You might think the wheat crop going into the ground this spring will provide nutritious, sustaining food for tens of millions of people at home and abroad.
You’d be right.
However, a tiny but increasingly vocal group of health commentators has a rather startlingly different view.
As far as they’re concerned, wheat, and more specifically the gluten it contains, makes consumers fat and unhealthy and might kill them. They’re making their case in books, videos and on the internet.
One such advocate says on his website that clients who stop eating wheat feel like “a cloud has been lifted from their brain.”
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Another says eating wheat and other grains made him lazy and moody and eventually put him into a six-year depression.
“The very first day I reduced my grain intake … these problems went away,” he said on his site superbeing.com.
Those views are held by what is best described as a fringe group, but one food scientist says the wheat industry should be aware of the potential threat.
“It’s hard to know what the magnitude is, but it’s growing,” said Mary Ellen Camire of the University of Maine’s food science and human nutrition department.
“There are lots of websites, and people see testimonials from somebody who’s a doctor and they may think, ‘this is credible, I’m going to try this,’ “Camire said.
And given the psychological factors involved in dieting, they may convince themselves that they feel better as a result.
Camire, who was interviewed after speaking to the recent International Wheat Quality Conference in Saskatoon, said there are legitimate reasons for people to go on gluten-free diets, most obviously if they suffer from celiac disease, an autoimmune digestive disease in which gluten damages the small intestine and interferes with absorption of nutrients from food.
Anyone who thinks they have sensitivity to gluten should have it properly checked out.
However, some anti-wheat advocates take the damage that gluten causes in celiac disease and conclude that all gluten consumption is harmful. Camire said there is no scientific evidence that is the case.
“These people say if you have some of those CD symptoms, like diarrhea, it’s because of wheat,” she said.
Canadian grain scientists and industry officials got a taste of the anti-wheat campaign during the February 2009 meeting of the Prairie Grain Development Committee.
Bill Code, a medical doctor originally from Saskatchewan who has written several books on health issues, described wheat as the number one source of food sensitivity problems in Canada.
“Wheat is a potential trigger for a number of chronic diseases,” he said, listing multiple sclerosis, type one diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease.
Code, who suffers from MS, said avoiding wheat has helped him fight the disease.
He urged researchers to focus more attention on developing wheat varieties that don’t have the same negative impacts on human health.
Camire said while she doesn’t think anti-wheat campaigners like Code will have a significant impact on wheat consumption, it’s nevertheless important to counter their claims.
She said wheat’s health and nutritional benefits are well established. It’s a good source of fibre, antioxidants such as anthrocyanin (an anti-cancer agent), lutein (good for eye health), and prebiotics, which stimulate the growth or activity of beneficial bacteria in the digestive system. Wheat contains important nutrients, she added, and people shouldn’t cut it out of their diets for no good reason.
“Man has survived for thousands of years on bread, so it can’t be all that bad,” said Camire, adding it’s encouraging to see the large array of health bread and whole grain wheat products that have been developed during the past five years.
