Friday, March 7, 2014

Are You a Gluten Gnostic?

The Gluten Myth 
Tim O'Shea, DC


This is getting out of control – hysterical, unreferenced disinformation about gluten.  Another market driven by mythology, joining the ranks of dairy, fish oils, carbohydrates, vaccines – buzzwords directed by systematic error.
Demonizing gluten has spawned a whole new industry, evident in entire aisles of gluten-free products in today’s supermarkets everywhere.  It’s big.  It’s part of the Alternative Lite program – the militantly uninformed who read a couple things off google and then act like they just discovered the Holy Grail of nutrition, and the cure for all disease. Which they will now condescendingly share with the rest of us.
Most of us know that gluten is the proteinaceous part of the wheat kernel. In itself it is not toxic or allergenic, but a necessary component of an integral whole food, which in many civilizations has been part of optimum human nutrition for the past 100,000 years.
The main deceit in the new anti-gluten frenzy is that if a food contains gluten free grains, or else no grains whatsoever, it is automatically a nutritious valuable whole food.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.
It’s about reading labels.  Stroll down the gluten free aisle when you’re not in a hurry and just start randomly pulling items off the shelf.  Read the ingredients.  All of them. The majority of gluten free products contain allergens,  chemicals, and neurotoxins including HFCS, hydrogenated oils, refined sugar, to name a few. 


These are the same culprits that contaminate the principal American processed food diet, and define it as non-nutritive and toxic.  Who are the largest contributors to the gluten free aisles?  The big names we all know—the global purveyors of processed and packaged enzymeless nutrient deficient foods.  For them, Gluten free was just another niche buzzword marketing device that needed to be covered.  And they have done a masterful job, not just in the US, but globally.
We talk about Jeffrey Smith’s pioneering work on GMOS in the Nutrition seminars, both live and online.  Just saw him lecture last week at CalJam.  His new work cited proof how changing to a non GMO diet ended gluten sensitivity.  Why might that be?  Because there’s no such thing as gluten sensitivity. What they were sensitive to were GMOs and the above processed ingredients, seen in virtually all gluten free foods.  Cut them out, the patient improves.

When people say they got better after eliminating gluten from the diet, they did.  But gluten wasn't why.  It was eliminating all the above additives in the processed foods, foods that also contained wheat.   
Whole grains, including wheat, have been important sources of B and C vitamins, as well as protein and complex CHOs, for most cultures from time immemorial. No need to change that because of some social-media-driven trendy pop myths.


Time to re-visit Weston Price.
Everybody’s not going to get this.  Fine.  The survival of the Correctly Informed. 

2 comments:

  1. While I agree there may be other factors, the fact remains that Perlmutter has shown that EVERYONE who consumes gluten creates zonulin, a protein that causes leaky gut issues. That didn't make me stop eating pizza. The fact that zonulin also attacks the blood brain barrier convinced me that I was done with pizza, pies, etc. Right before Thanksgiving. I agree, let's revisit Weston Price. I think it will take us down a road of thought that is akin to the current trends of Paleo, Slow Carb, Bulletproof, etc. This is a rant for rant sake Doc. Not really solid, scientific evidence.

    ReplyDelete
  2. All I can say to this is that I was diagnosed with hashimoto's. I had extreme fatigue, joint pain in my feet (to the point that I thought I had arthritis), extreme brain fog & memory issues, sluggishness, the feeling of heaviness in my arms & legs... many symptoms that I assumed were thyroid related. I studied hashimoto's online and time & time again I found information that indicated going gluten free, or even to a paleo diet (which I am not doing), may greatly help the symptoms. I thought to myself... why not. I wanted to see if I would notice an improvement because I was tired of feeling terrible. Let me tell you - all of the symptoms I had went away when I stopped eating gluten. I am not a silly trendy pop myth believer. Just as I easily found I am lactose intolerant by avoidance and reintroduction, I found I have some sort of gluten reaction through the same method. I am smart enough to know that the products in the GF aisle are not all healthy foods. It's no different than any other processed food aisle. I understand that there is a lot of blindness when it comes to foods & health. I see it every day in people around me. But, with that said, the research I've done never indicated one should go down the GF aisle and buy one of everything. Most caution that many of the products are unhealthy....

    ReplyDelete