The ZERO WHEAT diet and the fear of gluten

The Zero Grain Diet is a book by William Davis , published in Italy by Mondadori, and which has made a lot of talk about itself, fomenting the fear of gluten in people who have no gluten digestibility problems, that is, they are not celiac. However, it was books like these that led to many more people from the United States in Italy who believed they had to follow a gluten-free diet than in the past , so much so that now it is enough to take a tour in supermarkets to understand how much the business of products without gluten has increased tenfold, with lots of warnings also in ice cream, in bags of vegetables and not only in baked goods.
I’m sure some of you have also been infected with the madness of the gluten-free diet.Let’s clarify a few things: certainly, between additions of modified starch, wheat put in spreads and gluten as a thickener, there are many products contaminated by an excess of gluten , a totally useless and harmful gluten just like all the other additives and junk that we find. in packaged products. It would be enough to follow a healthier diet avoiding eating all these packaged junk to solve the problem, and not to avoid wheat products, pasta, wholemeal products, cereals with gluten.

In short: gluten is not the enemy to fight, but it is often used in unsuspected packaged products. If we eliminated these, we would eliminate all the excess gluten that perhaps slows down our digestion and metabolism as we suspect, rather than giving ourselves to gluten free products. It is true that modern wheat has a higher dose of gluten than in the past, and that the trend of kamut wheat, a grain much stronger in gluten, has certainly worsened and not improved the problem.
However, not only is it useless to impoverish the diet by removing all foods that have gluten , but above all we must think that many foods that do not have gluten are made with rice or corn flour., that is, they have a higher glycemic index than traditional versions, and if possible they make you fat more.
So why in this book as in others it is said that so many people lose weight thanks to a gluten-free diet? Well, all non-celiac people who lose weight by eating gluten-free simply for the first time in their life they abandon refined foods (white bread, pizza, white pasta) and many baked goods (biscuits, snacks) for a more varied diet in cereals. raw, pseudocereals such as quinoa and legumes. One thing they could do very well without giving up gluten, but having a varied diet. But no. They need to find an enemy instead of realizing that until then they ate poorly, and now they simply eat better. But William Davis, the author of the book Zero Grain, is a cardiologist, and he is convinced that he has been eliminating wheat from his patients’ diets that they are back in shape, citing various research reads trying to be right . Same thing that other authors have done, such as neurologists and even science journalists, see Gary Taubes, convinced that the solution to being overweight is to eliminate one food forever. Big mistake.

The solution to being overweight is to vary your diet by choosing healthy foods. If you eat bread and pasta every single day, it makes sense that you will lose weight if you give up. Butthe problem is the abuse of certain foods, in a sloppy and routine diet, not foods.
If we really believe that we should eat less gluten, here are the foods and advice I can give you, and that will certainly work:
– eliminate double zero flour in favor of flours of other cereals or whole or semi-whole wheat flour for cakes, desserts , homemade cookies.
– alternate pasta at lunchtime with the consumption of other cereals: rye, oats, spelled, and pseudocereals: buckwheat, quinoa, amaranth. It is also enough to vary once or twice a week, and another time a week to eat brown rice.
– eliminate kamut flour and kamut wheat
– avoid seitan in favor of tofu and other soy products
– eliminate refined foods and ready-made products: sauces, gravies, canned soups, frozen foods, white bread and pizza, white rice, snacks and puffed cereals. Yes to wholegrain products, brown rice, fresh vegetables and fresh fruit, fresh meat and fish, oatmeal or slices of wholemeal bread for breakfast.