"I went on the "Gluten Free" diet and felt terrible and gained twenty pounds" A common complaint. Really, the traditional "Gluten Free" diet where one removes ANY food products that have wheat, rye or barley and replaces those staples with processed foods that are high in white processed rice flour; is just about the worst thing you can do. Well, not necessarily for the 1 in 2500 people that actually have Celiac Disease, but since those people are quite rare, most people should never abandon real nutrition for fad dieting. And let's face it, "Gluten Free" is a fad.
Gluten and the new terror on the food scene, Lectin, are both a part of nature, and a huge part of the foods that we eat. (Lectins) I have read quite a few websites in the past week or so, and some of them are just full of misinformation and hype. All designed to scare you and the whole world into, well, I'm not sure. Many of the sites I've viewed tell me that gluten sticks to the cilia in the intestines and destroys the lining and then is like a layer of glue preventing the absorption of ANY nutrients. Really? Why would someone print crap like that? Or the websites that print right there for everyone to read that whole wheat bread has a higher glycemic index than table sugar. REALLY? Or that the Phytic Acid, or free phytates, can rob humans of nutrients, especially calcium, and are the biggest cause of osteoporosis in AmeriKa. Really?
Wow, what a bunch of unsubstantiated bullcrap. The people that write this stuff all have ads on their websites, and sell stuff, supplements and books and crap. All have menu plans and want you to return to the site daily to get recipes and new stuff and buy things so they can make money. On your fear.
The truth of the matter is that for some people, a very small percentage of people of northern european descent, gluten can cause problems. Lectins and phytic acid are both neutrilized during TRADITIONAL processing methods. And of course what most of these sites and the internet doctors attempting to sell you stuff and a way of life you don't need try not to let you know, is that lectins and phytic acid are pretty much common in a lot of the natural foods that we eat. And if you eat a diet rich in plant foods, raw or fermented, then you will have a system that is more basic than acidic and alkaline environments help in the body's natural mechanism to breakdown these toxins. If you have a diet rich in meat, dairy, and processed foods, like white rice based "gluten-free" foods, then your whole system changes, and you can have damage begin to accumulate. But then again, eating all that crap, foods high in pesticide or herbicide residues, processed foods stripped of their nutrients, meats (modern meat), and foods that your body is required to work extremely hard to garner any nutrition from; then yeah, you should avoid wheat. Read my other stuff here - (Gluten Free)
I suppose that the food world is ruled by money the way the rest of the world is. The old maxim, buyer beware is as important as ever, and that every single person out there needs to educate themselves about food, the economy and the interplay between business and food production, and also just how any person that wants to present themselves as an authority will do what ever they can to prey on everyone else. P.T. Barnum once said that it is easier to cheat someone than it is to convince them they have been cheated. And that certainly holds true in the nutrition world as well. And elsewhere. I have a friend that is convinced that pyramid schemes are the way to make money in the world today. She pumps money into them, and they promise her tons of money back in return for initial investment. Of course the trouble is that unless she recruits more suckers into the scam, they won't pay her. And most people see it for what it is and shy away from her. But she persists, and even as the FTC shuts down some of the ones she put money into, she finds new ones and is ever hopeful that this new one, is THE ONE. And she will live in filthy rich luxury forever. Gullible people all over the world read the latest on this or that lifestyle and buy into them, and most are disappointed. The truth is, a varied diet of organic foods, very little meat, seafood or dairy, whole grains processed in a manner that destroys the lectins and phytic acid; and live a healthy lifestyle, then you will be healthier than if you buy into any fad and do crazy crap.
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