Can’t we ever eat like a ‘normal person’ again and be healthy?

“Why can’t I just eat  like a normal person?”  is a frequent cry I hear from my fellow sufferers.

Eating like a ‘normal person’ in this era of such a high carbohydrate and  processed diet cannot be sustained by most people without they also sooner or later succumbing to disease.   Perhaps  to want to eat ‘normally’ is like saying why can’t I smoke and stay healthy?

It has become quite obvious to me that when I mention that wheat should be taken out of every person’s diet as  it is actually poisonous that people just go blank.  I think this is because wheat has such a hold on us that it is incomprehensible to our wheat addicted minds that we could ever take it out of our diet.  It’s just part of everything we eat.  We can’t go anywhere without being confronted with food made from wheat.

It doesn’t matter what nationality people  I talk to.  Wheat is ubiquitously found it’s way to all cultures in a big way, even Asia, home of rice.

Cheap but nasty

The lovely Heidi, a women in Italy I am staying with is getting a bit wider every year I see her.  She is a very aware and loving person but mention that wheat might  be a good thing to give up and she has up to now ignored me.  Her new American partner, Mark, is diabetic.   Diabetes can be reversed by taking high carb food out of the diet but they eat carbs…. breakfast muesli with chocolate bits and fresh cherries, lunch always has large quantities of pasta, rice or potatoes and dinner is mostly the same.   They eat some lettuce and other veges everyday which we grow in the garden but vegetables don’t play a large part in her diet.  Neither does meat.  She isn’t vegetarian but she is a frugal buyer and meat it’s true is more expensive than pasta.  They also snack on dark chocolate.

The trouble with skimping on good food is that you pay and you pay in the way your body works.

The other problem is you will eat a hell of lot more empty carbohydrate fillers, firstly because wheat does make us more hungry, and secondly because our bodies are trying to get more nutrients from these foods  which  just can’t supply it.

So food may be cheaper but nutrient density wise are they really so cheap?

What Ian and I are eating in Italy

Here in Italy Ian and I each eat  a bacon rasher, 2 eggs, 1 medium mushroom and 4 tiny tomatoes cooked in coconut oil  with some rocket for breakfast.  We are totally satisfied with this.  For lunch we have a large salad with home grown lettuce, tomatoes, celery, cucumber, olives, rocket and a small amount of salted anchovies and sometimes some prosciutto.  This is covered with a dressing of olive oil, salt and lemon juice.  Yummy.  Again totally satisfying.  For dinner a medium sized bit of meat and above ground vegetables cooked in different ways. Sometimes we might feel like a snack and we eat some nuts, not a lot but it’s a good snack.  Totally filling, nutrient dense and not a lot of food when you look at it compared to a large nutrient empty pasta dish.

Oh yes, that’s right Heidi has fruit trees with the most unbelievable tasting cherries, peaches and apricots.  They are nothing like the fruit at home.  We have eaten some of this fruit (blush).   The good thing about these trees though is that they bear for about two weeks and then they are over.  No more fruit till next year!  This is how it is in nature, no year long supply and this is how it should be for us, just a short window of fruit eating opportunity.

Heidi says she could never be full on what we eat.  She told me last year she had tried the low carbohydrate diet and it wasn’t right for her. It’s obviously not going to be right for anyone who sees wheat as a staple that cannot be given up.  This  is the addictive nature of wheat.

So wheat, even though our guts might complain bitterly we will still ingest a food not only nutritionally pretty empty, addictive, makes us more hungry, feeds bad bacteria in our guts, brings our glucose levels up like sugar does (see Dr William Davis “Wheat Belly”)  actually causes the gut wall to become leaky because of the Zonulin hormone it releases in the gut and can damage the gut villi due to the gluten contained within it.  

Hmm..what else?  Oh yes there is a high concentration of phytates in wheat, actually in all grains, which are called antinutrients because they actually stop the absorption of minerals into the body.  

Wheat out does us humans in intelligence

Am I still a victim because I can’t eat like a ‘normal person?  I have great respect for the power of wheat, after all it’s managed to make it’s way all over the world into everyone’s food and people can’t stop eating it.  Perhaps it’s the most intelligent species on earth, not us?

Oh and yes, is whole wheat different to refined wheat?  That is an absolute no, whole wheat or not it’s still doing all those nasty things to the body.

 The multitudes of health defects from wheat eating

Study on zonulin:  www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21248165