Baking&Snack - November 2011 - 12

NEWSFRONT
NEWS | TECHNOLOGY

‘Wheat Belly’ fears bloated
William Davis, MD, author of Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health, received media coverage in September when he appeared on Fox & Friends and compared wheat-based products to cigarettes. The 3-hour morning news show on Fox News Channel attracts approximately 1 million viewers on a daily basis. Released in late September, Dr. Davis’ book touts the benefits of a wheat-free diet as including such things as weight loss of 20 to 50 lb in the first few months, alleviation of metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes, recovery from intestinal woes like colitis and celiac disease, and marked improvement in overall cholesterol and LDL counts. And rather than focusing on “refined grains” maligned in the nutrition community, Dr. Davis is also critical of whole-wheat products. In his interview with the Fox & Friends anchors — who did not endorse the book — Dr. Davis noted his belief that whole wheat is an appetite stimulant. “There’s an odd protein unique to wheat, and this protein has essentially been re-engineered over the past 40 years by some clever geneticists,” he said. “What they have done in effect is created a plant that causes appetite stimulation.” Responding to a question on whether whole-wheat bread is less bad than white, Dr. Davis tried to make a comparison to cigarettes. “It’s a small difference,” he noted. “I would say it’s a difference similar to if I tell you unfiltered cigarettes like Marlboros are bad for you and filtered cigarettes are less bad. By that line of logic, I’d say let’s smoke lots of Salem cigarettes.” Dr. Davis also does not see consumers switching to gluten-free products as a solution. “We don’t want to replace one problem with yet another problem,” he said. “So the problem in the gluten-free world — that is, processed food used to replace the gluten products like bread — is that even if some multigrain gluten-free bread, it’s almost always made of rice starch, tapioca starch. These raise blood sugars very high and cause visceral fat to accumulate and make us diabetic and give us arthritis. I wouldn’t want to trade one problem area, wheat, for another problem area, gluten-free.” The American Bakers Association (ABA) issued a release soon after Dr. Davis’ appearance reminding the industry of the Grain Foods Foundation’s “Go with the Grain: Dispelling the myths about enriched grains” publication and website, www.gowiththegrain.org. The publication cites several studies that contradict the claims made in Wheat Belly, which could be useful in case ABA members receive calls from consumers or customers concerned about the claims. While not responding directly to Dr. Davis’ appearance Fox & Friends, the Grain Foods Foundation coordinated an interview with Glenn Gaesser, PhD, from the foundation’s scientific advisory board and the Chicago Tribune regarding the claims made in Wheat Belly.

BAKING & SNACK / November 2011

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Baking&Snack - November 2011

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