If you’re a diligent reader of food labels, in the past several years you’ve probably become familiar with the phrase, “Gluten free.” In fact, recently, this designation has even migrated to the front of some packaged food, such as Chex cereal. What is gluten and what does it do in our bodies?
For many years I thought that gluten was only relevant for those suffering from Celiac disease, who lack the ability to break this protein down and suffer allergic reactions to it. In fact, my brother was diagnosed at the age of 5 and our house has been at least in part gluten free ever since (he’s 19 now). But what every medical professional who advised my parents in dealing with his disease FAILED to mention is this: Gluten is destructive even in non-celiacs.
We were vigilant keepers of gluten free foods and careful label readers before “gluten free” became a dietary buzzword. We were the most informed eaters we knew: but we still had it all wrong. What our dietitian/nutritionist/physician should have told us was this:
“Your son is celiac, he is susceptible to serious allergic reactions when gluten enters his system. The only treatment known to modern medicine is to remove gluten from his diet.”
OK, doctor. We can do that.
“But you shouldn’t stop there. I can make a case for all of you to remove gluten from your diets.”
Even though we’re not allergic?
“Yes. I avoid it, my family avoids it, and I recommend that all my patients avoid it.”
Why?
“Let me walk you through it. Please sit down”
This is a bad sign. Go ahead, doc.
“When you eat, say, a piece of turkey, you mechanically reduce its size by chewing it.”
OK
“Then it passes into your stomach where acids break the small pieces into even smaller pieces.”
With stomach acid
“That’s right. Then these smaller pieces break into even smaller pieces in your small intestine, which has acid in it as well. The final destination for your turkey is the lining of your small intestine. This is a membrane, a protective sheet whose job is to act as the doorman for your bloodstream. Stuff on “the list’ gets in. Stuff not on the list gets rejected.”
OK, I’m with you so far.
“The turkey you ate is only allowed entrance to the club when it has been broken down into the smallest possible components, amino acids.”
They get in because they’re as small as possible.
“Pretty much. This is the safest and most natural way for a food to be absorbed: it gets the green light from the membrane of your small intestine, enters your blood stream in the smallest possible component, and gets transported in the blood to hungry cells in the rest of your body.”
You haven’t mentioned gluten. I’m getting tired.
“Right. When you eat bits of wheat, oats, rye, and barley, you break them into small hunks with your teeth and tongue, then…”
Pass them into your stomach where acid breaks it down.
“You got it. Your stomach then passes the even smaller pieces to your small intestine where the process starts to fall apart.”
Do go on.
“Gluten resists digestion. The acid in your stomach and intestine can’t break it down into its component amino acids.”
So, you’ve got bigger chunks of food, so what?
“The large gluten molecule meets the doorman, who does his job and blocks the door to your bloodstream. But gluten is sneaky, like an underage drinker: it sneaks in the club. Gluten is able to pass, intact, through your intestinal membrane and enter your bloodstream.”
So now you’ve got gluten swimming in your bloodstream. Let me guess, this is bad?
“It is bad: your body is used to seeing the smallest components of the food you eat. When it sees larger substances, it treats them like foreign invaders. What does your body do to foreign invaders?”
Sends immune cells to kill them.
“Very good. You are a very knowledgeable patient. The pharma/healthcare industry won’t make much money off you.”
Thank you for the compliment.
“So when you’ve got gluten swimming around in your bloodstream, your immune system is on alert, going after these molecules with immune cells. What would happen to firefighters who hour after hour, without a break, for a week straight?”
They’d be exhausted. Their performance would suffer.
“Yes, they would be weak and maybe unable to put out subsequent fires effectively.”
So gluten makes my immune system work overtime.
“Yes. And you need a strong immune system to combat serious threats to your body such as bacterial and viral infections, cancer, and other threats. It also needs to rest in order to repair cells that get damaged every day just through normal wear and tear.”
Are you suggesting that I’m getting sick all the time because I’m eating gluten?
“Cut out gluten for a month and see how you feel.”
Are you suggesting that my joints are sore because gluten won’t let my immune system repair the surrounding tissue?
“Cut out gluten for a month and see how you feel.”
Are you suggesting that I’m more vulnerable to cancer because I eat bread at breakfast, lunch, and dinner?”
“Cancer is virtually unknown in gluten free cultures.”
What about allergies? Our son gets a distended belly when he eats gluten, we’ve heard of other people having skin rashes. What’s the connection?
“Gluten is a protein that your immune system can easily confuse for normal, healthy molecules in your body. It all depends on the genetic vulnerability of your immune system in mistaking gluten for other similarly structured molecules in your body.”
I’m getting bored again. I’m not Celiac.
“Let me go on.”
OK but slap me if I nod off.
“I can’t do that. Consistent gluten contact can poke tiny holes in the membrane of your small intestine. Things can start to slip through these holes. Your immune system knows that they don’t belong, and does a good job of neutralizing them. But over time, your immune system starts attacking all molecules that resemble these foreign invaders. As chance has it, many of the cells in our joints resemble the large proteins that can slip past a leaky gut. Your immune system, overworked for years and years, starts attacking your joints. It can also attack skin cells, hair cells, and intestinal cells. Rashes, Alopicia, and Crohn’s are disorders that stem from your immune system attacking your own healthy cells.”
Hm, I’m losing my taste for toast.
“I like to hear that. Gluten is a ‘gut irritant,’ it scratches holes in your intestinal membrane. I want you to stop this process, and allow your intestinal membrane to heal completely. It could save your life.”
What should I do with all the gluten containing foods in my kitchen?
“If you don’t mind passing gluten on to other people, give it away to a food bank.”
I don’t think I want to do that.
“That’s good to hear.”
But gluten is in everything (said with a long whine).
“Gluten is in processed food. When you shift your diet to real food, you’ll by default remove the gluten. Grilled veggies and salmon is delicious, a hunk of French bread is a beige hunk of starch. I prefer bright, colorful food.”
I guess, but toast and jam? It’s soooo delicious.
“Sugar and grains are addictive. You are a gluten addict. Once you’re free from grain and sugar you can really start enjoying fresh, real, colorful, and flavorful food.”
I accept your challenge.
“In that case you won’t be seeing much of me. The more patients I tell about this, the fewer I see in the long run. I should keep this to myself. But I won’t”
Supporting medical literature
Fact: When you exercise you’re basically working up an appetite, and if you combine this with eating less you are asking your body to do the impossible: run on an empty tank. In the long run, your body will rebel. It will insist that you eat. You will and you will gain the weight back.
Most modern disorders and their symptoms, counting excessive stored body fat, can be “eaten away.” Alter your diet and align it with what your genetics expect to be fed. Fat will melt, muscle will return, immune, neural, and metabolic function will improve.
Then you can exercise strenuously.
It simply makes no sense to run in an overweight body. Walk: yes. Lift light weights: yes. Hike, cycle, jump, and throw. But if you’re severely overweight, you need to wait on the sustained strenuous exercise until you have a more athletic frame.
Diet first: Exercise second.
Last night at Normandy we passed some nutrition knowledge on to our students that might *gasp* someday actually improve their dietary behavior.
Central to our healthy eating curriculum is the education of diabetes, how one develops it, what the major terms are, and what foods lead you to it. The kids understand that diabetes develops after years of elevated glucose and insulin in the bloodstream. If you were to ask them what foods elevate glucose and insulin, they would tell you, “junk food.” OK. That’s true, but what is junk food? Is it just chips and soda?
Junk food identification is a skill that most Americans, adults or children, don’t possess. Everyone knows that fries and coke are junk foods, but very few ever think to attach the same label to most of the (geometrically shaped) food products in their shopping cart. Since most people can’t accurately and consistently identify junk food, most people in our country are overweight, sick, or in danger of becoming so. The ability to ID junk food will largely determine your ability to make healthy choices and avoid disease throughout your lifetime. What’s missing from our nutrition/dietary education is courage from educators to say what needs to be said: many foods marketed as healthy are in fact insulin spiking, immuno-depressing substances (*fake cough* Kashi). What spikes insulin? Sugar and starch. What depresses immune function? Sugar and starch. What words did the kids learn last night? Sugar and starch.
The kids were reminded that diabetics are at risk for limb amputation and blindness (sorry but we don’t have time to be gentle, not when “adult onset” is no longer an accurate description). They were given a myriad of name-brand junk foods and reminded that these foods spike insulin, and spike glucose. They learned that all of their junk foods fall into one of three categories: sugary foods, starchy foods, and foods that are both sugary and starchy. Here’s how we explained it:
starchy: foods that get mushy, squishy, or spongey in milk or water
sugary: foods that are made to be sweet
both: foods that get mushy in water and are made to be sweet.
Games and activities followed, all revolving around the categorizing of common food products into these groups. It was such a joy to watch the wheels turning as a boy considered what a Pop Tart is (hmm, it gets mushy in water and is made to be sweet, “It’s both!”). It was a thrill to hear a boy and a girl debating where Bunny Bread should go, “it’s got sugar in it, and it’s a starch, it should be both.” “It’s not sweet, it should be just a starch.” Me: “You’re both right.” In the next few weeks we’ll be hammering home the connection between sugars/starch and blood glucose, and inching kids towards the most comprehensive definition of junk food: That which is not a plant or animal.
Thank you again to Crossfit Kirkwood for yet another delicious donation this week. Snack time is such an important part of our lessons, and our Crossfit friends make it bigger and better than we could ever afford to. 291.7 lbs of nutrient dense foods were shuttled into the diets of our students in February. Compare that to 46 lbs in January before our collaboration began. Wow. Thank you, CF KW, for your service to our kids and families!
We love our Crossfit friends! Meg, Rich, Patty G., Katie L., and The S. family from CF Kirkwood. Neil and Emily from CF South City. Dallas and Melissa from Whole9. You guys are generous, creative, and compassionate humanitarians. We are glad you found us, and we are glad you found Crossfit.
Deepak Chopra (love him or hate him) asserts that there is “intelligence” locked in all the cells of our bodies, and those of us who call their bodies into service through physical exertion, be it Yoga or Crossfit, stimulate the release of this intelligence. It’s up to us, however, to be open to what it tells us, embrace it, and act on it. When certain people, “geniuses” as Emerson calls them, are connected with this intelligence, practices of physical exertion awaken the best and most affirming parts of the human spirit.
Those listed above and their (for now) anonymous collaborators are fulfilling the call of Crossfit in the most complete way, and the community that HopeBUILD serves is a better place because of them. Thank you all deeply!
February 21st, 2011 in
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This weather as of late has made everyone at HopeBUILD thinking about spring and summer gardens. The new office feels like a greenhouse… and thankfully that makes it excellent for seed starting.
Next week we will begin sowing tomatoes, bell peppers, and herbs. We would start greens, but we are waiting on new seeds of collards, mustards, and other greens. On Tuesday, we will also be doing some Spring Clean Up! Check back for entries on spring cleaning and seed starting adventures!
Who else is excited for SPRING?!
February 18th, 2011 in
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After almost 12 months of healthy living education at JSO, we hit a peak moment last night in class when a young lady inadvertently stopped us in our tracks and made our entire week.
We’re 3 weeks into diabetes education, teaching kids what Kraft, General Mills, and ConAgra would rather us keep to ourselves: that starch and sugar are literally sickening adults and children all over America by spiking their glucose, spiking their insulin, rendering their insulin receptors deadened to its call and allowing toxic glucose to accumulate in the blood. Kyla, one of the older and taller girls in class and, as such, one of the leaders (for better or for worse) was getting impatient with the other kids, who weren’t getting the gist of the principles we were teaching that day. Over and over, some of the kids were mixing up terms and fumbling over vocab. Until Kyla stood up. I was in a room across the hallway typing away on my laptop when I heard, at full volume, Kyla pound her desk and proclaim the following monologue for all to hear:
“Listen ya’ll, it’s not that hard. When you eat these foods (presumably pointing our “junk food” poster), your glucose goes up. When your glucose goes up, your insulin goes up. When your insulin is up for too long, you get diabetes.”
I stopped what I was doing, smiled broadly, closed my eyes, and nodded, “yes…”
Now. We all know that elevated insulin doesn’t per se equate to diabetes, but let’s not split hairs here. She is just a few small steps from understanding diabetes and the role of junk food better than most Americans, maybe even her parents’ physician. When the message is clear, consistent, and coherent, diabetes can be understood by anyone, young or old. Only when it is understood can it be avoided!
February 17th, 2011 in
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Eggplant is a versatile vegetable that’s an essential ingredient in dishes from around the world! It’s naturally low in calories, fat, and sodium, yet high in fiber and loads of other vitamins and nutrients, and it comes in a number of varieties that are just as beautiful as they are tasty!
When choosing which Eggplant to grow, you have a lovely variety of colors, shapes, and sizes to pick from! The basic types are globe-shaped, elongated and cylindrical, and egg-shaped, with the possible colors for the fruit including white, purple, rose, green, black, yellow, orange, or red, and solid or striped. The most common type found in North America is the Western or oval eggplant. Its large deep purple fruit is used for stuffing, baking, sautéing, and grilling.
What’s your favorite eggplant variety? Join the discussion on facebook!
Eggplants are best started inside approximately 6 weeks before the last frost or about 8 weeks before you expect the outside temperatures to remain above 60 degrees F at night. They can be sown outdoors only in climates with very long growing seasons, when the soil is warm and all danger of frost is past.
February 11th, 2011 in
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One of the most often cited barriers to eating well is the financial cost. No doubt, cheap food goes a long way and fresh food is more expensive. But this exposes a narrow perspective of “cost.”
here are some hidden costs of eating cheap food that we often overlook at when shopping at the grocery store:
* more sugar and starch means more tooth decay and more trips to the dentist
* more sugar and starch means more…eating. these foods must be perpetually replenished, leading to overeating and constant spending.
* more sugar and starch means less “edible medicine” (plants) and more pharmaceutical medicine (pills).
* more sugar and starch means more energy crashes, means lost productivity at work and home.
These are just the ones that come to mind. If you can think of more (and there surely are more) send us a message on Facebook, we’ll add them to this post!
February 11th, 2011 in
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Thank you to Patty G., for coordinating food collection from 5 area Kohl’s stores. Kohl’s in Manchester, Ellisville, Fenton, Crestwood & Wentzville collected darn near 65 lbs. of fresh, whole goodies. The kids last night were delighted by the fun colors and new flavors. You can bet it was a feast! Thank you to Kohl’s Associates in Action!
Washed, chopped, and eaten with delight!
February 8th, 2011 in
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From sweet to spicy to downright sizzling, there’s a perfect Pepper for everyone! Nature has a wide selection includes just what you’re looking for — whether you’re wanting a fresh and colorful garnish for your salads or you need to spice up those Mexican and Oriental dishes or you’re simply looking for a tasty and nutritious snack food, peppers are happy to provide. Keep reading and learn just what you need to know to grow the biggest and most delicious harvest of Peppers you’ve ever had! And if you’ve never attempted to grow these versatile veggies before, now is the time!
CHOOSING THE PEPPER FOR YOU:
When deciding what type of Peppers you want to grow, you will need to consider size, flavor, and color. In the category of sweet or salad Peppers, your choices include bell and pimento as well as some banana and cherry varieties. If heat is what you want, you can grow Habañero, Jalapeño, Anaheim, or Hungarian Peppers. Sweet and hot Peppers come in a rainbow of beautiful colors — green, yellow, red, orange, and even purple. So not only are they delicious, they make great eye-candy!
WHEN TO START:
It’s best to start your Peppers inside about 8 weeks before the last frost and at a temperature of 75-80 degrees F. They can be sown outdoors in early summer when the soil remains above 65 degrees F, but indoor germination is recommended.
February 4th, 2011 in
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