This looks like an interesting book. I’ve tried to cut back on grains in general, having been pretty thoroughly paleo for the past few months, though I like corn too much to cut it out completely. But I hadn’t realized that modern wheat is even worse for us than the ancient stuff, and that gave the Egyptians diabetes, to judge from the mummies.
8 thoughts on “Kick The Wheat Habit”
That looks like an interesting book. I haven’t given up on grains yet, but I’m trying to restrict myself to “traditionally prepared” (i.e. soured, soaked, or sprouted) grains, and to eat fewer than I did before. I started making my own whole-grain sourdough bread (mostly using spelt flour) a few months ago, and I have enjoyed doing it so much, I doubt I’ll ever give up on grains completely, though on some days the only grain product I eat is a slice or two of my sourdough spelt bread. I recently bought a paleo cookbook, and though I have yet to try the recipes, I’m trying to use the principles of substituting vegetables for grains whenever possible.
The condition of the mummies wouldn’t be entirely due to diet, considering the marital habits of ancient Egyptian royalty. Has anyone studied the incidence of diabetes among the inbred?
Old news. It’s probably out of print now, but check out “The Stone Age Diet” which came out about 20 years ago or maybe a bit more. It didn’t do all that well, perhaps because the whole message was in the title of the book.
But to amplify a little; humanity has only been consuming grains of any sort in quantity for maybe 9-10,000 years, absolutely at the most. This sort of timespan is an eyeblink in evolutionary terms, so we haven’t adapted to a grain-heavy diet yet. Still less have we adapted to a diet heavy in modern wheat – which is even higher in carbs and lower in protein and micronutrients than is spelt, its ancestor.
Quinoa is a great grain, and now they sell pasta that’s made of quinoa and corn, completely wheat free. I spent part of the summer eating goosefoot (aka lambsquarters) which is the same species as quinoa, and grows around here as a weed. It makes a delightful salad.
Still, without grains we’d be restricted to wine, brandy, and some vodkas. Hardly a life worth living.
Two thoughts about that ‘we’ve only been eating grains for 10,000 years’ thing:
One, we haven’t done too badly in those 10,000 years and some say, (or used to say), that the invention of grain farming was key to the development of civilisation.
And two, 10,000 years may be an eyeblink in terms of human evolution but it’s a whole lot of generations for our friendly gut bacteria to learn how to cope, and bacteria do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of breaking down our food into the bits that we need and the bits that are… er… crap so to speak.
My guess is that a better understanding of our symbiotes will do more for human health than any amount of nutritional science.
Civilization has done well, and it allowed us to dramatically increase our numbers, but that doesn’t mean it’s been good for our health as individuals.
Paleo has been very good to me. For financial reasons the last few years I have eaten more cheap grains, but I strictly avoid wheat. Neanderthin by Ray Audette is a good resource, if you can find a copy. Amazon sometimes has a few. A while back they were going for over $100/copy though.
Rand,
You might want to go to the original source, vilhjalmur stefansson, who started advocating this type of diet in the 1920’s based on his research in the acrtic.
Since its been out of print for over sixty years copies are hard to find, but he talks about a bet he made with nutritionists in the 1920’s that he would be healthier after a year eating water and meat (mostly prepared by boiling) then eating their balance diet. He won the bet 🙂
As a side note, this is why the discovery of how to make synthetic meat using tissue culture techniques is so important for space exploration and settlement as it provides a means of providing fresh meat without the energy or labor costs of using animal intermediaries.
That looks like an interesting book. I haven’t given up on grains yet, but I’m trying to restrict myself to “traditionally prepared” (i.e. soured, soaked, or sprouted) grains, and to eat fewer than I did before. I started making my own whole-grain sourdough bread (mostly using spelt flour) a few months ago, and I have enjoyed doing it so much, I doubt I’ll ever give up on grains completely, though on some days the only grain product I eat is a slice or two of my sourdough spelt bread. I recently bought a paleo cookbook, and though I have yet to try the recipes, I’m trying to use the principles of substituting vegetables for grains whenever possible.
The condition of the mummies wouldn’t be entirely due to diet, considering the marital habits of ancient Egyptian royalty. Has anyone studied the incidence of diabetes among the inbred?
Old news. It’s probably out of print now, but check out “The Stone Age Diet” which came out about 20 years ago or maybe a bit more. It didn’t do all that well, perhaps because the whole message was in the title of the book.
But to amplify a little; humanity has only been consuming grains of any sort in quantity for maybe 9-10,000 years, absolutely at the most. This sort of timespan is an eyeblink in evolutionary terms, so we haven’t adapted to a grain-heavy diet yet. Still less have we adapted to a diet heavy in modern wheat – which is even higher in carbs and lower in protein and micronutrients than is spelt, its ancestor.
Quinoa is a great grain, and now they sell pasta that’s made of quinoa and corn, completely wheat free. I spent part of the summer eating goosefoot (aka lambsquarters) which is the same species as quinoa, and grows around here as a weed. It makes a delightful salad.
Still, without grains we’d be restricted to wine, brandy, and some vodkas. Hardly a life worth living.
Two thoughts about that ‘we’ve only been eating grains for 10,000 years’ thing:
One, we haven’t done too badly in those 10,000 years and some say, (or used to say), that the invention of grain farming was key to the development of civilisation.
And two, 10,000 years may be an eyeblink in terms of human evolution but it’s a whole lot of generations for our friendly gut bacteria to learn how to cope, and bacteria do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of breaking down our food into the bits that we need and the bits that are… er… crap so to speak.
My guess is that a better understanding of our symbiotes will do more for human health than any amount of nutritional science.
Civilization has done well, and it allowed us to dramatically increase our numbers, but that doesn’t mean it’s been good for our health as individuals.
Paleo has been very good to me. For financial reasons the last few years I have eaten more cheap grains, but I strictly avoid wheat. Neanderthin by Ray Audette is a good resource, if you can find a copy. Amazon sometimes has a few. A while back they were going for over $100/copy though.
Rand,
You might want to go to the original source, vilhjalmur stefansson, who started advocating this type of diet in the 1920’s based on his research in the acrtic.
http://www.amazon.com/Not-bread-alone-Vilhjalmur-Stefansson/dp/B0007DU4BA/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316285177&sr=1-5
Since its been out of print for over sixty years copies are hard to find, but he talks about a bet he made with nutritionists in the 1920’s that he would be healthier after a year eating water and meat (mostly prepared by boiling) then eating their balance diet. He won the bet 🙂
As a side note, this is why the discovery of how to make synthetic meat using tissue culture techniques is so important for space exploration and settlement as it provides a means of providing fresh meat without the energy or labor costs of using animal intermediaries.