How To Avoid Eating Poisonous Grains And The Health Studies That Matter Most To You

Do you recommend people avoid whole grains with gluten

do you recommend people avoid whole grains that have gluten like wheat barley and oats uh no i think that there are some people that do need to avoid gluten containing grains and those are people that are somewhere on the gluten sensitivity spectrum and and that may be six percent of the population it’s still debatable

but certainly people with celiac disease who are very sensitive have to avoid all gluten but people on the spectrum some can have small amounts of of these grains if they’re sprouted some can have you know it different just they can manage oats but not you know other uh i mean oats technically don’t contain gluten but they they can cause sensitivity because they’re often processed on equipment that has had gluten containing grains on it and so they can be contaminated because of that

but but generally what i would say is is if you are not sensitive to gluten there’s absolutely no reason to avoid those grains and in fact i think they’re some of the best grains we can eat they’re very high in fiber they’re very satiating they’re very nutritious barley has tremendous amount of soluble fiber there’s all sorts of advantages to them

now the one thing um that i i would say is we do need to be aware that for some people who you know i’ve met a number of people who who say for some reason i react to these grains when i’m in the states or canada but i go off to europe and i can eat bread it’s weird and i think in those cases it may be actually glyphosate they’re responding to and not uh gluten per se

and so glyphosate is is a chemical in in roundup and and it’s sprayed on several crops to expediate the drying of those crops so that they can be harvested more quickly and and so it to me it makes no sense that we’re spoiled uh spraying poison on our food uh we it just doesn’t make sense but but we do that and and uh the amounts of glyphosates in a number of cereal products and other grain-based products can actually be quite significant quite concerning

and so how do you avoid that by eat by just eating organic grains so if you buy flour buy organic if you buy the intact grains which is mostly what i buy i buy kamut berries organic i buy spelt berries organic i i buy oat groats organic and so i get these foods organic and then you don’t have to worry so much about about this particular issue

but generally i would say um i mean i love camus berries i love spelt berries i love barley i i um one of my favorite barleys is black barley which is it just a little higher in the phytochemicals and and it sprouts beautifully and i think these foods can be a wonderful addition to the diet

Taiwanese Health Study

explain what the taiwanese health study was and what its conclusions were was this study an important one well the taiwanese health studies also called the tsuchi health study is a very important study and again it’s not just one study it’s several studies and so this is a series of studies that compares about 6 000 people who are taiwanese buddhists some of whom are are meat-eaters and some of whom are vegetarian

and so they’re comparing the vegetarians with the non-vegetarians and looking at their rates of of disease and the the lead person on a lot of these studies is a personal friend her name is tina chu and she went to school at loma linda to do her master’s went on to taoshi’s taiwanese she went on back to taiwan did her phd has since become a professor and she is a very strong ethical vegan and a wonderful presenter

she’ll actually be at the plantrician project conference uh in september and and be speaking and sharing a lot more about these studies but these studies have shown that the vegetarians the men had 51 percent less diabetes the women 74 75 percent less lower rates of of gout lower rates of hypertension lower rates of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease i just received the brand new study i tina always sends me the studies just as they’re being released on urinary tract infections a significant reduction in that as well so very important study and and very interesting results as well

Health Professionals FollowUp Study

explain the results of the health professionals follow-up study and why do you like this study so the health professionals follow-up study i’m going to combine two studies in here because they’re so tightly related so harvard has done two series of studies one is called the nurses health study and one is called the health professionals follow-up study and and in these studies so the let’s start with the nurses health study again it’s not one study i would guess i know for the health professionals it was over a thousand studies and it’s very similar for the nurse’s health study and then they combined both for for some studies looking at you know the men and women combined

so the nurses how study is most is is women and and the health professionals was was men and and so out of harvard what they did was they’ve done a number of of interviews with um the the these cohorts and actually the nurses health study there’s there have been three cohorts one in 1976 one in 89 and one in 2010 so all total we’re talking about 280 000 people and for the health professionals uh follow-up study it’s about 50 000 individuals so these are big numbers of people

and what they do is they they find out what do you eat what do you drink what how much do you smoke what’s your lifestyle like and then they look at them over time to see who develops what disease and and these studies are extremely important because they have really a and and this is no exaggeration they they have helped us uh tremendously create nutrition policy that will help reduce the risk of chronic disease in this country and and so they have informed nutrition policy essentially

and so very very important studies and and what they’ve shown is that um you know people should not be smoking people should not be drinking much alcohol people should be eating more fruits and vegetables more whole grains more legumes less red meat especially less refined carbohydrates so they’ve been giving they’ve been giving us these big picture kinds of answers to health and chronic disease and so yes very important studies and one of our speakers here at this conference is dr walter willett who is you know at the helm of uh of these studies so very important you