[paula_w]

i don't have the particular source for this study but saw it on the morning news and know that there are other reasons not to eat wheat bread; it turns into sugar and there is a tremendous increase in diabetes, which prompted the doctor to study it. many still think it is healthier.

honestly ....

[lindylanka]

Most foods get turned to sugar, that's how they get into the bloodstream and converted to energy. My take on this is that older forms of wheat were not too bad for you, in a varied diet, and it is wheat's potential to become an allergen that makes it not so good. And it's high calorific value weight for weight compared with veg, fruit, etc. In history grains were used because they were storable and supplemented other seasonally available foods. That's how they gained importance. But modern farming methods are what make them both plentiful and problematic

[moondaughter]

Originally Posted by paula_w

i don't have the particular source for this study but saw it on the morning news and know that there are other reasons not to eat wheat bread; it turns into sugar and there is a tremendous increase in diabetes, which prompted the doctor to study it. many still think it is healthier.

honestly ....

Paula,

I heard an analogy once that haunts me any time I think about buying bread likening wheat to concrete in the intestines gumming up the villi. Also perhaps an equally chilling argument for pders is that the gmo wheat has glutathione engineered out of it.

all this said the sprouted grain bread called "Ezekial Bread" makes wonderful toast and does not contain any sugar altho it may eventually convert to it but provides a comprimise as there is no flour in this bread.

good to eat the foods that love you back

md

[soccertese]

Originally Posted by moondaughter

Paula,

I heard an analogy once that haunts me any time I think about buying bread likening wheat to concrete in the intestines gumming up the villi. Also perhaps an equally chilling argument for pders is that the gmo wheat has glutathione engineered out of it.

all this said the sprouted grain bread called "Ezekial Bread" makes wonderful toast and does not contain any sugar altho it may eventually convert to it but provides a comprimise as there is no flour in this bread.

good to eat the foods that love you back

md

there IS NO GMO WHEAT!!! It's in the works but as far as i know there is none commercially produced.
http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/groce...ied_wheat.html

i don't get this old vs new wheat concept, most wheat breeding has been to increase disease resistance and shorten the stem length so it won't fall over.
cookie/cake flour is about 10% protein, bread wheat 15-18%, pasta a little higher.

i worked for a barley and wheat breeder, if anything they didn't want to modify the protein content in any way since like any food, people don't like changes. millers have to blend flour to get a standard protein content. farmers want to produce wheat with just the right protein content, too low or too high and they get paid less.

tell billions of people around the world to eat something else when there is nothing else?

[moondaughter]

Originally Posted by soccertese

there IS NO GMO WHEAT!!! It's in the works but as far as i know there is none commercially produced.
http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/groce...ied_wheat.html

i don't get this old vs new wheat concept, most wheat breeding has been to increase disease resistance and shorten the stem length so it won't fall over.
cookie/cake flour is about 10% protein, bread wheat 15-18%, pasta a little higher.

i worked for a barley and wheat breeder, if anything they didn't want to modify the protein content in any way since like any food, people don't like changes. millers have to blend flour to get a standard protein content. farmers want to produce wheat with just the right protein content, too low or too high and they get paid less.

tell billions of people around the world to eat something else when there is nothing else?

this article refers to "laboratory modified" wheat and "engineered grains" referenced from Science News:

http://soundhealthoptions.com/pdf/gmo.pdf

notice the date is August 2010 http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gene...celiac_disease

md

[olsen]

In additon, from a blog about new book "Wheat Belly":

"...I came upon the website for the Kansas Wheat Commission that listed a few facts about wheat...
Wheat is the primary grain used in U.S. grain products. Approximately three-quarters of all U.S. grain products are made from wheat flour.

More food is made with wheat than any other cereal grain.

U.S. Farmers grow nearly 2.4 billion bushels of wheat on 63 million acres of land.

About half the wheat grown in the United States is used domestically.

[calculations are] each of us in the United States consumes about four bushels of wheat per year. Another statistic from the linked website states that each bushel of wheat makes about 90 one-pound loaves of whole wheat bread. So, we all eat the equivalent of 360 loaves of bread per year, or approximately one loaf per person per day. That’s a lot of wheat, in fact, it’s almost approaching ancient Egyptian levels....
It would be bad enough if we consumed all this wheat as emmer or einkhorn or other primitive varieties, but we don’t. We get most from a hybrid of Triticum aestivum – our great grandmother’s wheat – called dwarf (or semi-dwarf) wheat, which now comprises more than 99 percent of all wheat grown worldwide.

... the hybridization of wheat came about in an effort to improve yield, which is now about tenfold greater per acre than it was a century ago. Older strains of wheat were taller and more prone to damage from wind and rain. And

When large quantities of nitrogen-rich fertilizer are applied to wheat fields, the seed head at the top of the plant grows to enormous proportions. The top-heavy seed head, however, buckles the stalk. Buckling kills the plant and makes harvesting problematic. A University of Minnesota-trained geneticist…is credited with developing the exceptionally high-yielding dwarf wheat that was shorter and stockier, allowing the plant to maintain erect posture and resist buckling under the large seed head. Tall stalks are also inefficient; short stalks reach maturity more quickly, which means a shorter growing season with less fertilizer required to generate the otherwise useless stalk...




Dr. Davis writes that modern wheat is approximately 70 percent carbohydrate by weight. The carbohydrate is in the form of a starch called amylopectin A.

The most digestible form of amylopectin, amylopectin A, is the form found in wheat. Because it is the most digestible, it is the form that most enthusiastically increases blood sugar. This explains why, gram for gram, wheat increases blood sugar to a greater degree than, say, kidney beans or potato chips. The amylopectin A of wheat products, “complex” or no, might be regarded as a supercarbohydrate, a form of highly digestible carbohydrate that is more efficiently converted to blood sugar than nearly all the other carbohydrate foods, simple or complex. [Italics in the original.]

But what about the much vaunted whole grains. Won’t ‘whole grain’ bread or wheat products be better? Not according to Dr. Davis:

…the degree of processing, from a blood sugar standpoint, makes little difference: Wheat is wheat, with various forms of processing or lack of processing, simple or complex, high-fiber or low-fiber, all generating similar high blood sugars. Just as “boys will be boys,” amylopectin A will be amylopectin A. In healthy, slender volunteers, two medium-sized slices of whole wheat bread increase blood sugar by 30 mg/dl (from 93 to 123 mg/dl), no different from white bread. In people with diabetes, both white and whole grain bread increase blood sugar 70 to 120 mg/dl over starting levels.

And aside from the blood sugar and, consequently, insulin problems caused by the consumption of too much wheat, there are other problems. As with almost any food, the newer the food, the greater the likelihood that it will be problematic to some humans who consume it. Since dwarf wheat has been around for less than 50 years, it should come as no surprise that it does indeed cause it’s share of problems. Dr. Davis spends the better part of his excellent book detailing many of these problems and describing his clinical experience in helping many of his patients shuck their wheat habit. He describes the increase in celiac disease over the past 50 years and believes, as I do, that celiac disease is a continuum. The severe form of it that is recognized as celiac disease is pretty easy to diagnose (if a doctor has sense enough to look for it), but there are milder forms that manifest themselves as anything from mysterious rashes that come and go to diarrhea and other GI disturbances to arthritic aches and pains. And we can’t forget a number of other afflictions that may well have their basis in wheat intolerance that include osteoporosis, acne (bagel face?), neurological disorders,..."

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/s...t/wheat-belly/

[reverett123]

I am increasingly convinced that if PD was the ancient scourge that we are told it is that there would be legends of "man turned to stone" sprinkled through our history. People love drama and that is much more dramatic than "he shook a lot until he choked on a pork chop."

If that be so then PD probably came with the Industrial Revolution. Prior to that time of mind-boggling change, each English village had its own mill where locally produced grain was processed and each grain was a little different and reflected the locale where it was grown.

The advent of steam-powered harvest and processing brought a need for standardizing the plant to withstand the rigors of the new technology. The result was a good bit different than what some areas of the gene pool were used to. People from those areas who also harbored a highly reactive inflammatory response were hardest hit. I, too, think that celiac sits on one end of a spectrum and along the other are a series of malabsorption disorders. It only takes the loss of one critical nutrient to bring it all down.

[soccertese]

wheat is a staple in india, the middle east, northern china. now unless the human gene pool is incredibly different in those areas, it would be easy to determine if there is a higher incidence of pd. even with no official records, it would be obvious.

wouldn't ya think that if gluten/wheat significantly increased your chances of pd then the correlation of pd in identical twins would be very high since they likely ate the same things? and why wouldn't it manifest itself at a much earlier age like diabetes? people eat wheat products everyday of their lives, wouldn't the constant onslaught of proteins from the bread destroy our neurons way before age 50?

sure the current wheat is different from what moses used to make unleavened bread. the ancient wheat is like a grassy weed. thank god we have the science to improve agriculture. sometimes you have to see the forest thru the trees.

the semidwarf wheat that is grown now had it's start in japan, troops stationed there after WWII noticed dwarf wheat and brought it back to the u.s. where breeders incorporated the dwarf genes into american varieties. wheat used to be 6 feet tall and mostly stalk, you'd lose 30% or more to falling over and rot.

sure, go back to the old varieties and have mass starvation.

[paula_w]

The report i saw was about the onslaught of diabetics, but many do think diabetes and pd are related.

[CarolynS]

Fact or fiction??


Diabetes Linked to Parkinson’s Disease
Type 2 Diabetes May Raise Parkinson’s Disease Risk

WebMD Health News

March 28, 2007 -- Having diabetes may increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.

Finnish researchers have found that people with type 2 diabetes were more than 80% more likely to be later diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease than others.



More evidence links diabetes, Parkinson's disease

NEW YORK (Reuters Health-4/15/2011) - People with diabetes may be more likely to also develop Parkinson's disease - and this seems particularly true for younger patients, a new study suggests.

The findings, published online by the journal Diabetes Care, add to evidence linking diabetes and Parkinson's. One recent report said that U.S. adults with diabetes had a slightly higher risk of developing Parkinson's over a 15-year period, compared to nondiabetics.