By Mike Geary
I’ve been doing more reading of the fascinating book, Wheat Belly, by Dr. William Davis, and I found an interesting passage that I wanted to share with you…
Dr. Davis basically did actual blood sugar tests on himself before and after consuming a modern whole grain wheat bread vs the type of ancient wheat that existed in the wild and began to be used as a crop between 5000-10,000 years ago — einkorn wheat. The results I’ll discuss below are shocking.
Einkorn wheat is the ancient type of wheat that existed and was eaten for several thousand years before modern agricultural scientists began doing hundreds of hybridizations of wheat over the last 50 years.
These hybridizations were done to increase crop yield and other characteristics of wheat with no testing or consideration for whether these hybridizations affected our health at all, or how our body digests and processes this biochemically different wheat.
Dr. Davis states, “…despite dramatic changes in the genetic makeup of wheat and other crops, no animal or human safety testing was conducted on the new genetic strains that were created.”
After more details on the biochemical changes in modern wheat, he continues, “Wheat gluten proteins, in particular, undergo considerable structural change with hybridization. In one hybridization experiment, 14 new gluten proteins were identified in the offspring that were not present in either parent wheat plant.”
It’s no wonder that us modern day humans have so much prevalence of wheat and gluten intolerance as the source of so many digestive problems… we’ve had a mere 50 years for the human digestive system to try to adapt to these new foreign gluten proteins that were never present in the ancient human diet.
Now for the blood sugar tests that Dr. Davis conducted…
In order to make a bread out of einkorn wheat, Dr Davis actually had to obtain the grain from another country. It’s not easy to find. He then ground the ancient einkorn type wheat into flour and made a loaf of bread out of it.
He then used modern day organic whole grain wheat and ground that into a flour and baked a loaf of bread exactly the same as the ancient einkorn wheat bread.
Then, on two separate days, he conducted blood sugar testing on himself from a fasted state, testing the ancient einkorn wheat bread on day 1 and testing the modern day whole wheat bread on day 2. Check out the shocking results:
Day 1:
Fasting blood sugar: 84 mg/dl
Blood sugar after consuming 4 oz. ancient einkorn wheat bread: 110 mg/dl
That would be a fairly normal response to the amount of ingested carbs. However, look at the shocking blood sugar spike caused by modern day whole wheat…
Day 2:
Fasting blood sugar: 84 mg/dl
Blood sugar after consuming 4 oz. modern day wheat bread: 167 mg/dl
Now you can see actual results showing that modern day wheat, after 100’s of hybridizations and changes to its nutritional biochemistry, is a far cry from ancient wheat that was eaten over 5000 years ago by our ancestors.
If you remember from a few of my articles in recent weeks, the higher your blood sugar goes more frequently, the more advanced glycation end products (AGEs) that your body produces, and the faster your body ages (your organs, skin, etc) including how old you LOOK. You can read item #7 on this article to see how eating too much wheat has the unique ability to age you faster (not good!)
One thing I try to do personally is to follow a fairly low-carb (paleolithic style) nutrition plan most days of the week (except for 1 cheat day) … This means a focus on proteins, healthy fats, and fibrous veggies and a purposeful lack of grain-based foods and sugary foods as much as possible.
Another trick I use whenever I do eat a higher carb meal is to use certain herbs and spices before my meal or mixed in my meal to help control blood sugar response. Cinnamon and cayenne are two noteworthy spices that can help to control your blood sugar response from a meal.