Bread and grains are one of the most sacrosanct elements of our diet. For most people, including the family I grew up with, a meal is a starch, meat and a vegetable. Dinner just isn’t complete without bread. Yet grains could be the culprit behind your health problems and you might do well to reduce or eliminate them.
Bread and grains appeared on the human scene about 10000 years ago. Humans left their nomadic hunter gatherer lifestyle behind in favor of agriculture. They cultivated grasses which evolved into the grains we know today such as wheat, rye and barley. But not everyone fared well on grains. Children failed to thrive and died due to diarrhea with undigested fat and food in it. The ancient Greeks identified this as celiac disease but did not know that it was caused by gluten. Gluten is a protein in wheat, rye and barley. Today, celiac disease affects 1 in 133 people with a wide variety of symptoms including acid reflux, diabetes, headache, hypothyroidism, skin problems and infertility. Former Baylor University gastroenterologist Kenneth Fine, MD believes the incidence is higher because the standard blood test is not sensitive enough. He has developed a more sensitive test available at www.enterolab.com.
Loren Cordain, PhD of Colorado State University blames heart disease, stroke, osteoporosis, cancer and other diseases of western civilization on an overly cultivated diet. In his book, the Paleo Diet and on his website, www.thepaleodiet.com, he recommends a diet of lean grass fed meat, but not pork, wild fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. He avoids grains, beans, milk products and even minimally processed foods like vinegar. People have responded well to this regimen, especially those with insulin resistance and diabetes.
Peter D’Adamo recommends a hunter gatherer diet for people of with blood type O in his book Eat Right 4 Your Type and website www.dadamo.com. The American Red Cross reports that 60 to 70 % of people of Hispanic origin have type O blood and about 45% of other ethnic groups are type O. He goes further to suggest that the blood types evolved in response to changes in the human diet and thus we are healthiest when we eat foods available to us at that time in human history.
Summer, with its bounty of fresh fruit and vegetables, is an excellent time to see if a hunter gatherer type diet could be good for you. This evolving body of research has convinced me that grains and cereals are not needed for human health and may be harmful to many of us.
This article originally appeared in the July 2007 issue of the Kansas City Wellness Magazine, www.kcwellnessmagazine.com.
