To eat wheat: yay or nay?

[AnalyticalEngine]

I've read a bunch of conflicting research on whether or not wheat is a healthful food to eat. Most people agree that eating plain white flour in large quantities is bad for you, but this gets tricky when you try to put it into practice. Because plain white flour is so cheap and found in so many cheap foods (pasta, bread, etc), cutting it out cuts out a large variety of options.

I've also read that it doesn't matter if it's white or wheat so much as how the grains were processed. Wheat has to be dried before it can be ground, and they use certain chemicals to speed up that process that can be bad for you. They also irradiate the flour to kill fungus. I was skeptical about this at first, but when I tried to make natural sourdough, I found that any conventionally grown flour completely killed my sourdough culture. I had to use organic wheat flour or else the sourdough culture completely died.

Then you get into the whole gluten debate. This is again something I was skeptical about, but after doing some research, there is evidence gluten can be harmful if you are prone to any autoimmune disease, not just Celiac. I personally don't think going gluten-free so you can eat the same sugary cupcake sans gluten makes any difference whatsoever, but gluten can be a hard protein to digest for some people. And if you can't eat gluten, getting gluten-free flour seems largely pointless due to how it doesn't make good, sticky dough.

And finally, I've also heard that supposedly getting whole wheat berries and sprouting them/fermenting them is supposed to make them easier to digest/make the gluten less problematic. But basically no where in the world sells whole wheat berries, and even when you can find them, they're outrageously expensive. There's the same problem with organic whole wheat flour vs conventional white flour. Conventional white flour can be bought for like $0.10 a pound, but organic whole wheat flour is $3-$5 a pound.

Do you all have any thoughts/experience on this issue? Wheat is so cheap and delicious, but it seems like one of those foods to avoid if you are trying to lose weight or have autoimmune symptoms.

[Campitor]

Wheat in the US is heavily subsidized and genetically modified to increase its gluten content. The means of production introduces many artificial contaminates. Some wheat has been genetically modified to destroy the digestive system of insects (https://ag.purdue.edu/GMOs/Pages/GMOsandInsects.aspx). Supposedly this gut busting genetic modification is harmless but no long term studies have been done on humans to verify this. Perhaps the celiac and gluten sensitivity is a result of the wheat contaminates and genetic modifications attacking human stomach lining and not so much the gluten protein itself. There's anecdotal evidence that some celiac/gluten sensitive people do not react the same way to bread made of unmodified wheat and grown organically.

The only way to know for sure if the wheat you're eating isn't good for you is to exclude it for a month and make a diary of how you feel and the effects on your body. In my case when I avoid commercial wheat products I feel better, my skin clears up, and I have more energy; resuming its consumption, especially bread, causes rashes and sometimes hives. When I make my own bread using organic wheat and my own sourdough culture I don't get the same effect.

I stopped bread making because the gas bill soared and the odd hours required to babysit the leavening and autolyse. And keeping up with the sourdough culture was a pain in the rear. 2 loaves of bread wouldn't last a day - my family loves the taste of sourdough. PS - I used 80% organic wheat to a 20% rye flour ratio for my sourdough starter. I would also use the same ratio for the bread making - and I baked it tartan style - inside a cast iron pot with a spritz of water on the top of the bread to get that crispy outer dimply crust.

[Bankai]

Food is rarely 'good' or 'bad' in a vacuum - even big mac & fries could be a godsend in the right circumstances. I like to think of food as a spectrum. On the one end, there are green leafy veggies, legumes, berries, nuts & seeds... as well as grains. But only whole grains. Processed 'white' grains are quite useless from the nutritional point of view. Those belong somewhere closer to the other end of the healthy-unhealthy spectrum - a quick comparison of white vs whole pasta shows that processing removes 2/3 of fibre, almost all vitamins and most minerals, leaving not much else than calories. Not nearly as bad as for example processed meat which is proven to cause cancer, but still, far from ideal. We only eat whole wheat pasta - initially, it didn't taste as well as the processed one, but people adapt fast. As for bread, the go-to choice is wholemeal, however, occasionally we do buy while one - maybe once every few weeks. But generally, there's no good reason to eat 'white' carbs since much healthier, unprocessed versions are readily available.

[ertyu]

From what I've read, it depends on your personal genetical make-up. The best way to resolve the yay or nay on wheat imo is to take 3 months off it and see whether you do better. If you do, keep the change. If you notice no perceptible improvement in your health or quality of life, and you find you miss wheat, go back to it.

Personal bias: organic wheat sourdough sounds divine. I'd keep that and, if budgeting is an issue, find other ways to save. Also to remember: 5 bucks on wheat now is better than 500 bucks on doctors later.

Combining the two: not eating wheat for 3 or so months will allow you to explore options and find workarounds. Keep the delicious ones. Then eat less wheat, but quality wheat.

[fiby41]

Take the wheat flour and add water periodically to create a ball, apply some oil on your fingers to prevent stickiness, batter the ball into a disk using thumbs to mark the two centers of the ellipse while the four fingers press down at the circumference from under, squeeze the slice between a flat wooden surface and a cylinder, both preferably carved out of wood until the disk is paper thin, apply some oil on pan before putting the paper disk on the pan, roll clockwise, then anti-clockwise, then flip and repeat rotation until it develops burns or the top surface inflates into a bubble, replace with new paperthin disk while the bubble pops. Eat the flatbread.

[7Wannabe5]

If you want cheap test to determine if you are descended from human line that was genetically modified towards starch digestion, just pop some saltine or other sugar free crackers in your mouth, chew them up into a bolus, and retain it in your cheek for a few minutes. Then remove the bolus from your mouth, drink some water to clear your palate, and take a bite of bolus. If the bolus tastes obviously sweeter than a saltine that has not been exposed to your saliva, you probably have a decent ability to digest starch, which means better potential to gain weight if you eat it. If not, you can still eat fruit and nuts (but watch out for arsenic and tannins) and/or jump on to the back of a Wooly Mammoth and stab it to death with your pointy stone tools so you can gain access to the pure fat stored in large back hump which you will have to cook until mildly carcinogenic over pile of flaming wood.

[Tyler9000]

Everyone is different. And just as important, people change over time and foods that never were a problem can start to cause problems. So while I think it's silly to generalize that something like wheat is good or bad, I do think it's useful to be aware that certain foods can definitely affect your individual health. If you have digestive issues, persistent heartburn, or an autoimmune disease, you should definitely take a hard look at what you're eating. Personally, I largely cut out gluten, dairy, and soy this year and I feel tons better.

I do still consume gluten in certain forms (beer, an occasional flour tortilla, etc.) but moderation has helped a lot. Replacing the wheat-based items I eat a lot of (mainly sandwich bread & crackers) with gluten-free alternatives seemed to do the trick for me. This is actually the hardest time of the year because of all the terrific holiday baked goods, so I just pick my battles and only eat the really good stuff worth the pain.

[ZAFCorrection]

I've known vegans who say it saved their life and people who have lard for lunch who say the same. Both groups are convinced they have stumbled upon the one true diet. Most likely they are both right, just only for themselves. Probably best to do some experimentation or only consider literature (if there is any) that assumes normally-functioning people can have fundamentally different responses to the same diet.

[slsdly]

Radically changing my diet over the years from somewhat meat heavy to mostly vegan (+ eggs) hasn't had much impact on my day to day. My baseline is fairly positive; I have certain weird/minor food intolerances, but all are easily avoidable once identified. I've done a few elimination diets over the years, but no magic.

I suspect many people feel so different because their previous diet lacked enough fiber (the washroom is now a very different experience), and lacked some key nutrients in general (and now their addition is a godsend, no longer anemic). That is not to say the new diet is perfect -- it probably has its own gaps, which causes its own miseries given sufficient time .

I have asked my family physician for blood tests to see if there are any gaps. Thus far I haven't hit any. I pay attention to the nutritional information on things I eat (well I estimate it online since I buy mostly in the produce section, along with grain kernels for grinding and beans), consider my rate of consumption over a year, average it out. That tells me I don't have any glaring holes . I would also note that I am fairly active cardio wise, which may help with the extra carbs with a vegan focus.

As for wheat specifically, I eat it frequently, along with several other grains -- predominantly soft wheat, oat, and spelt. I buy unground organic kernels and mill them myself. Switching to organic and kernels, instead of conventional flour, made no difference for me. Just personal satisfaction. Same thing with eliminating them for 2 months, no difference. Grains (and perhaps carbs more general) are one of those things where I believe some people don't process it well, but it isn't universal -- the only answer is to try taking it out while changing as few variables as possible. Nobody is going to have an answer tailored for you (unless it is one of those gut flora / microbiome analyses ).

[jacob]

In https://www.amazon.com/Longevity-Diet-D ... 0525534075 Longo recommends the minimum about of carbs but that if you're going to eat carbs to pick the ones from your [ancient] culinary heritage because you're most likely to be adapted to those types. This goes along with what 7wb5 says although her test is a better way to do it.

In that regard, wheat came from northern Africa/southern Mediterranean, so if your ancestors came from the Roman Empire, you should be good.

[Salathor]

I was skeptical about this at first, but when I tried to make natural sourdough, I found that any conventionally grown flour completely killed my sourdough culture. I had to use organic wheat flour or else the sourdough culture completely died.

My wife makes sourdough and we've had a culture for the better part of a decade that we have never once used organic wheat flour on. It's bargain basement club flour and there have been no issues--I suspect you just missed the real culprit.

That said, we don't eat a lot of white flour on its own--we always use it to cut whole wheat flours for breads, pastries, etc. Until you really start making a LOT of bread yourself, it's easy to buy "whole wheat" bread and think it's all whole wheat. The texture difference between something made from whole wheat and white flour puts the truth to the lie pretty quickly.