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Humanity doubtless gained more than it lost in this hunter to farmer changeover when viewed in a big-picture sort of way.

Covenant of the Wild, describes how domestic animals formed a pact with humans in which the animals traded a period of safety and survival for their lives.

Homo sapiens entered an almost mirror image of this same covenant when they domesticated cereal grasses.* 

Ancient forms of wheat didn’t do our forebears a lot of good, and, according to Dr. William Davis’s new book Wheat Belly, the modern forms of the grain do us even less good.

he ancient Egyptians consumed a diet that would be considered optimal by many people today. 

But, as their mummified remains and their contemporary artwork demonstrate, the ancient Egyptians were often fat and were riddled with heart disease, dental caries, bad periodontal disease and no doubt diabetes and hypertension. 

Sadly, these same findings are also common among modern man who consumes a more malign version of primitive wheat.

Until I read Dr. Davis’s book Wheat Belly, I didn’t really think much about wheat other than its being a major source of carbohydrate in the American diet. 

Since reading Michael Pollen’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma I had been conscious of the amount of corn in our modern diet, but I hadn’t thought much about wheat. 

In most grocery stores, an entire aisle is devoted to nothing but bread in all its forms.  Then there is typically another large aisle full of cakes, cupcakes, cookies, pies, tarts, sweet rolls, bagels, croissants, brownies, and other sweet baked goods.  The vast majority of the cereal aisle displays products containing primarily wheat.  And if you look at processed foods of all kinds, you’ll find wheat in there. 

More food is made with wheat than any other cereal grain.

Because it is the most digestible, it is the form that most enthusiastically increases blood sugar.  This explains why, gram for gram, wheat increases blood sugar to a greater degree than, say, kidney beans or potato chips. 

In healthy, slender volunteers, two medium-sized slices of whole wheat bread increase blood sugar by 30 mg/dl (from 93 to 123 mg/dl), no different from white bread.  In people with diabetes, both white and whole grain bread increase blood sugar 70 to 120 mg/dl over starting levels.

As with almost any food, the newer the food, the greater the likelihood that it will be problematic to some humans who consume it. 

I’m not overweight and I exercise regularly. So why would eating whole wheat bread be bad for me? A: You can trigger effects you don’t perceive. Small low-density lipoprotein [LDL] particles form when you’re eating lots of carbohydrates, and they are responsible for atherosclerotic plaque, which in turn triggers heart disease and stroke. So even if you’re a slender, vigorous, healthy person, you’re still triggering the formation of small LDL particles. And second, carbohydrates increase your blood sugars, which cause this process of glycation, that is, the glucose modification of proteins. If I glycate the proteins in my eyes, I get cataracts. If I glycate the cartilage of my knees and hips, I get arthritis. If I glycate small LDL, I’m more prone to atherosclerosis. So it’s a twofold effect.

wheat is essentially the single cause of the obesity epidemic. A: I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all obesity is due to wheat. There are kids, of course, who drink Coca-Cola and sit in front of video games for many hours a day. But I’m speaking to the relatively health-minded people who think they’re doing the right thing by limiting fat consumption and eating more whole grains, and there’s a clear subset of people who are doing that and gaining weight and don’t understand why.

wheat is “addictive,” but does it really meet the criteria for addiction we’d use when talking about, say, drugs? A: National Institutes of Health researchers showed that gluten-derived polypeptides can cross into the brain and bind to the brain’s opiate receptors. So you get this mild euphoria after eating a product made with whole wheat.

In clinical trials, people lost about 22.4 lb. in the first six months.