Wheat Belly By William Davis, Md

[GlutenFreeManna]

A friend gave me this book recently and I was just wondering if anyone had read it. From it's cover I have a feeling it's going to prescribe a gluten-free diet for everyone. Under the title it says "Lose the wheat, lose the weight and find your path back to health." Just wondering how medically accurate it is or if it's just another book pushing a gluten-free fad for people wanting to lose weight. I lost weight when I went gluten-free but that's not why I went gluten-free and it's not the norm I don't think--while around 40% of us are overweight that still means 60% are normal sized or underweight. I don't like the idea of pushing a gluten-free diet for weight loss only even if it does help some people lose weight. I do intend to read with an open mind but just wonderign who has read this book? Any background on the authors credentials?

[viviendoparajesus]

sorry i have not read it. but your post captured my interest. from what i have seen it looks like it shares characteristics and ideas with some books i like and have seen before. it seems broader than just weight loss. i think that is just the catchy title thing to get people's interest and get the truth out about the problems of gluten beyond just for those with celiac's. based off what i have seen i would try to have an open mind reading it but still try to be analytical/ "critical" and not just take everything as a cold hard fact. i am interested in reading it now. thanks for the post. sorry i could not help and have not already read it.

[GlutenFreeManna]

sorry i have not read it. but your post captured my interest. from what i have seen it looks like it shares characteristics and ideas with some books i like and have seen before. it seems broader than just weight loss. i think that is just the catchy title thing to get people's interest and get the truth out about the problems of gluten beyond just for those with celiac's. based off what i have seen i would try to have an open mind reading it but still try to be analytical/ "critical" and not just take everything as a cold hard fact. i am interested in reading it now. thanks for the post. sorry i could not help and have not already read it.

You did help a little, thanks for posting. I had never heard of it before my friend gave me the book and then I started noticing a few people here mention it in posts so now my interest is peaked too. I went and read some of the reviews on Amazon. It got almost overwhelmingly positive reviews. The few people that gave bad reviews complained that it didn't really give a diet plan and prescribed a grain free diet (not just wheat free) which was preceived as being unsustainable for most people. I will read with an open mind and hope I learn something. I'm a very slow reader however and just thought I would pick some brains here first.

[kareng]

You did help a little, thanks for posting. I had never heard of it before my friend gave me the book and then I started noticing a few people here mention it in posts so now my interest is peaked too. I went and read some of the reviews on Amazon. It got almost overwhelmingly positive reviews. The few people that gave bad reviews complained that it didn't really give a diet plan and prescribed a grain free diet (not just wheat free) which was preceived as being unsustainable for most people. I will read with an open mind and hope I learn something. I'm a very slow reader however and just thought I would pick some brains here first.

We expect a 500 word book review in 1 week, young lady.

[GlutenFreeManna]

We expect a 500 word book review in 1 week, young lady.

Ha! If I could read it in a week it would be a miracle. I'll let you know though...

[saintmaybe]

I'm halfway through, and there are sixteen pages of credible medical references in the back. It ranges from an anthropological exploration of wheat's place within the American culture, to it's effects on Celiac, it's role in the formation of diabetes, it's neurological effects, and much much more besides. It is an AMAZING book.

The author is a renowned cardiac MD who's goal was to develop the diet that most effectively treated diabetes. The best way to do that, he discovered, was to eliminate high glycemic foods, rather than focusing on processed sugars. The food with the highest prevalence in the American diet that also has the highest glycemic index? Wheat.

It is quite simply a stunning piece of work, and an elegantly constructed scientific argument from start to finish. There are also bonus recipes for an added incentive, and a blog for those so minded.

I am convinced the man has found the cure for many incidences of non-celiac diabetes, heart disease, a weight loss technique, depression, and many anxiety disorders, and ARTICULATED it in an easy to understand way.

If this makes it to the popular consciousness, he should win the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

[GlutenFreeManna]

Okay so I read the first chapter and then decided to skip to the chapter about celiac disease. Here are a few quotes:

"Wheat Belly is not a book about celiac disease. But it is impossible to talk about the effect of wheat on health without talking about celiac disease." Pg 75

"While celiac disease is not the most common expression of wheat intolerance, it provides a vivid and dramatic illustration of what wheat is capable of doing when it encounters the unprepared human intestine." Pg 76

He has some interesting stories of the history of celiac disease, some I knew, some are new info for me. I've read many of the articles he is citing here. While so far this is a good read and he keeps my interest, I'm not very keen on his focus on wheat alone as the main cause of obesity and many other health problems. I do think that eliminating gluten may be an answer for many but it won't be the answer for everyone. He seems to be prescribing a wheat free diet (he only used the term gluten free diet twice in the entire book) as a panacea.

I also had to laugh at the very start of the book because clearly he assumes most people reading it are his age or older. He used an example saying that our parents and grandparents were not obese and also did not exercise. He made a comment about his mother 50+ years ago never running. I'm in my early 30's and my earliest memories of my mother were of her exercising and dieting (duirng the 1980's), always trying to lose weight. My grandmothers on both sides were thin and frail with multiple health issues (I guess they would have been the same age/generation as his mother), my grandfathers were overweight. Pictures of my great grandparents on both sides show that they were obese--and they were born in the 1890's. He is using this generational thing to set up the premise that wheat has changed genetically in the past 50 years, however it's not very effective (IMO) if you are under 50 and have older relatives that are/were obese without having eaten that genetically modified wheat of today. It's a minor point really but it sets the tone for the book to me so far because it hones in on his target audience. People who are overweight, over 50 and have type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, etc. He is a cardiologist so I understand that's probably what most of his patients look like.

As the quotes above show, this is not a book about celiac disease. However he uses the rise in celiac disease diagnosis as "evidence" for why wheat is worse for people now than ever. The jury's still out for me on whether I buy his thesis--although my family has clearly suffered from generations of obesity while eating gluten, the majority of my peers who are thin with no major health problems eat wheat products on a regualr basis. So it's too early for me to draw as strong of a causal relationship as he is drawing between wheat and weight. I will keep reading, however.

[Sunny600]

Well, I know this is a long time past when you posted this, but I just read the book, and while the scientific stuff seems very good (and he himself seems to have celiacs), his ultimate reccommendation is to elimated ALL carbohydrates from one's diet, which makes this ultimately no different from any other no-carb diet. But it was very very interesting, and made a lot of sense to me.