LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER 5

       YOUR WHEAT BELLY IS SHOWING: THE WHEAT/OBESITY CONNECTION

      PERHAPS YOU’VE EXPERIENCED this scenario:

      You encounter a friend you haven’t seen in some time and exclaim with delight: ‘Elizabeth! When are you due?’

      Elizabeth: [Pause.] ‘Due? I’m not sure what you mean.’

      You: Gulp . . .

      Yes, indeed. Wheat belly’s abdominal fat can do a darn good imitation of a baby bump.

      Why does wheat cause fat accumulation specifically in the abdomen and not, say, on the scalp, left ear or backside? And, beyond the occasional ‘I’m not pregnant’ mishap, why does it matter?

      And why would elimination of wheat lead to loss of abdominal fat?

      Let’s explore the unique features of the wheat belly habitus.

      WHEAT BELLY, LOVE HANDLES, MAN BOOBS AND ‘FOOD BABIES’

      These are the curious manifestations of consuming the modern grain we call wheat. Dimpled or smooth, hairy or hairless, tense or flaccid, wheat bellies come in as many shapes, colours and sizes as there are humans. But all share the same underlying metabolic cause.

      I’d like to make the case that foods made with or containing wheat make you fat. I’d go as far as saying that overly enthusiastic wheat consumption is the main cause of the obesity and diabetes crisis in the United States. It explains why modern athletes, such as baseball players and triathletes, are fatter than ever. Blame wheat when you are being crushed in your airline seat by the twenty-stone man next to you.

      Sure, sugary soft drinks and sedentary lifestyles add to the problem. But for the great majority of health-conscious people who don’t indulge in these obvious weight-gaining behaviours, the principal trigger for increasing weight is wheat.

      In fact, the incredible financial bonanza that the proliferation of wheat in the American diet has created for the food and drug industries can make you wonder if this ‘perfect storm’ was somehow man-made. Did a group of powerful men convene a secret Howard Hughesian meeting in 1955, map out an evil plan to mass-produce high-yield, low-cost dwarf wheat, engineer the release of government-sanctioned advice to eat ‘healthy whole grains’, lead the charge of corporate Big Food to sell hundreds of billions of dollars worth of processed wheat food products – all leading to obesity and the ‘need’ for billions of dollars of drug treatments for diabetes, heart disease and all the other health consequences of obesity? It sounds ridiculous, but in a sense that’s exactly what happened. Here’s how.

      Wheat Belly Diva

      Celeste no longer felt ‘cool’.

      At the age of sixty-one, Celeste reported that she’d gradually gained weight from her normal range of 18½ to 9½ stone in her twenties and thirties. Something happened starting in her mid-forties, and even without substantial changes in habits, she gradually ballooned up to 13 stone. ‘This is the heaviest I have ever been,’ she groaned.

      As a professor of modern art, Celeste hung around with a fairly urbane crowd and her weight made her feel even more self-conscious and out of place. So I got an attentive ear when I explained my diet approach that involved elimination of all wheat products.

      Over the first three months she lost 1½ stone, more than enough to convince her that the programme worked. She was already having to reach to the back of her closet to find clothes she hadn’t been able to wear for the past five years.

      Celeste stuck to the diet, admitting to me that it had quickly become second nature with no cravings, a rare need to snack, just a comfortable cruise through meals that kept her satisfied. She noted that, from time to time, work pressures kept her from being able to have lunch or dinner, but the prolonged periods without something to eat proved effortless. I reminded her that healthy snacks such as raw nuts, linseed crackers, and cheese readily fit into her programme. But she simply found that snacks weren’t necessary most of the time.

      Fourteen months after adopting the Wheat Belly diet, Celeste couldn’t stop smiling when she returned to my office at 9 stone – a weight she’d last seen in her thirties. She’d lost 3 stone 13 pounds from her high, including 12 inches off her waist, which shrank from 39 inches to 27. Not only could she fit into size 10 dresses again, she no longer felt uncomfortable mingling with the artsy set. No more need to conceal her sagging wheat belly under loose-fitting tops or layers. She could wear her tightest Oscar de la Renta cocktail dress proudly, no wheat belly bulge in sight.

      WHOLE GRAINS, HALF-TRUTHS

      In nutrition circles, whole grain is the dietary darling du jour. In fact, this USDA-endorsed, ‘heart healthy’ ingredient, the stuff that purveyors of dietary advice agree you should eat more of, makes us hungry and fat, hungrier and fatter than any other time in human history.

      Hold up a current picture of ten random Americans against a picture of ten Americans from the early twentieth century, or any preceding century where photographs are available, and you’d see the stark contrast: Americans are now fat. According to the CDC, 34.4 per cent of adults are now overweight (BMI of 25 to 29.9) and another 33.9 per cent are obese (BMI 30 or greater), leaving less than one in three normal weight.¹ Since 1960, the ranks of the obese have grown the most rapidly, nearly tripling over those fifty years.²

      Few Americans were overweight or obese during the first two centuries of the nation’s history. (Most data collected on BMI that we have for comparison prior to the twentieth century come from body weight and height tabulated by the US military. The average male in the military in the late nineteenth century had a BMI of <23.2, regardless of age; by the 1990s, the average military BMI was well into the overweight range.³ We can easily presume that, if it applies to military recruits, it’s worse in the civilian population.) Weight grew at the fastest pace once the USDA and others got into the business of telling Americans what to eat. Accordingly, while obesity grew gradually from 1960, the real upwards acceleration of obesity started in the mid-eighties. In the UK, as of March 2013, the Department of Health reported that in England, most people are overweight or obese. This includes 61.9 per cent of adults and 28 per cent of children aged between 2 and 15. Health problems associated with being overweight or obese cost the NHS more than £5 billion every year.

      Studies conducted during the eighties and since have shown that, when processed white flour products are replaced with whole-grain flour products, there is a reduction in colon cancer, heart disease and diabetes. That is indeed true and indisputable.

      According to accepted dietary wisdom, if something that is bad for you (white flour) is replaced by something less bad (whole-wheat), then lots of that less-bad thing must be great for you. By that logic, if high-tar cigarettes are bad for you and low-tar cigarettes are less bad, then lots of low-tar cigarettes should be good for you. An imperfect analogy, perhaps, but it illustrates the flawed rationale used to justify the proliferation of grains in our diet. Throw into the mix the fact that wheat has undergone extensive agricultural genetics-engineered changes, and you have devised the formula for creating a nation of fat people.

      The USDA and other ‘official’ opinion makers

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