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unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

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Monday, September 28th, 2009 09:27 am

Last night, someone I know pointed me at a July 2007 blog article by a Dr. William Davis, talking about why excessive consumption of processed wheat products is bad for your health.  That includes breads, cakes (see, you always knew Ho-Hos were evil!), pasta, and even those breakfast cereals with the boxes plastered with logos telling you how heart-healthy they are.¹

It’s an interesting blog overall. The title of this post comes from part of Dr. Davis’ capsule “about” text:  “You’ve been playing the health game by someone else’s rules with the odds stacked against you.”

Davis stresses that he’s not dispensing medical advice, just sharing information and discussing health issues frankly as he sees them.  But it seems to me there’s a lot of good information here.

I’ve just syndicated his Atom feed here on LJ as [livejournal.com profile] heartscanblog.  If you want to become a little more of an informed player in the health game, you might want to pick the feed up.

[1]  Oh, wait, wait, most of them don’t actually come right out and say that they’re heart-healthy ... they usually wrap the insinuation in weasel-words like “Supa Wonda Brekky Bikkies can be part of a heart-healthy diet” and let you draw the conclusion they want you to, without ever actually making explicit claims.  Well, cellulose packing peanuts can be “part of” almost any diet you care to name, too, but I still don’t recommend eating them.

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Monday, September 28th, 2009 02:44 pm (UTC)
I'm skeptical of his "fundamentalist" approach to wheat-based products -- one must draw a distinction between processed and fresh products. Daily-baked pumpernickel is nothing like Cocoa Puffs. The latter is engineered to give a sugar kick and encourage overconsumptions, not to mention attendant consumption of milk and being full of preservatives.

Fresh bread is an integral component of the Mediterranean diet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_diet).
Monday, September 28th, 2009 03:00 pm (UTC)
I believe you'll find he does make the distinction. The harm, he says, lies in an excess of highly-processed wheat products. But it's probably simpler to advise people "Eliminate wheat from your diet as much as you can" rather than "Eliminate highly-processed wheat products from your diet". The majority of people don't know how to tell them apart, and the ingredients list on the package is seldom of any help in this regard.
Monday, September 28th, 2009 06:17 pm (UTC)
i know many people who almost exclusively live on processed wheat and soy. it's kind of scary. they don't get many vegetables, and some no meat at all.

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Monday, September 28th, 2009 08:55 pm (UTC)
Daily-baked pumpernickel is nothing like Cocoa Puffs.

Closer than you might like.


Yes, the pumpernickel is *better*. But we're just not built to process it. Well wait, no, we are, which is the problem. We're not built to process ground grains well, which means we absorb them far too well. Add to that our ingenuity and drive and how cheap we've made even those "expensive" carbs...

Processed is worse, yes. But both aren't good.

Monday, September 28th, 2009 11:18 pm (UTC)
I dunno, there does seem to be a big difference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index#Glycemic_index_of_foods). The more processed/"refined" the carbs, the more rapidly sugar enters the bloodstream. I agree that humans are well-designed for digesting carbs, which is why the sugariness has an a large impact on the risk of overconsumption.

Moreover, if you are correct, then one should be able to discern a difference in health between cultures which consume fresh bread but little else unhealthy (e.g., Mediterranean), and those that do not even consume that (e.g., Okinawa). When controlling for confounding factors like genetics, I am not aware of any such difference. Do you have a ref?
Monday, September 28th, 2009 11:33 pm (UTC)
Anti-wheat fundy is right, sheesh. Not a whit of data just blather.