs, fat, red meat, chocolate, Spam, cooking hamburgers above a certain temperature, the sugar-creates-hyperactivity hysteria; saturated fats (transfats), fast food, and even gross exaggeration of the very real danger of cigarette smoking (the second-hand smoke pseudoscience).

The nutrition Stalinists have been at this for a long time, and as I was heavily into "holistic health" in the late seventies and early eighties, I'm well aware of the recurring themes. The major boogeymen have always been meat, milk, wheat, sugar, fat, and the horrible, terrible, awful, deadly "processed" foods common to Western diets.

Following upon this has always been the romantic neo-primitivism and idealization of primitive lifestyles and diets (the Hunzas have always been an iconic group within this ideology) as compared and contrasted with crippling, toxic, life-threatening American diet and associated lifestyles (like driving around in cars, living in large houses in the suburbs, and having air conditioning).

This kind of thing is all of a piece with the environmental movement and its associated ideological preoccupations (note, Dr. Davis is an opponent of "Frankenfood," the term of emotion -based opprobrium hurled by neo-Marxists, neo-Communists, anarchists, and anti-capitalist statolotors against genetically modified food crops)

http://www.wellnessletter.com/ucberkele ... r-health/#

Not to put too fine a point on it, Davis' claims appear to be lifestyle fascist bunk (single books by single authors making scientifically uncorroborated claims are the meat and potatoes of the mainstream media, and always have been. The entire AGW fraud has been perpetrated (as was the DDT hoax, the dioxin hysteria, Alar, acid rain, the anti-nuclear power hysteria etc.) in the same manner from the same dubious sources).

But anti-Mormon desperation - the need at any cost, even that of fundamental credibility, to find anything one can to bash the Church and its teachings on even the flimsiest of pretexts - begets further desperation.

This was a bold stretch, even for this place.