Is gluten really that bad?

[actualizing25]

Hey guys:D

So I'm currently in the process of cleaning up my diet. Im eating vegan for 2 and a half years now, and it's working quite well. I dont consume any artifical sweeteners (sometimes here and there, but I dont crave it), I rarely eat fast food and overall Im eating a quite healthy diet. Sure there is always something to improve. For example gluten. I still eat bread and pasta and I dont see that it is bad for my body. After I eat gluten, I feel pretty good, no brain fog, no stomach issues, nothing. I even ate a glutenfree diet for a few monthes, just to experiment a bit and I felt the same as before.

So do you think I should still cut it out of my diet, although I dont feel any benefits? Maybe it's a long term thing and I will see the benefits in a few years, I dont know.

Anyways, thanks for your help, it means a lot to me

[Leo Gura]

Some people can tolerate it. Many cannot.

There's nothing really good about it. It's basically empty calories and toxins. Wheat has a lot of pesticides in it and it is poorly digested by the gut because it was been so over-bred to be pest-resistant.

The thing is, if you are young, you will feel like nothing can hurt you regardless of what shit you eat. Then, as you age it all catches up to you.

When I was young I could eat wheat and drink 3 cokes a day without worries. Today I am paying for it.

Optimizing your diet requires a very long-term view: decades. If you only consider how it makes you feed today, you will eat a lot of shit and still feel okay.

[flume]

Nothing wrong with gluten. People usually immediately think about white wheat flour in these conversations. That's for sure not the most nutritious choice. It's also been cultivated in ways that make it way more heavy in gluten than it used to be. But there are many kinds of (ancient) grains that are perfectly fine. Experiment with them: Rice, barley, millet, oats, rye, polenta, oat, rice, buckwheat, quinoa, spelt, amaranth, etc. 

Some of them contain gluten, others don't. Just get a variety in and choose whole grain products as often as you can. And eat your veggies too It's all about balance and finding a way that is sustainable for you on the long run. Also, the quality of the food you eat is way more important than the kind. 

Especially if you don't feel off eating it, it's a smart, healthy, cheap and sustainable choice to include grains in your diet. Your footprint becomes huge just eating veggies and meat all day.

[flowboy]

38 minutes ago, flume said:

And eat your veggies too

YES?

 

Many people I talk to have noticed feeling tired, sluggish, and just general malaise that they didn't know was connected to gluten until they thought about it, and noticed that their usual meals made it worse. 

All during high school I had such bad brain fog after eating my usual whole grain bread lunch that it was hard for me to think straight and socialize. I even had to go home to sleep it off.

I'm not gluten-intolerant though. I can eat it a bit and be fine. It just saps my energy when I have a lot.

I'm convinced that gluten is not a good thing to eat for most people. Can't speak for all people. If it never bothers you, great. Keep an eye indeed on how your food makes you feel. When you do start to experience some negative effects, there's so many alternatives

Edited March 10, 2021 by flowboy
I was WRRONG

[Michael569]

@actualizing25 gluten is problematic if you are coeliac. That would be an extreme form of allergy and in such case gluten has to go for life.

The modern thing called Gluten intolerance or gluten sensitivity, on the other hand,  usually marks gastrointestinal disturbance rather than any sort of genetic thing or an immune conflict.

For example, you can test non-coeliacs who react to bread for gluten sensitivity and you will find that their anti-gliadin antibodies up. When you remove gluten and put something else like oats in and retest in a month, you will find anti-avidin antibodies going up. What this suggests is not that the gluten is an issue but that this stuff is making its way to the bloodstream, triggering an immune reaction and that's what you see on blood results usually due to increased gut permeability, the microparticles called antigens are small enough to fall through these "openings". 

For people who are non-coeliac and who have no digestive disturbances, gluten is usually fine but it should come from natural whole food sources such as wholegrain breads, wholegrain pasta or gluten-containing wholegrain such as rye or teff rather than from highly processed foods like tortillas, white toasts or flour. Alternatively, you can always mix it up with non-gluten wholegrains like buckwheat, quinoa, amaranth etc. 

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, flume said:

Experiment with them: Rice, barley, millet, oats, rye, polenta, oat, rice, buckwheat, quinoa, spelt, amaranth, etc.

Obviously rice, oats, polenta, and quinoa have no gluten, so they are much better than wheat.

White long-grain rice seems to be one of the best grains, if you're looking for quick and cheap calories.

[Hello from Russia]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Obviously rice, oats, polenta, and quinoa have no gluten, so they are much better than wheat.

White long-grain rice seems to be one of the best grains, if you're looking for quick and cheap calories.

According to some latest researches, rice often contains Arsenic, which can be a problem. I love rice a lot too, though  .

For me, I found one of the best grains is Oats. Never really had any issues with it if you buy a quality product with high cooking time (not 1 min fast oats type of stuff)

[mmKay]

@actualizing25 For me, wheat bread spikes my blood sugar extremely and makes my energy crash no long after. 

Also, wheat is adicting. No joke. I had a phase where I was somewhat nihilistic and my go-to emotional crutch was junk food. I could have as much ice cream, chips, or fried food as I wanted and I never felt full until I ate something bread-ish. I heard dairy has a similar mechanism :

 

If you wanna do burger buns and bread for sandwiches, you can choose flax meal, tahini, peanut butter, chickpea flour , coconut flour and almond flour. You can bake a whole loaf or do individual buns in a mug in the microwave in less than 2 minutes.

You can literally mix in a mug chickpea flour only with water, stir it until it becomes dense and clump-free, and throw it into the microwave for 120 sec. Boom. Gluten free low glycemic tasty bun for your vegan sandwitch.

Some people feel little bloated after it, some dont.

Also : cauliflower crust pizza.

Edited March 10, 2021 by mmKay

[TheAlchemist]

In these conversations about gluten I usually don't see people taking into account the highly promising benefits of feeding the gut microbiome. It has been demonstrated that many healthy bacteria strains in the gut can be fed with rye especially well, since it has a really good slow digestion profile and it it is broken down almost through the whole length of the intestinal tract feeding different bacteria along the way. The intestinal tract is basically as diverse as a rainforest, and if you don't feed the bacteria that keep the system in balance, unexpected consequences might happen, which we are have just in recent years begun to understand. Overall if you don't have celiac disease or other gluten sensitivity, the net effect from high quality rye seems to be quite positive. 

Thesis= gluten good

Antithesis=gluten bad

Synthesis=gluten in some forms and in certain cases bad, sometimes good and healthy.

Before the last decade the power of the microbiome wasn't understood anywhere near as well (especially how it affects brain function), and that aspect is changing our understanding of the body system quite significantly. It's quite a new aspect of consideration in regards to human health optimization, but many people (understandably) want to cling to the old paradigm where the role of the microbiome wasn't understood. 

Edited March 10, 2021 by TheAlchemist

[Karmadhi]

@Leo Gura I am currently trying to cut down on wheat because it gives me some issues with migraine and also in general i think there are better substitutes. I wanted to know does eating rice give you these health issues after a long time? I noticed that Asians tend to be generally not fat and much healthier and their main carb source is rice. I cannot personally do a non carb diet and therefore i want to eat the healthiest carb source (aside bananas). I just use them as fuel and energy source while still eating the healthy fruits and veggies. (for example i am doing your smoothie recipe each day while also adding a bit of avocado in it, it tastes great, thank you for that!).  What about things like lentils and beans? Do these create health problems down the road? 

[UDT]

@actualizing25  No. Modern wheat is te problem.

Try some ancient organic wheat bread with some olive oil and goat cheese and youre offf to the stars

[Flowerfaeiry]

If you're gonna do wheat/gluten try and do organic. I notice a huge difference in the way I react to non organic/organic wheat. I wouldn't even fuck with non organic wheat. It's that big of a difference. 

 

[Hello from Russia]

9 hours ago, UDT said:

@actualizing25  No. Modern wheat is te problem.

Try some ancient organic wheat bread with some olive oil and goat cheese and youre offf to the stars

Where I can find the ancient organic wheat?!!

[UDT]

On 13/03/2021 at 7:04 AM, Hello from Russia said:

Where I can find the ancient organic wheat?!!

Try some https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmer

[OmAhHungVajraGuru]

Gluten is a hit or miss. 

It is something that makes our gut tight junctions to become leaky however in a healthy biome, every attack from gluten actually makes us more resilient and stronger ultimately leading to a healthier biome. However if you're already sensitive then its going to cause a problem unless you address the root cause which are chemically fested food and a toxic compromised incomplete microbiome, address those two, your gut will be able to handle anything 

[martins name]

We are not evolved to eat grains. We've only cooked food for 100,000 years. It's not really natural for us.

[vladorion]

Many people are not even aware they have gluten intolerance. You can be asymptomatic for a very long time. The problem is, if you have celiac and are eating gluten, you're damaging your gut lining almost beyond repair. 

[roopepa]

@Leo Gura In your video of healthy diet, you say not to eat bread of any kind. Why is this? Do you say this because most bread is made of wheat? How about bread with no wheat, let's say, 100% oat?

Do you have any good sources to learn about negative health effects of wheat? I'd like to look into it. This one is for @Michael569 too.

[Ima Freeman]

@roopepa https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00130/full

[roopepa]

27 minutes ago, Ima Freeman said:

@roopepa https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00130/full

Thank you!!