Posted on 07/12/2014 4:11:32 PM PDT by Renfield
New research confirms some of the basic tenets of the Wheat Belly, a book by Dr. William Davis, which argues that wheat avoidance results in healthy weight loss.
Published in Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry this month, and titled “Gluten-free diet reduces adiposity, inflammation and insulin resistance associated with the induction of PPAR-alpha and PPAR-gamma expression,” researchers compared the effects of a gluten-based diet to a gluten-free diet in mice.
Gluten exclusion (protein complex present in many cereals) has been proposed as an option for the prevention of diseases other than coeliac disease. However, the effects of gluten-free diets on obesity and its mechanisms of action have not been studied. Thus, our objective was to assess whether gluten exclusion can prevent adipose tissue expansion and its consequences.
Mice were fed either a high-fat diet containing 4.5% gluten (Control) or no gluten (GF). The researchers then assessed the following 16 parameters in both groups:
Remarkably, they found that, relative to the gluten-fed mice, the gluten-free animals showed a reduction in body weight gain and adiposity, without changes in food intake or lipid excretion.
We interpret this to mean that the weight gain associated with wheat consumption has little to do with caloric content per se; rather, the gluten proteins (and likely wheat lectins) disrupt endocrine and exocrine processes within the body, as well as directly modulating nuclear gene expression, e.g. PPAR-α and γ, in such a way as to alter mammalian metabolism in the direction of weight gain.
Sometimes we forget that food is not simply a source of energy, or the material building blocks for the body, but a source of information as well. The way in which food directly interacts with the genes, gene expression, or gene product structure and function, is the object of study of the burgeoning new field of nutrigenomics. Wheat, like anything we attempt to use as food, contains both energy/matter and information that the body will use to maintain its genetic integrity or that may interfere with it.
Certain foods our bodies have had thousands, if not millions of years of adaptation to. Wheat, on the other hand, and particularly its modern permutation, is a biologically and evolutionarily novel new source of both energy/matter and information. In the same way that we have spent intense effort manipulating its genes through selective breeding and hybridization, it is in turn, intensely modifying our own gene expression and related biological pathways.
The researchers stated that the observed results were associated with “up-regulation of PPAR-α, LPL, HSL and CPT-1, which are related to lipolysis and fatty acid oxidation.”
Also, there was an improvement in glucose homeostasis and pro-inflammatory profile-related overexpression of PPAR-γ among the gluten-free animals.
Our data support the beneficial effects of gluten-free diets in reducing adiposity gain, inflammation and insulin resistance. The data suggests that diet gluten exclusion should be tested as a new dietary approach to prevent the development of obesity and metabolic disorders.
Considering our previous investigation of the weight-promoting effects of wheat in cattle, discussed in our essay The Dark Side of Wheat, we are not at all surprised by these most recent research findings. Wheat grain-fed cattle, while much sicker, are always heavier. Grass-fed, on the other hand, are healthier and yet weighs less. Certainly, therefore, the notion that feeding wheat to mammals may increase their weight is not novel.
The time has come for us to recognize that the consumption of grains, that is, the seed form of the cereal grasses, is a evolutionarily novel behavior. While we have been doing so for 10,000-20,000 years, this is only a nanosecond on the scale of biological time. Albeit, culturally, it may seems like forever.
Weight gain, of course, is only one of over 200 adverse health effects associated with wheat consumption. Whereas weight gain often speaks to our vanity, the reality is that cardiovascular health, psychiatric problems, autism, irritable bowel, and many other common health complaints can be tracked back directly to this “king of grains.” The time has come, we believe, to give wheat and gluten elimination a good try. After all, only your first-hand experience can determine with any certainty whether these concepts are just theory or truth – for you.
This article was originally published on www.GreenMedInfo.com
Would that be GMO gluten or non-GMO gluten?
So, red meat, dairy, sugar, corn, rice, and now wheat are certified by “experts” to be bad for me.
The debate is over, the science is settled.
Busch and Bud are bad for you. USA regional craft beers are good.
And that science is *settled*. /grin
All horse poop.
ANY carbohydrates are eventual fat cell fillers.
Hispanics have a large propensity for obesity and diabetes. They eat very little wheat, but consume large amounts of corn tortillas.
Almost everything they eat is wrapped in a tortilla.
Dr. Belly Fat’s research was probably funded by the corn lobby.
We should be able to sue these so called scientists for all the harm they do with their brain dead ideas.
At a minimum they should have to disclose if their "research" is being funded by someone who has a financial interest in the outcome of their results.
Oh noes.
CONFIRMED: Food Makes You GAIN Weight.
How long did the mice live?
Corn, wheat, and rice are all grains.
I’m always fascinated when I come across something like this. I always ask myself, if our society was to be frozen in place, like Pompeii, what would future archeologists surmise about our society from what we were doing, what we were eating, what we were making?
From what I can guess is that the human body was not really designed to thrive using the current energy sources. Processed carb sources provide energy but most likely the wrong type. If that ends up being the case, how do we slowly move away from that is the question. Processed foods have become the norm and not the exception over my lifetime. Our society has chosen the faster and more cost effective full feeling foods versus the slower and more costly base foods. Maybe there is something to it, but I think we need to spend more time researching. Modern science is really in it’s infancy and for all intents we have no idea how processed grains and sugar effect the human body in the long term, because the studies really have only been happening for a few decades and humans evolved over millions of years.
When I was following the Atkins lifestyle, I was almost never hungry and then only after I drank alcoholic beverages. I’ve been following the principles but I still have a pizza and bowl of spags once in a while and I feel great. I read the same from people going Paleo.
Exactly.
We’ve been off almost 100% gmo, high fructose corn syrup
and non-fermented soy for 2 years, and it’s not a miracle but
we’re both down in weight and have much fewer gastro problems.
I make homemade bread using spelt and certified non-gmo grain.
I really believe it’s made a positive difference.
This research neglects a lot of extremely important variables, namely the bacteria in the intestinal flora.
(For a quick refresher, biological classification has a hierarchy of eight major ranks. From most encompassing to most specific, they are Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species.)
For example, in the intestinal flora dwells a microorganism that looks like a bacteria, but it actually closer to humans than it is to bacteria. It belongs in a different *Domain* from bacteria, called Archaea. It is called Methanobrevibacter smithii, and it is about the only Archaea in our bodies that we know of.
However, it clearly affects human calorie harvest and body fat indirectly, by strongly improving the efficiency of bacterial digestion of dietary polysaccharides.
Simply put, bacteria digest food, which makes its nutrition more available to the body. In doing so they produce hydrogen gas which limits their action. M. smithii consumes hydrogen gas and converts it to methane, which allows the bacteria to more fully digest food, increasing the body’s calorie harvest.
And this is just one microorganism that influences our weight.
At the phylum level, there is a balance in our digestive flora between the phylum of Firmicutes bacteria and the phylum of Bacteroidetes bacteria. Firmicutes are very good at digesting food, making it much more nutritious when they dominate the balance. Bacteroidetes are less efficient, so we get less nutrition when they dominate.
That is, more Firmicutes than Bacteroidetes, and you will likely gain weight. Change the balance, and you will likely lose weight. Most “probiotic” bacteria are Firmicutes. Bacteroidetes are anaerobic, so you likely cannot get them in a supplement.
Another phylum, called Verrucomicrobia, gives us a single bacteria associated with weight loss. Called Akkermansia muciniphila, it lives in and consumes the mucus of the large intestine, but it causes it to thicken, which helps prevent bad bacteria and their toxins from entering the blood stream through the bowels. This helps reduce the inflammation that leads to weight gain.
At the Genus level, an entire genus of common digestive bacteria, called Enterobacter (Phylum: Proteobacteria), are definitely associated with weight gain. So much so that in obese people, it becomes the dominant bacteria in the flora.
Even viruses can get into the act. Human adenovirus 36 (HAdV-36) or Ad-36 or Adv36 is one of 52 types of adenoviruses known to infect humans. AD-36 is the only human adenovirus that has been linked with human obesity, present in 30% of obese humans and 11% of non-obese humans.
You have to admit that just these are a LOT of variables that should be considered in a study like this one about wheat gluten.
For example, the genus of bacteria that degrade gluten is called Rothia, in the family Micrococcaceae. Researchers noted that: “While the human digestive enzyme system lacks the capacity to cleave immunogenic gluten, such activities are naturally present in the oral microbial enzyme repertoire. The identified bacteria may be exploited for physiologic degradation of harmful gluten peptides.”
LOL! Nice.
Yes, wheat is poison. Bill O’Reilly said so. No wonder all the cultures that ever grew wheat have died out. (Sarcasm, for you food nuts)
Eating food causes weight gain? Why did I not know this?
But corn and rice don’t have the same type of gluten as wheat has, even though they are all grains.
I have almost totally removed wheat from my diet. I have not lost a pound, I have had some other improvements but no weight loss.
Hardly. This is a study released December 17, 2012, conducted by Departamento de Alimentos, Faculdade de Farmácia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, in Brazil.
Personally, I replaced wheat with quinoa as a protein source for a month. Everything else being equal in both nutrition and exercise, I gained seven pounds. I returned to wheat and that weight came off.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.