October 17, 2012

By David Blyweiss, M.D.

In This Issue:

• How the “whole healthy grains” myth is a diabetes nightmare
• What you can learn from comparing the Glycemic Index of wheat and other foods
• Why “gluten-free” isn’t the answer

Might As Well Trade In That Toast for a Candy Bar

If you think the best way to avoid diabetes is to eat less sugar, you could be in trouble. Even if you aren’t overweight, and don’t have a typical diabetic profile.

Because one of the foods that puts the most people in danger of diabetes is not technically thought of as a sugary food. Worse, it is considered part of a healthy diet, even by the American Diabetic Association.

I’m talking, of course, about wheat.

Even as the gluten-free trend is heating up, and many people are eliminating carbs to curb weight gain, we don’t hear enough about what I consider one of the top reasons to go wheat-free. The diabetes risk.

The relationship between wheat and insulin is a major factor in diabetes, regardless of whether you have other risk factors or not. In fact, if you really understood the connection, you would probably indulge in a candy bar more often than you would have toast with your eggs in the morning.

We may even have the cause-and-effect of diabetes backwards. The wheat-insulin response may well be what sparks weight gain, rather than the other way around. This means that if you wait to take steps to control your blood sugar, you could already be too late.

Let’s start by looking at where wheat falls on the glycemic index, and what those numbers mean. And more important, what sugar spikes do to your body…

Foods raise glucose – or sugar – to varying levels in your blood. Measuring the Glycemic Index (GI) of different foods enables us to compare those foods, relative to one another. The GI ranks foods based on the effect they have on your blood sugar levels – and the lower the index, the better. And looking at the numbers side-by-side tells an alarming story.

Wheat raises blood sugar higher than nearly all other foods, including table sugar and many candy bars.

Get a load of this comparison…

The GI of white bread is 69 and whole-grain bread is 72. Wheat cereal is 67. Compare that to a Mars Bar at 68 or a Snickers bar at 41. Table sugar comes in at 52. Meanwhile, chickpeas and lentils show up at 33 and 29 respectively. An alternative grain such as quinoa is 53.

Fruit often gets a bad rap for a high GI – but not compared to wheat. Many fruits, such as grapefruit and cherries come in as low as 25.

The highest fruit on the GI scale is watermelon at 72. Equivalent to whole wheat toast. And most vegetables, such as broccoli, celery, and cauliflower come in as low as 15.

Looked at through the GI lens, eating wheat can be seen as an invitation to diabetes. This kind of spike – as often as 2, 3, 4 or more times a day, depending on your diet, forces the pancreas to produce greater and greater amounts of insulin to metabolize the sugars. It also sparks visceral fat accumulation, to store the excess energy.

To make matters worse, modern wheat is extraordinarily high in a specific sugar, amylopectin A. And it’s uniquely digestible. That digestibility just magnifies the entire process.

Now, before you jump on the gluten-free bandwagon, a word of caution.

While there are only a few foods that increase blood sugar higher than wheat, these are the very foods that are often used in gluten-free products. These include: figs, dates and other dried fruit, rice starch, corn starch, tapioca starch, and potato starch – the most common ingredients used in gluten-free foods.

A gluten-free whole grain bread, for instance, is usually made with a combination of brown rice, potato, and tapioca starches – a combination that can send blood sugar through the roof.

The difference between those who go wheat-free and those who go gluten-free can often be spotted by two factors: their waist circumference and their blood sugar levels.

My recommendation is that you use the gluten-free products as an occasional treat, but that you find other ways to eat sidestepping products that can surge your glucose levels altogether.

There are more creative solutions to replacing wheat than you might realize. Here are a few substitutes I use. They are so tasty I don’t miss wheat one bit anymore:

• Eat tuna salad or chicken salad in half an avocado instead of between two slices of bread
• Combine mashed cauliflower and eggs and bake into a tasty pizza crust instead of the usual dough
• Use a large raw collard leaf, lettuce leaf or romaine lettuce as a sandwich wrap instead of bread or a tortilla
• Eat toasted seaweed or kale chips, or dehydrated veggies, when you are in the mood for something crunchy
• Shred zucchini (minus the seeds inside) lengthwise into “pasta” and add into your sauce and cook just until it softens
• Use crushed nuts in place of breadcrumbs

One of the biggest challenges to going wheat-free is eating out.

For starters, as soon as you sit down, ask them not to bring out the bread. Then you don’t have to sit and look at it all evening! I’ve noticed in fancier restaurants lately they have an impressive array of vegetable side dishes. You may be able to cobble together the perfect plate with a little bit of effort – and still enjoy an evening out without blowing your no-wheat status.

Getting off wheat – and not replacing it with gluten-free products that cause even greater blood sugar problems – is often enough to get my patients out of the diabetic range completely.

And I am convinced that if more people would make these changes before they started to face problems with their blood sugar, we could turn the tide on the epidemic we are currently facing…

My colleague, Functional Medicine physician Mark Hyman, cautions against labels that make health claims. He contends they are usually hiding something.

I have to agree.

The current “gluten-free” fad is starting to resemble the fat-free and low-fat fads, where they replace the offending food with something much worse. In both cases, they’re creating a blood sugar crisis – and challenging a nation that’s already losing the battle against diabetes and obesity.

It’s time we all start trusting that Mother Nature gave it to us just right. Our urge to meddle with perfection will ultimately be our undoing.

And making personal choices that buck the system – as challenging as it might be on a day-to-day basis – is the only way to make sure that you end up on the right side of the staggering health statistics.