Is it too much TV?  Too much carbonated soda?  Are our jobs too sedentary? Is it not enough “healthy whole grains” in our diet?

It may be all of the above.  A relatively new book, The Wheat Belly, written by a preventive cardiologist, William Davis, MD, asserts the culprit is the character of modern wheat.  Modern dwarf wheat, developed in the 1940’s, is not the same wheat that grandmother ate.  The newer wheat is a hybrid of previous grains, designed to be more drought-resistant and have higher yields.  It also has complex proteins, gliadins among others.

Modern wheat has large amounts of amylopectin A.  This is a complex carbohydrate, that is easily digested by our bodies.  It leads to a greater spike in blood glucose than we realize. Wheat bread leads to a higher rise in glucose (and greater spikes in insulin) that table sugar. Excessive spikes in insulin lead to greater production of fat, particularly visceral fat, or belly fat.  It’s a very complex story, but visceral fat, or belly fat, plays a different role in the body than fat stored elsewhere in the body.  For example, large amounts of belly fat appear to contribute to the risk of breast cancer, to increased risk of heart disease.

The book is a complex story.  It does present a striking argument that the introduction of the new grain (90% of all wheat now grown on the planet) contributes directly to the fattening, and worsening health, of modern America.

There has been a 2 or 3 fold increase in the diagnosis of attention deficit disorder and autism.  Are these diagnoses related in some way to food intake?  Perhaps.  Nothing will be as simple as one cause, but there are some issues here that would worth looking into, in greater detail.