Book Review - Wheat Belly

* Farming Smarter is an Alberta, independent, non-profit crop research association. They put out a magazine twice per year with the same name. You can find out much about this organization here.

Text that looks like this is added because I don't have space restraints here.

Wheat Belly by William Davis MD  ISBN #978-1-44341-273-5

Spring wheat growing at the
Farming Smarter research site

I wanted to review this book for Farming Smarter* because we grow a little wheat in Alberta. So if this book has relevance to the industry, I wanted to let you know.

Also, I saw many people turning away from wheat and ordering gluten-free meals. But most of them were unable to articulate why it is important to ban wheat from your diet.

I wanted to find out if there is any science behind the wheat ban or if this is just another fad driven by modern man’s (and woman’s) distrust of the food industry in general and modern crops in particular.

The author is a preventative cardiologist from Wisconsin and medical director of Track Your Plaque. 

Davis bases his prescription to eliminate wheat, in particular, and grains in general from your diet on evidence that over the generations of hybridization we turned ancient grain into a Supercarbohydrate. The Supercarbohydrate causes our bodies to have a glucose over reaction to ingesting modern gluten rich wheat.

He claims that before Dr. Norman Borlaug developed dwarf, high yield wheat, we were growing and eating something reasonably close to ancient grains such as Einkorn and Emmer.

With the wheat Borlaug developed, we began eating something causes the human body to over react with an inflammatory immune response. He lays the blame for modern illness and obesity squarely at the roots of Triticum Aestivum. He postulates that most of us are celiac disease sufferers, but we don’t display the most common symptoms and are therefore undiagnosed.

He takes readers through all the things that eating wheat will do to your body; which is where my first objection came into play. He carefully explains terms such as glycation, cerebeller ataxia, exorphins and many other medical terms related to every disease of the body and brain. My challenge is that, even though I’m a smart cookie (gluten free of course), I needed a glossary and there isn’t one.Therefore, every time one of these terms shows up after that (and they do so ad nauseam) I was just a little unsure of the point he was making.

Davis brings in examples from his own practice and scientific studies that support his premise. I have no way of knowing whether he is using carefully selected results or offering definitive evidence that would stand up against peer review. I’ve written enough stuff about science to know that it is possible to skew results to fit just about any purpose. Most of the studies he sites connect with his theory through unexpected side effects of the research. Research specific to how the human body reacts to modern wheat either haven't been done or maybe don't support his theory so aren't mentioned.

Speaking of which, I too write a little and can recognize a writing style/mechanism that serves to emphasize a point or drill an idea into a person’s mind. This book is rife with such techniques and that causes me to distrust, but that could just be me.

This is mature rye growing in Lethbridge at the
Farming Smarter research site.

It took a while to read this book. Every now and then, I had to walk away because I found myself feeling very much like I was committing suicide every time I had toast. The level of detail regarding what wheat does inside the body and the diseases it aggravates overwhelmed my ability to think rationally and made me want to abandon my life-long belief that a little bit of everything in moderation is the way to go.

Davis also talks about how much wheat we grow on this planet. He claims the average American diet is about 50 percent wheat. He talks about the fact that you can find wheat in some strange places – like pea soup – and that to become completely wheat-free requires diligent effort. This effort will pay off through a long, slim, disease-free life.

By the time I got to the back of the book where he pares food options down to vegetables, nuts/seeds dairy products and meat, I figured I’m doomed. Seriously, this guy wants us to give up all grains of any kind, all starch and legumes! I think that goes too far.

If Davis is right, wheat farmers are growing poison that is causing the great obesity, diabetes, heart disease and mental illness epidemics of our time. They are feeding us a food that will kill us slowly and with much pain, sensory deprivation and mental illness. There is no part of the human body that wheat is not hurting.

If this guy is right, Houston we have a problem.

If this is just another food fad directed at a modern population looking for a silver health bullet, then we just have to wait it out. Another fad will come along and I’ll be reading something called Fruit Face or something.

I feel there are a few things left out of this book. First, it doesn't talk about what happens to the wheat when it leaves the farmer's field. 

Also, it sidesteps how the huge agri/food conglomerates control what our farmers grow  and make change extremely risky and difficult beyond reason for an average human.

Next, it doesn't talk about how ineffective western medicine can be when treating chronic illness or how bad for us the North American diet has become. Other people, in other countries do not have these problems until they adopt our diet.
It is not just wheat that is the problem.