There are some health problems associated with refined grains.

Eating refined grains can result in the body producing adverse metabolic consequences very similar to what the body experiences when we consume refined sugar.

The majority of refined grain products provoke our glucose levels (blood sugar levels) to increase significantly causing the body to produce insulin to counteract the high glucose levels & return them to normal levels.

Sometimes, however, in the early stages of impaired glucose tolerance, the body will react to the increase of glucose levels by producing too much insulin, which results in the glucose levels dropping well below the normal level.

This condition is known as reactive hypoglycaemia.

This is a clear indication that the body is unable to cope with refined sugars & grains and is heading for more severe glucose tolerance problems in the future.

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Gluten grains may be the most problematic of the grains but a high intake of non-gluten grains has caused plenty of health problems around the world too.

An example of this is corn. Corn is a non-gluten grain but it’s interesting to note that it is particularly low in niacin (vitamin B3) and tryptophan, an amino acid the body can use to make niacin. As a result of a high intake of corn, pellagra (niacin deficiency disease) can develop.

Imbalances & nutrient deficiencies in refined grains

You may not be aware of it, but refined grains are nutrient-deprived foods.

The process of refining wheat involves the removal of the starchy endosperm away from the bran and germ, which also strips away the portions of vitamins & minerals essential for health.

The vitamins & minerals stripped away include:

• 60% of the calcium
• 85 % of the magnesium
• 77% of the potassium
• 78% of the zinc
• 68% of the copper
• 76% of the iron
• 86 % of the manganese
• 40% of the chromium
• 48 % of the molybdenum

Nutrients including chromium, magnesium & zinc are vital in assisting the body to properly use carbohydrates including grains for fuel.

Other nutrients including potassium & calcium are required to perform vital functions such as building & strengthening bones & relaxing muscles.

Unfortunately, eating plenty of white flour products doesn’t provide many of these nutrients. As a result of this it can lead, over time, to subtle pre-clinical nutrient deficiencies. The more refined grains & sugars we eat, the less balance we have of nutritious foods that provide the essential nutrients absent in refined foods.

Eating too many refined grains and sugars instead of nutritious foods leaves our body lacking the vital nutrients from nutritious foods. We are more likely to develop sub-optimal intakes, or worse, nutrient deficiencies, preventing our body from performing at its best.

Keep in mind that whole grains – which refined grains are derived from – also contain no vitamin B12 & none of the important antioxidants including vitamin A, vitamin C & beta carotene.

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In my last blog I wrote about the implementation of Mandatory Folic Acid Fortification and began speaking of the effects it has. Now I will continue to write about the negative implications it has.

Many countries have begun to seriously question the entire concept of Mandatory Folic Acid Fortification (MFF). Ireland put the whole matter on hold in 2006 after finding that target populations were obtaining sufficient folate from their diets under a regime of voluntary folic acid fortification (VFF). In August 2009, New Zealand deferred MFF until at least 2012 pending a review of emerging scientific feedback. Some 87% of the NZ population were opposed to the introduction of MFF. The UK has followed a similar strategy. The USA, which has had MFF in place for 10 years, is currently reviewing its stance, in the light of the strong correlation between MFF and increased levels colorectal cancers.

The implementation of the process is particularly flawed. The legislated range of folic acid addition of 2 – 3 mg/kg of flour is difficult to achieve, verify and guarantee reliably. The other problem is that folic acid denatures over time and at varying rates depending upon product moisture content, ambient storage conditions and reactions with and between the various flour mix ingredients. Several months out from manufacture it is virtually impossible for any responsible manufacturer to guarantee either the folic acid content or quality.

The legal requirement is an unrealistic and unachievable nonsense which should not have been imposed on the flour millers, blenders and baking industry, especially as this is not the most effective and safest way to ensure folic acid fortification. Non-conformances are inevitable. Public and Product Liability Insurers are also reluctant to insure against future liability risks associated with this poorly thought out and inequitable legislation. This is a legal, health and financial minefield that invites civil disobedience on the part of flour millers and blenders and should compel public outrage.

MFF also restricts Consumer freedom of choice. Apart from organic flours technically no flours are exempt. Boutique gluten free flours like ours fall into a grey legal area.

MFF and its likely consequent side effects and negative publicity is something that Soy Products (Sales) Pty Ltd does not want to be involved in or held responsible for. We wholeheartedly support the well informed stance adopted by Mr. Mark Laucke, the current President of the Flour Millers Council of Australia.

It is our view that folic acid should be prescribed only for those sectors of the population who require it, namely women intending to become pregnant and pregnant women and that the dosage should be properly regulated and monitored to meet their specific needs. Suitable supplements are already commercially available. This is more easily, cheaply and reliably controlled and would be more effective and safer for the whole community including the expectant mothers.

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In my last blog I introduced the need to establish good eating habits in the young. This week I will continue to write about importance of this and methods parents should be using to feed their children.

Young children should be actively discouraged from eating just white bread, yoghourt, jelly, ice cream and the like with very little fruit and vegetables. A diet comprised of these processed, sugary foods does not allow their muscles to develop properly, causing them to be prone to deficiency issues and perhaps to premature gout and arthritic problems.

This is also the time to start gently and patiently teaching young children to use their cutlery and eating utensils properly. It is also important to make this whole eating process as enjoyable and leisurely as possible and to avoid bad experiences. Above all, young children should never be bribed with lollies to get them to eat and should never be given lollies, dessert or any other alternatives if they have declined to eat the main meal provided. It is a fundamental mistake to enable a child to consistently reject the food provided and teaches the child bad and demanding habits, which once established can be difficult to break.

It is better and kinder all round, to be firm and insistent than to let a tyrant child rule the roost. No child is going to starve itself and most quickly run out of puff when faced by a resolute parent. A slightly hungry child is more likely to eat what s/he is given and it is always better if the child knows the limits and boundaries.

Sometimes – even though it might seem unsightly and messy to us as adults – it may be important to let children touch, play with, smell and kiss their food as part of the process of getting used to it. However, allowing a child to spit or throw food and smear walls and furniture etc with food should never be tolerated as this is just plain bad and unacceptable behaviour.

In my next blog I will continue to write about the importance of establishing good eating habits in the young through my own personal experiences with my son.

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I have long been concerned about the nutritional adequacy of the diets of most of our senior citizens whether resident in their own homes or in various forms of care. Very often, when left to their own devices many older people cannot be bothered to prepare proper meals and many of them fall into a toast and tea or coffee regime: they do what is easiest without recognising or realising the longer term consequences of this behaviour. They often become seriously under nourished. Many do not maintain an adequate intake of fluids,  particularly water, sometimes due to fear of incontinence or of inability to get to the toilet in time, even when they have dementia. Dehydration may cause brain shrinkage, headaches, memory loss and an inability to think clearly and logically. It can also cause serious kidney malfunction.

As we age, we often become less active physically and stress levels should diminish all of which reduces our energy intake requirements. A situation which, in combination with a declining digestive system, amplifies the requirement to maintain a nutritionally adequate and balanced diet. This also maintains the immune system, body warmth, energy levels, mental activity and the body’s natural healing and repair functions. Almost conversely, it becomes more critical that as the food quantity diminishes the need for appropriate fundamental quality and adequate nutritional balance increases. To avoid doing the elderly a grave disservice we need to better understand and provide for their nutritional needs taking into account the issues that also arise from their aging metabolisms.

I also believe that it is important for the elderly to remain as physically active as possible in order to maintain bone and muscular strength as well as their balance and blood circulation. Sadly, there are many older men in nursing homes, and elsewhere, who appear to be losing weight and muscle tone through being inadequately fed: quantity and quality wise. There are also increasing numbers of elderly women with open, ulcerated sores on their shins that will not heal: due often to the combined lack of an adequate diet and physical activity regime causing poor blood circulation. They all require quality sources of protein and vegetables in their diets not snacks, convenience foods, bread, cakes and biscuits etc.

The maintenance of good nutritional status in this group is critical. The elderly have the right to enjoy healthy, productive and fulfilling lives. Better nutrition will ensure greater independence for longer, better quality of life, higher immunity, lower mortality and less need to progress to higher, more expensive forms of care.

All human beings need to eat their body weight in quality food per month if they are to maintain body weight and good health. This requirement is inescapable. If there is insufficient food the outcome is loss of weight, malnutrition and a declining immune system leading to poorer quality of life, ill health and reduced life expectancy.

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Last week I mentioned in High Sodium Levels Linked to Cancer, how Dr. Max Gerson provided us all with valuable information about the health benefits of eating high proportions of fresh fruit and vegetables, instead of foods high in acidity and sodium. This week I will build on this by looking at several long lived populations from history. By studying the diets of these long lived populations, the benefits of reducing foods with high proportions of acid and sodium from our diets are evident. Three long lived populations we should study the diet’s of are: the Hunzas in the Himalayas, Peruvian natives living in the high Andes and the Okinawans of Northern Japan.

Both lots of mountain dwellers lived into active, healthy old age (110 -120 years) on an essentially alkaline diet of fresh, seasonal fruit and vegetables watered by glacier induced mineral rich irrigation water. Both the Hunzas and the Peruvian natives in the high Andes, consumed alcohol and animal proteins and fats, milk etc sparingly. The Okinawans also live into healthy old age on a traditional diet of mineral rich seafood and seaweed, tofu, miso, rice, fruit and vegetables. Similarly, their traditional diet is also more alkaline than the typical Western diet.

Quite obviously in Western communities, the combination of constipation, excess acidity and sodium levels, lack of exercise and the consumption of energy dense, mass produced and often over-processed and nutritionally deficient convenience foods high in fat, salt and sugar is proving to be a disaster. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, macular degenerative eye diseases, Coeliac Disease, asthma, osteoporosis, obesity and declining life expectancy, under our regime, are all on the rise: a very sad reflection and commentary upon our dietary and lifestyle choices. A situation, which despite our knowledge, we appear reluctant to address.

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In last week’s post, The Dangers of Acidity and Sodium, I wrote about the diet of the Western world containing too many highly processed foods with high proportions of acidity and sodium levels – leading to health serious health problems. I also wrote about Dr. Max Gerson’s discovery of high sodium intake being the cause of his recurrent severe migraines. Read on to find more about Gerson and his cancer treatment clinic.

Dr. Max Gerson believed that an excessive intake of sodium, caused the sodium to replace and displace the potassium in the human body, modifying body chemistry significantly and undesirably. In clinical trials, he found that body cells rich in potassium were highly oxygenated or aerobic – the anti-cancer condition. Whereas body cells rich in sodium become increasingly anaerobic or deprived of oxygen: a situation he believed to be cancer inducing. Gerson’s treatments involved treating people with water and seasonal fresh raw fruit and vegetable juices.

Towards the end of his life, Dr. Max Gerson complained increasingly of the declining nutritional quality of many of the fruits and vegetables he was using, also a sad indictment of our farming practices and another reason underlying our seemingly increasing poor health. His treatments involved a major cleansing regime and progressively reversed the sodium-potassium imbalance with patients often excreting 10g per day of sodium via their urine over quite extended periods.

Gerson’s cancer treatment clinic used treatments that were slow, gentle and effective. The treatments often adapted to treating a particular form of cancer, taking up to two or more years. They worked with the body’s natural healing systems, strengthened the immune system and were relatively non invasive compared to mainstream, Western, allopathic medicine. Many patients, over the years, have left his clinic free of cancer, diabetes, arthritis and the many other symptoms of an affluent lifestyle: the Gerson treatments often addressing multiple ailments simultaneously.

Sadly, Gerson’s treatments were beyond the reach of most patients financially. However, they do provide important clues as to what constitutes a more ideal long term diet for the human race; something we continue to ignore at our peril.

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Firstly, I’d like to start this post by wishing all my readers Happy Holidays and Happy New Year. I hope you all enjoyed the festive season as much as I did.

Unfortunately, too large a proportion of most people’s diets is acidic. Bread, pasta, dairy products, meat, tea, coffee, sugar, soft drinks and alcohol are all acid forming in the human digestive system. This often neutralises high dietary intakes of calcium and can lead to malabsorption of nutrients, and deficiency diseases. In the longer term this can lead to serious rheumatic, arthritic, dental and osteoporosis issues, like the rising incidence of hip fractures. I also believe this acidity plays a role in and is one of the factors behind the rising incidence of cancers of various types, especially in conjunction with constipation and excessive sodium intake.

Most people eat too high a proportion of the above listed foods and insufficient fresh fruit and vegetables. Fresh fruit and vegetables tend to be more liquid, alkaline and rich in potassium and dietary fibre than most processed foods. It is my belief that fruit and vegetables should constitute at least two thirds of the diet with all the above acid forming foods being eaten sparingly rather than forming the major portion of the diet, as they do in many instances.

Sodium is another especially critical issue when consumed to excess. In the early 1920’s Dr. Max Gerson, a young veterinary student in Vienna, suffered from severe migraine headaches for which no-one could find a cause. By careful observation of his own eating habits, Gerson eventually related these severe headaches to the consumption of milk and bacon, both of which he found contained very high levels of sodium which he suspected constituted the major cause of his headaches. At the time and to this day milk was treated with caustic soda or sodium hydroxide to neutralize the acidity produced by fertilizers and the process of pasteurising the milk. At the time, bacon was also being cured with very high levels of salt or sodium chloride.

After making these discoveries, Gerson transferred to study medicine and later went on to establish a world famous cancer treatment clinic in Mexico, still being run by his daughter, Paula.

In next week’s post I will continue writing about Dr. Gerson, his cancer treatment clinic

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In my view “properly” grown organic food is the cleanest and best option available.

However, as in all arenas of life there are always degrees of excellence and compromise.

There can be huge differences in production costs, marketing hype and sales margins and price, as in many facets of life, is not always a true indicator of value or better quality.

The best organic foods are produced by farmers who are passionate, fanatical and uncompromising about the preparation, maintenance and quality of their soils: about the levels and balance of carbon, organic matter and nutrients, including trace elements, in their soils.

They grow and plough in copious quantities of green manure to improve the water and carbon retention of their soils.

They work at building their soils to produce healthier crops with better nutrition quality, better insect and pest resistance.

For them, “organic” is a total and integrated way of life. Such farmers are, in my experience, few and far between.

The vast majority of organic farmers tend to be organic by default. They produce crops without the aid of artificial fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.

The problem is that while this may reduce chemical residues it does not always produce a better crop. Any crop grown on an unbalanced or deficient soil reflects the quality of the soil it is grown on.

This is inescapable and reveals itself in myriads of different ways including insect and pest resistance, or the lack therof, during production and browning and oxidation in use, if sugar and other nutrient, enzyme and electrolyte levels are not adequate.

Unfortunately, it is very often difficult to weigh up and make a fully informed choice about the often great difference in price against the supposedly greater value.

Much depends upon the conviction, integrity and knowledge of the individual farmer.

Best Regards

Paul Smith

www.glutenfreehealth.net

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The Coeliac Society of Australia was formed to provide a forum to promote the national welfare and uniformity of purpose and objectives of the state coeliac societies throughout Australia.

They provide information and support to those diagnosed with coeliac disease and their families, sufferers of dermatitis herpetiformis and those medically diagnosed as requiring a gluten free diet.

So why did they stop listing a commercial food list?

When someone is first diagnosed as requiring a gluten free diet, the first thing they want is a list of acceptable gluten free foods – a commercial food list.

For many years the Coeliac Society prepared a food list for its members.

However, some time ago a decision was made to discontinue this list and prepare the ingredient list booklet.

In their “The Australian Coeliac” magazine they listed the reasons for this decision.

• Preparation of a commercial food list is a very time consuming activity. It can take over two years.

• The list was always limited to those companies who were prepared to give us the information. This limited the food choices available to members.

• Manufacturers can be very conservative in their advice on which products are gluten free. Products containing ingredients from a gluten source which we know to be gluten free (eg. glucose from wheat) were sometimes withheld from the list.

• Within a very short time, and sometimes even before publication, some of the information was out of date. New products are introduced onto the market and some withdrawn. A manufacturer can change the formulation and replace a gluten free ingredient and we may not be informed. Members could then be consuming products that are not recommend for their diet.

Learning the language of reading product ingredient labels enables a wide range of food choices to be made confidently in all locations in Australian and New Zealand.

When new products appear, The Coeliac Society have the knowledge to determine whether they are gluten free or not.

It is certainly harder and takes much longer to shop when a person is first diagnosed; however in the long run it gives you the power to control your condition.

There is no need to ring manufacturers and no need for a commercial food list.  It does mean the Society receives a constant stream of enquiries regarding labelling issues, many of which relate to trying to interpret information from manufacturer’s consumer help lines.

With the requirement to declare allergens (including gluten), their knowledge has now been enhanced and the product range available to us vastly increased.

Regards

Paul Smith

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