Modern day wheat.. a diet sabotaging agent?

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darnice2013
darnice2013 Posts: 8 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I came across this today, though it has been out a while, and will link below. Dr. Davis advises to stay away from wheat as it increases appetite to the point of increasing the average calorie intake per day.

He says, "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."

"If three people lost eight pounds, big deal," he said. "But we're seeing hundreds of thousands of people losing 30, 80, 150 pounds. Diabetics become no longer diabetic; people with arthritis having dramatic relief. People losing leg swelling, acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome, depression, and on and on every day."

I notice I eat more when i consume wheat and it is easy enough to check this, especially here at MFP where we record our intakes.

So what is your experience with wheat and what do you do instead?

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/modern-wheat-a-perfect-chronic-poison-doctor-says/

Replies

  • emdeesea
    emdeesea Posts: 1,823 Member
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    Meh. He's selling a book. I'm skeptical.

    Just another Dr. Oz fraud jumping on the diet bandwagon.
  • _MG_
    _MG_ Posts: 453 Member
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    Meh. He's selling a book. I'm skeptical.

    ^^This.

    There are plenty of success stories that rely on nothing but eating a balanced deficit and exercising.

    Those selling books or special foods/shakes/etc have a reason to be telling you what they are and it's $$$. for them.
  • mortuseon
    mortuseon Posts: 579 Member
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    Just another person looking for the 'magic bullet' for weight loss. If you find that wheat 'sabotages' your diet by causing binges, by all means limit it - but I think that exercising portion control and leading an active lifestyle is really what's going to cause the loss, wheat or no wheat.
  • chelstakencharge
    chelstakencharge Posts: 1,021 Member
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    Meh. He's selling a book. I'm skeptical.

    Just another Dr. Oz fraud jumping on the diet bandwagon.

    Exactly!!!
  • eric_sg61
    eric_sg61 Posts: 2,925 Member
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    I wrote a book once titled "Eat something, If it make you feel bad, don't eat again" Didn't sell many copies because it is not an alarmist title.
  • aleggett321
    aleggett321 Posts: 186 Member
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    Love that he was able to come up with eating exactly 440 calories more per day. Would just love to see his research. Garbage.
  • tameko2
    tameko2 Posts: 31,634 Member
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    I wrote a book once titled "Eat something, If it make you feel bad, don't eat again" Didn't sell many copies because it is not an alarmist title.

    the subtitle for that book should be "....unless it was so delicious that it was totally worth it."
  • neandermagnon
    neandermagnon Posts: 7,436 Member
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    opiates don't come from wheat, they come from poppies

    not sure what this dude is on about to be honest



    fact is lots of people like to find a culprit to blame for obesity, along the lines of "cut this out of your diet and you'll lose weight easily" and "I didn't get fat because I was inactive and ate too much, it's because of that damned (add demonised food here)"........ the reality is people get fat because they eat more than they burn off* and losing the fat is a slow and sometimes difficult process. But the demonising food line of thinking is popular because it sounds like a panacea to everyone's obesity and other health problems, so it sells lots of books. In the case of wheat, giving up wheat products will help some people to lose weight because they're calorie dense and carbohydrates tend not to be that filling, so it's easy to overeat on them. But it's totally possible to lose weight and keep it off for life while eating wheat products. The only people who should avoid wheat are those with medical reasons to do so, e.g. celiac's disease, wheat allergy, etc. If there's no medical reason to avoid wheat, just be careful to log it accurately and stay within your goal, because it's calorie dense and easy to overeat on. But you don't have to give it up to succeed at fat loss.

    *some metabolic issues can mess things up so this can happen with amounts of food that wouldn't have made anyone else fat
  • brookemart81
    brookemart81 Posts: 62 Member
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    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.

    This doesn't sound right to me. Don't opiates generally decrease appetite?
  • jeridith
    jeridith Posts: 67 Member
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    I have no health issues with wheat so eat it daily, and am steadily loosing weight. I do eat whole freshly ground rather than highly processed white, but whether that makes any difference I don't know.
  • SezxyStef
    SezxyStef Posts: 15,268 Member
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    But we're seeing hundreds of thousands of people losing 30, 80, 150 pounds. Diabetics become no longer diabetic....

    that is because they lost weight not because they gave up wheat...and that statement should indicate it's type 2...

    Trust me my brother who is a diabetic will still be a diabetic if he gave up wheat...difference between type 1 and type 2

    ETA: I eat wheat...almost everyday and it hasn't stopped my weight loss...
  • _Zardoz_
    _Zardoz_ Posts: 3,987 Member
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    He says, "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.
    Giadin is not actually an opiate. Gliadin polypeptides can bind to opiate receptors in the brain, but there’s no scientific evidence that this stimulates appetite. Also this claim that Giladin has only recently come into wheat is nonsense it has always been their it's just it's only recently been identified
  • darnice2013
    darnice2013 Posts: 8 Member
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    I was mostly interested in your experience with wheat. I consider most books written of some value and I'm nerd enough to love delving in and research the ideas, though obviously not everyone does. I am NOT promoting the book, BTW. I haven't read the book nor do I intend to. The NBC article was enough for me to begin thinking about my experiences with carbs and wheat. However, the responses here inspired me to check it out a bit more and found that Dr. Davis does have research to back his assertions. Here's one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6099562 You can decide for yourself if there are opoids produced by gladin protein.

    In my experience my appetite does increase with consumption of wheat and, in general, refined carbs. Dr. Davis isn't actually the only one who has made this more general assertion, he has offered a more detailed theory. At any rate, something to consider if your appetite seems to go crazy sometimes. In my case, I may be one of those folks who has become more sensitive to gluten and gladin, which the research has shown can happen with age.
  • Branstin
    Branstin Posts: 2,320 Member
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    I don't have any problems with wheat.
  • Marcia315
    Marcia315 Posts: 460 Member
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    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.

    This doesn't sound right to me. Don't opiates generally decrease appetite?

    You generally don't see fat heroin addicts.
  • emdeesea
    emdeesea Posts: 1,823 Member
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    ...Dr. Davis does have research to back his assertions. Here's one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6099562 You can decide for yourself if there are opoids produced by gladin protein.

    So basically, you take a protein, break it down into smaller fractions and see how it reacts to stuff. In this, the research focused on how these building blocks attached themselves to opioid receptors. However, that doesn't mean the protein itself will attach to opioid receptors, so citing it as evidence for opiate-like activity of gliadin is questionable. Not to mention that this paper is 30 years old.

    The fact that the doctor in the CBS article calls the protein an opiate seriously brings into question his competence or at least his schooling.

    It is possible that some day, someone will provide data to support Davis' claims, but until then it's unsupported. I remain skeptical.
  • darnice2013
    darnice2013 Posts: 8 Member
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    I see the article and the Dr. was more distracting than helpful towards a discussion of one's experience with wheat.. Sorry. Letting this one go by the wayside.

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