Wheat

The article Modern wheat a “perfect chronic poison” has made me consider eating habits.  Advice has generally been to avoid processed foods in preference to fresh produce.  Genetic modification suggests no save haven there either.  Different from the traditional evolutionary approaches the modern form introduces elements from other animals with apparently little understanding on the impact.  Foods are complex systems that fuel other complex systems that have evolved a symbiotic relationship over the eons.  

The difference in this study is that numbers quantifying impact are expressed.  

Davis said that the wheat we eat these days isn’t the wheat your grandma had: “It’s an 18-inch tall plant created by genetic research in the ’60s and ’70s,” he said on “CBS This Morning.” “This thing has many new features nobody told you about, such as there’s a new protein in this thing called gliadin. It’s not gluten. I’m not addressing people with gluten sensitivities and celiac disease. I’m talking about everybody else because everybody else is susceptible to the gliadin protein that is an opiate. This thing binds into the opiate receptors in your brain and in most people stimulates appetite, such that we consume 440 more calories per day, 365 days per year.”

I’ll see if I can avoid wheat-based products and monitor any weight changes.  But wheat is widely used.