These 5 Foods May Cause Health Problems Similar to Wheat

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Image: Raw For Beauty

While eliminating wheat from your diet is an excellent and necessary step for improving health, it may not be alone sufficient, especially in those with serious health challenges.

According to a series of articles on the website Green Med Info, there are other foods in the Western diet that have properties similar to wheat, because they contain “chitin binding lectins”, which are similar to wheat lectin (WGA).

Chitins are long polymers of n-acetyl-glucosamine, the primary binding target of wheat lectin. Wheat lectin and chitin-binding lectin are therefore functionally identical. Chitin-binding lectin containing foods include:

Potato
Tomato
Barley
Rye
Rice

Additionally, sprouted grains, which are typically considered to be healthful fare can also be problematic for a couple of different reasons. Not only do sprouted whole wheat contain the highest amounts of wheat lectin, SPROUTED GRAINS ALSO CONTAIN BENZOXAZINOIDS (BAS)—a surprisingly toxic component!

Even a modest reduction in consumption of these types of carbohydrate-rich foods may promote loss of deep belly fat. This could help reduce the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, stroke and coronary artery disease, as excess visceral fat (intra-abdominal fat) raises the risk of these diseases.

According to Eurekalert:
“… [S]ubjects who consumed [a] moderately carb-restricted diet had 11 percent less deep abdominal fat than those who ate the standard diet … [S]ubjects on both diets lost weight. However, the moderately carb-restricted diet promoted a 4 percent greater loss of total bod
Non-Wheat Grains May Be Just as Bad as Wheat…

If you have celiac disease (gluten intolerance), it’s absolutely imperative to avoid all kinds of gluten—primarily wheat. But did you know that other non-wheat grains, and even some vegetables, such as tomato, may be problematic as well? Yes, there are a number of other foods with very similar properties to wheat! The following foods contain “chitin binding lectins”, which are similar to wheat lectin (WGA):

POTATO
TOMATO
Barley
Rye
RICE

“Chitins” are long polymers of n-acetyl-glucosamine, the primary binding target of wheat lectin. Wheat lectin and “chitin-binding lectin” are therefore functionally identical. This is probably news to most people, and could be an important tidbit for anyone struggling with celiac disease, or any other gastrointestinal issues.

Be Careful if You Have Insulin Resistance

About 85 percent of the people in the population have insulin resistance, and eating any grains, even healthy organic unprocessed ones can be a problem. How do you know if you have insulin resistance?
There are two ways.

You can measure your fasting insulin level. It should be under 3. It is relatively inexpensive and I believe most people should have it done The higher it is, the worse your insulin resistance. If you want to forgo the hassle of a blood test then you can use clinical conditions as a gauge. If you have any of the following four conditions you most likely have insulin resistance

Overweight
Diabetes
High blood pressure
High cholesterol

I have explained this information for many years, but now we have new scientific research documenting that grains have other problems that are appear to be unrelated to insulin resistance, and I will review them below.

Sprouted Grains—Perhaps Not as Healthful as You’ve Been Told

The sprouts of grains such as wheat, maize, and rye are increasingly being consumed as health foods, and are also used for the production of dietary supplements. However, sprouted wheat actually contains the highest amounts of wheat lectin (WGA)—which is responsible for many of wheat’s ill health effects! And that’s not all. These sprouts (wheat, maize and rye) also contain benzoxazinoids (BAs). Benzoxazinoids are part of the plants’ defense system against pests, and are actually toxic components…

A STUDY FROM 2007, PUBLISHED IN THE JOURNAL CANCER LETTERS, investigated the mutagenic activities of the two most abundant BA’s in these sprouted grains. Both types of BA were found be mutagens, meaning capable of altering genetic material, and both were also found to be aneugenic, meaning they affect cell division and lead to aneuploidy, an incorrect number of chromosomes.

“This is an interesting observation as it is assumed that aneuploidy is a key event in cancer induction and at present no other aneugenic plant-derived substances of dietary relevance are known,” THE AUTHORS WROTE.

Now, I think it may be risky to claim that sprouted grains are outright toxic when ingested. That’s probably not exactly the case. There may be mitigating factors involved, as there often are when you’re dealing with a whole food.

Bread Consumption and Cancer 

That said, bread (grain) consumption in general has been shown to increase your risk of cancer… For example, AN ITALIAN STUDY PUBLISHED IN 2007 found “a significant direct trend in risk” between bread consumption and renal cell carcinoma. Compared to those with the lowest consumption, those with the highest bread consumption nearly doubled their risk of this type of kidney cancer.

Pasta and rice consumption increased the risk by almost 30 percent.
Although that study didn’t specify the disease mechanism at play, it’s a well-known fact that excessive grain consumption leads to insulin resistance—sooner or later—and that insulin resistance is the primary underlying factor of most chronic disease, including cancer. My feeling is that you start to dramatically increase your risk for cancer once your fasting blood sugar rises above 100. The higher your blood sugar level, the higher your risk of cancer. As for your insulin; your fasting insulin level should, ideally, be below 3, as mentioned earlier.

Aside from cancer, all those daily bowls of cereal and sandwiches also amount to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. A STUDY PUBLISHED JUST LAST YEAR found that women who eat a lot of foods high in blood sugar-spiking carbohydrates, such as white bread and rice, double their risk of heart disease.

This is because, when you eat more carbohydrates than your body can use, the excess energy is converted to unhealthy fats by your liver which push YOUR CHOLESTEROL RATIOS in the wrong direction. This process occurs to help your body maintain blood sugar control in the short-term, however it will likely increase triglyceride concentrations, which in turn increases your risk of cardiovascular disease. It’s unfortunate that so many physicians are still clueless about insulin’s influence on cancer and heart disease, but that doesn’t mean you have to be!

read more here: MERCOLA.COM

Source: Raw For Beauty

Barley Grass Benefits

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Many health conscious individuals are including green food concentrates such as Barley grass and other cereal grasses in their diets. The appeal being that Barley grass is richer in individual vitamins and enzymes than many other known super-foods. The real benefit and power of Barley grass is the combination of all these nutrients and enzymes in one food.

Barley grass is sprouted from barley seeds and is best consumed by juicing the grass sprouts (at 3 to 7 days old) to produce a powerful fresh green juice elixir. It is also available in powder form (spray-dried barley grass) and is very easily digested by the body.

Celebrity Nutritionist, Gillian McKeith, states in her book, "Living Food for Health: 12 Natural Super-foods to Transform Your Health", that barley grass offers more protein than a sirloin steak, five times the amount of iron as broccoli, seven times more vitamin C than orange juice and 11 times more calcium than milk.

Consuming Barley grass has also shown to balance the pH of the body. The average Western diet is fairly acidic especially when large quantities of processed foods are eaten. Raised acidity in the body is linked to many diseases and general ill-health. Barley grass is very alkalizing and useful for helping the cells in the body function optimally.

Studies on Barley Grass
Research done on patients with ulcerative colitis showed that those given Barley grass showed significant improvements in their symptoms - including fewer episodes of diarrhoea and less pain - compared to the group receiving conventional medication (standard anti-inflammatory medication including steroids).

Ulcerative colitis is linked to low levels of friendly bacteria in the gut and an accumulation of toxins in the bowel. Barley grass helps reverse this by stimulating the growth of friendly bacteria, which in turn helps reduce inflammation and improves symptoms. Barley grass helps combat ulcerative colitis by lowering the amount of inflammatory chemicals in the bowel, including one called epithelial NF-k, and by balancing the water content of the bowel content. Studies also show that barley grass increases the amount of friendly bacteria in the patients' bowels.

Other studies done in Japan have shown that barley grass tea significantly improves the flow of blood as well as lowers the amount of LDL (Low Density Lipoprotein) cholesterol.

Barley grass has also shown promising results in preliminary studies done on its ability to inhibit certain cancer cell growths, mainly breast and prostate cancer. There are testimonies of cancer patients, who have been healed by consuming Barley grass and changing their lifestyles, but further studies are needed.

How To Include Barley Grass In Your Diet
Enjoy barley grass in healthy smoothies or by juicing it. It's simple to grow all year round (by sprouting) on a sunny kitchen windowsill. Cut the grass with kitchen scissors to juice with carrots, apples, beetroot, parsley and celery. Its super-food status makes it well worth having in constant supply.

Try this super-food energising drink from the recipe below. Drink it straight away to benefit from the enzymes and nutrients - it makes enough for two. Use a juicer with a centrifugal twisting action. Ordinary juicers don't twist the juice out thoroughly enough.

Take 2 cups of fresh barley grass and juice with:
2 medium-sized beetroots
2 medium-sized carrots
2 celery sticks
1 cup of parsley
1 large peeled apple or two smaller ones.

Other healthy grasses you can sprout and eat are alfalfa grass, oat grass and wheat grass.

References

1. "Dr. Gillian McKeith's Living Food for Health: 12 Natural Superfoods to Transform Your Health"; Gillian McKeith, M.D.; 2005

2. Yu YM, Chang WC, Chang CT et al. Diabetes Metab 2002, 28(2):107-114

3. http://www.thehealthierlife.co.uk/natural-remedies/herbs/barley-grass...

About the author

Katherine Oosthuis is completing a Diploma in Nutritional Therapy. She researches and writes for a health and nutrition website Detox For Life . Her passion is to make research available to those who are looking to improve their well-being and revolutionise their health through better nutrition and alternative medicines.

Source : Dave Sommers

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