Avoiding gluten is so all-pervasive nowadays that it’s become quite commonplace for the vast majority of restaurants to offer gluten-free alternatives. So many people are giving up gluten and grains in general even if they don’t have celiac disease. Let’s discuss this whole phenomenon and come up with much better solutions than giving up wheat, which historically has been known as the “staff of life,” for good reason. We should think twice before giving up one of the most nourishing foods on the planet.
To understand why we have all become gluten, and in particular wheat-averse, let’s look at two root causes which stem back over the last 3-4 decades.
First, let’s look at the quality of the wheat and how it went from being so essential to our diets globally to being a food that we are now being told to avoid at all costs.
Let’s go back a couple hundred years. Prior to the 1900’s most of the bread consumed was baked at home. People either owned their own mill where they would grind their own flour at home or communities were actually built up around the local miller who would freshly mill the grain for them, which was then used up fairly quickly.
If you store the grain and keep the kernel intact then the nutrients are perfectly retained. But once you mill it into flour, the nutrients located deep inside the wheat kernel – the oils, vitamins, minerals and fat-soluble nutrients – are now exposed to the air and it begins to oxidize and go rancid, losing its nutritional value.
The wheat has three parts – the bran, the outer covering, which contains all the vitamins, minerals, and fiber, the germ or the inner part where the fats and oils are found, and the endosperm or the starchy part of the grain.
In the late 1800’s they discovered that if they remove the bran and the germ the flour wouldn’t spoil. This became a major breakthrough where they could now keep the flour on the shelf for long periods of time since they got rid of the parts that decay and oxidize. The homes threw away their grain mills and the millers went out of business as massive white flour production began.
It appeared to be a wonderful discovery until three diseases became epidemic once the nutrients were taken out of the flour. These 3 diseases were Beriberi, which is a Vitamin B1 (or thiamine) deficiency, causing swelling of the legs, shortness of breath, rapid heartbeat, heart failure, muscle weakness, numbness or tingling in hands and feet and difficulty walking. Pellagra, a skin condition causing dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia and even death. And Anemia also became epidemic.
They eventually traced these new epidemics to the missing nutrients which happened when they took the bran and germ out of the wheat.
It took until 1948 for the government to step in and mandate that something needed to be done. 35-40 nutrients are lost when you take away the bran and the germ. They only put 4 back in: they put 3 B vitamins and iron – they were all synthetically made, and no longer in their natural and most healing form.
Then it took another 50 years as birth defects began to rise to finally trace it back to the missing folic acid that was no longer in the flour – so they now mandated that they had to put the folic acid back in – again in a synthetic form which is now creating a whole host of problems especially in people who have genetic weaknesses such as MTHFR, where they can’t break down the synthetic folic acid. Which is no small thing when you consider that 40% or more of the world’s population are harboring this genetic variant.
To make matters worse, the residual oils coming from the germ which are left behind on the flour caused the flour to turn yellow-ish so they bleached it with nitrogen trichloride for more than 25 years – a chlorine derivative. They eventually took it off the market because it caused seizures and hyperactivity, marking the beginning of the hyperactivity and ADHD era which blossomed in the early 1990’s as we took out the inherent nutrients in the food and instead dumped more and more chemicals back into our food.
They also used benzoyl peroxide as a bleaching and whitening agent in the flour. Currently the nitrogen trichloride was taken out of the flour, but America still allows the benzoyl peroxide while the European Union and some other countries have banned it along with several other flour bleaching agents.
Potassium bromate is a white crystal powder used to improve the bread volume and texture, but it is classified as a potential human carcinogen and banned in the EU, Canada and other countries, but it is allowed in the United States. It damages the kidneys, depresses the thyroid gland and causes cancer.
Nowadays people are also avoiding wheat because of the misinformation circulating about phytates and lectins which are found in the wheat. Phytates are the storage form of phosphorus in plants, found in seeds, grains, legumes, nuts and bran. Lectins are proteins that bind to carbohydrates – the plants produce them as a defense mechanism. They are found mainly in beans, whole grains, the nightshade vegetables and some seeds.
Phytic acid is a powerful antioxidant and an anti-chelator. Phytates and lectins are not antinutrients, as they are mistakenly called. Phytates are a source of inositol which our bodies need. It’s not correct to say that the phytic acid will pull out all of the nutrients – if anything it will protect you from over-absorbing iron, calcium and other minerals. Too much calcium and iron is not good for us. The intestinal microbes produce phytase which breaks down the phytic acid.
If you consume phytates on a regular basis your gut microbes actually learn to break it down. So if you are eating these foods often which are rich in phytates, they will have less of an effect on you over time because your gut is going to know how to break them down for you.
In animal studies high amounts of isolated lectins have been shown to have potentially negative effects on the GI tract. This is why people say that lectins can damage the gut and lead to leaky gut. But this information comes from animal studies that have used isolated doses of single lectins in very high doses.
This doesn’t happen when you’re actually eating the foods – if they have been soaked, rinsed and cooked then almost no lectins are present in the final product that you are consuming. Fermenting the wheat, as in the case of a sourdough starter, can also remove most of the lectins. This is why Ayurveda always stated to soak your beans, grains and nuts. By soaking, rinsing, fermenting and cooking them will remove most of the phytates and lectins found in these very nourishing foods. People are unnecessarily avoiding foods with phytates and lectins because of misinformation that has been circulated around in books and blogs.
In one study, they removed 90% of the phytates in sorghum flour, but it had no effect on the bioavailability of iron. In another study on young children it showed that increasing phytates in the diet by 500 mg daily only reduced zinc absorption by 0.04 milligrams, a very small number. Another study found that in 180 post-menopausal women, eating more phytate-rich foods was actually associated with a higher bone mineral density.
The second huge reason people are now avoiding wheat, gluten and even other grains, is because of the devastation to our digestive tracts from overuse of antibiotics, acid reflux medicines, steroids, birth control pills and many other medications.
Once you upset your digestive organs, particularly the gut microbiome and the liver, it becomes difficult to digest the proteins in the grains.
So with all of our patients, we fix their digestion and then teach them how to use the good wheat products. You want to find grains which are organic and have never been sprayed with pesticides. Also look for heirloom grains which have never been hybridized or intensively bred for high yield and baking performance.
Here are the names of some ancient and heirloom wheat varieties: einkorn, which is one of the oldest wheats, over 10,000 years old. Then there is emmer or farro, and spelt. Kamut/Khorasan wheat, is an ancient Middle Eastern wheat, which has a very high protein content, yet will make your bread light and fluffy.
Lesser known are red fife – a 19th century Canadian heritage wheat, white Sonora – an ancient wheat brought to North America by Spanish missionaries, one of the oldest wheats in the Americas, turkey red – brought to the U.S. in the 1800’s: an heirloom hard red winter wheat used historically in making bread.
Let’s quickly understand the difference between non-GMO and non-hybridized and heirloom.
Non-GMO means the plant’s DNA has not been altered using genetic engineering in a lab. No genes are inserted, deleted, or modified using biotechnology. No genes from unrelated species are added.
GMO’s are made by directly changing the DNA using lab techniques and it can involve genes from bacteria, viruses or other organisms. This process does not happen naturally.
Non-hybridized usually refers to plants that have not been cross-bred with other varieties to create new traits. No intentional cross-pollination has occurred between different strains. The way hybridization works is that farmers or breeders cross two compatible plants of the same species – this has been done for thousands of years and can happen naturally in nature and in agriculture.
Hybridization is not genetic engineering and does not involve lab DNA manipulation. For example many plants nowadays are non-GMO but have been heavily hybridized. Heirloom varieties are non-hybridized and non-GMO. So just saying a grain is non-GMO doesn’t imply that it is a traditional or heirloom grain. Hybridization changed the gluten structure and yield, not through genetic engineering but through selective breeding.
And we should get back to what our ancestors already knew – keep the wheat the way nature intended it. Don’t take anything out, don’t put synthetic nutrients back in, and mill your own flour.
Before you think this is something which takes up time and you couldn’t possibly do it, keep in mind that there are wonderful grain mills which you just keep on your countertop which will grind your whole grains in a matter of 1-2 minutes. Then make your breads and other baked goods as soon as you can before the grains start to degrade.
Countless people will tell you that they thought they were allergic to gluten, but when they fix their digestion, get the good kernels of wheat, mill their own flour and bake their own bread, they are astonished to find out that they can in fact digest wheat and the gluten it contains – which is great for the gut microbiome. Because the more you keep restricting the diet, the less diverse your gut microbiome will get, making it harder and harder to digest any food, pushing you into a little corner where there are hardly any foods you can tolerate.
Once you fix digestion and start expanding your diet back out again, your gut microbiome will start to thrive and your health will return in ways you hadn’t imagined.
I hope this information helps you in your efforts to realize how important wheat and gluten is for your health, despite all the information to the contrary. There are wonderful podcasts discussing the importance of eating whole wheat, especially the Bread Beckers podcast by Sue Becker who has studied whole grain baking for decades.