Wheat Belly: The Healthy Food Thats Giving You Belly Fat

Last month, searches for "wheat belly diet" spiked 580 percent, according to information released by Yahoo Search. Wondering what the diet's all about? It's built around the fact that modern wheat—even the stuff found in whole-wheat bread—causes your blood sugar to spike since it has a high glycemic index. In fact, two slices of whole-wheat bread can increase blood sugar more than two tablespoons of pure table sugar.

If you're young and you don't have diabetes, you may not care very much about your blood sugar. But if you're trying to lose weight, it's time to start paying attention: High blood sugar provokes high blood insulin, which leads to belly fat accumulation.

In his bestselling book Wheat Belly (published by WH parent company Rodale), cardiologist William Davis, M.D., explains that eating wheat can not only provoke a fat-storing insulin response, it also stimulates your appetite so you eat more, too. Davis is continually amazed to see "flop-over-the-belt belly fat vanish" after he puts patients on wheat-free diets.

But the health benefits of eliminating wheat don't stop at the scale. Belly or visceral fat triggers inflammation and abnormal inflammatory signals that underlie diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, says Davis. Other health conditions linked to visceral fat include dementia, rheumatoid arthritis, and colon cancer. Cutting out wheat can also improve the symptoms of acid reflux and irritable bowel syndrome(IBS).

Davis, who has put thousands of patients on a wheat-free diet, admits that "it may seem absurd, even unpatriotic, to demote an iconic dietary staple to the status of public health hazard." The problem is that, after hundreds of years of hybridization—that is, crossing different varieties of the grain together—and more recently, 50 years of genetic modifications, altered plants weren't subjected to safety testing until 2003. Modern wheat has made its way into our food supply without the FDA determining if it's safe for human consumption. And that's a lot to stomach.

Tell us: Would you cut wheat out of your diet if it meant better health?

Buy Wheat Belly to learn more on how wheat affects our bodies and get advice on how to undergo a wheat-ectomy, plus wheat-free recipes and eating plans.

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