Grains To The Grave

Everyday, we are bombarded by images of grains and grain products all around us. Turn on the television, how many commercials do you see of boxed cereal and beer? How many commercials do you see advertising vegetables and fruits? Go to a supermarket, how many aisles are there of bread, bagels, donuts, muffins, rice crackers, and cereal? Heck, even the government tells us to eat copious amounts of grain products. I’m about to let you in on a little secret … grains are unhealthy.

Homo sapiens have been hunting and foraging food for our survival for 150,000 + years. Their ancestors (Homo Habilus, Homo Erectus, Neanderthal) have been doing the same for over 2 million years. That means for over two million years, we have been eating meats, nuts, leafy greens, regional veggies, tubers and roots, seasonal fruits and berries. Only about 10,000 years ago with the agricultural revolution, have our diet shifted towards a predominantly grain based diet (wheat, rye, barley, rice).

10,000 years may seem like a long time, however, it is just a drop in the bucket in the evolutionary scale. Our digestive system has not yet evolved to effectively digest grains. Need some proof? Continue reading…

Grains have a very unfavorable inflammatory response to our system. Lectins are specialized proteins found particularly in wheat, legumes, and dairy. Lectins are not easily broken down in the stomach and they are resistant to stomach acids and digestive enzymes. They bind to insulin receptors, attack the stomach lining of insects, and they seemingly cause leptin resistance. Furthermore, they bind to human intestinal lining causing ulcers and holes in the gut lining. This becomes problematic because it leads to the leaky gut syndrome, holes in your gut causes contents of your gut being leaked out into your bloodstream. Think about it, your poop gets leaked out of your gut into your bloodstream. The body sees that as foreign substances in your bloodstream and ignites your immune system into overdrive. This may lead to auto-immune diseases where like diabetes, narcolepsy, psoriasis, Crohn’s Disease and many more.

Gluten, a form of lectin, is even worse. Gluten is found in wheat, rye, and barley. Celiacs are 1% of the population who are completely intolerant to gluten. Any gluten in their diet can be disastrous. But just because you’re not diagnosed with Celiac disease, doesn’t mean that grains won’t have an effect on you. Everyone is in some degree or another, susceptible to gluten side effects. Gluten intake compromises your body’s ability to process calcium and Vitamin D3, leads to hyperparathyroidism and other bone defects. You do not want to be deficient in Vitamin D.

Another unfavorable response of eating grains is the associating insulin spike you get. Grains are chock-full of carbohydrates. When we consume high amounts of carbohydrates, it gets broken down into simple sugars in our blood stream. When our blood sugar levels get too high, our pancreas releases a hormone called insulin. Insulin is the hormone that signals to our cells to start storing this extra sugar in our muscle and liver cells as stored energy. If we do not readily use up the glucose as energy, and our muscle and liver glycogen stores are full, we will store the glucose into our fat cells. Now imagine when you’re eating large amounts of carbs in every meal: pasta, cereal, rice, bread, bagels, dessert, donuts, muffins, your constantly increasing your blood sugar levels and constantly releasing more and more insulin. Too much insulin poses a serious health problem. As you keep releasing insulin, your body’s cells become desensitized to the amount of insulin and will not respond to its signal. Thus, insulin and glucose stay in your blood stream. This insensitivity to insulin leads to hyperinsulinism (Google it and find that it is related to a host of diseases), and type II diabetes.

Still not convinced that grains are bad? Let’s analyze exactly how nutritious grains are. The government, nutritionists, and trainers are constantly telling us how healthy whole grains are. Well, let’s compare whole wheat bread to broccoli and see what we come up with.

As you can see from the data above, I have compared 100 grams of multi-grain/whole-grain bread (two slices) versus 184 grams (1 cup) of chopped, cooked broccoli. The bread contains a whopping 265 calories per 100 grams while broccoli only has 52 calories per 184 grams. If you’re trying to lose weight, think about how much bread you’re eating versus the amount of broccoli or veggies you’re eating. Furthermore, the bread has more than 20 times the amount of sodium and over 4 times the amount of carbohydrates leading to higher insulin release and we’ve already discussed how bad that is. People always defend bread by saying how much fiber bread has but broccoli, spinach, and other veggies have just as much. When we look at the micronutrients of these two foods, you’ll notice that bread is pretty much devoid of any vitamins and minerals whereas broccoli is a good source of Calcium, Iron, Magnesium and Phosphorus, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Vitamin K, Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Potassium and Manganese.

One final note to add, eating too many grains produces an acidifying effect in your body. A net acid producing diet promotes bone de-mineralization leading to osteopenia and osteoporosis. The acid must be buffered by alkaline stores in your body and the largest alkaline store in your body is calcium from your bones. Therefore, calcium is actually stripped from your bones to buffer the high acidic diet you’re eating from dairy, cereal grains, legumes, and meat and excreted in your urine. Eat more fruits and vegetables if you want to preserve your muscle mass and bone mineral density as they have an alkaline effect.

I know most of you cannot cut out all grains from your diet but hopefully this article will shed some light on what happens to you when you eat the stuff you eat and entice you to make a change. I just want you to make an informed choice, not one dictated by governmental agenda and nutritional “experts.” At most, grain products will kill you, at the very least, there are much better options for your health and body composition.