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What’s Up With Wheat?

with The Biggest Losers Jay and Jen Jacobs, and Jonathan Bailor


Jay: Jonathan, my question for today is about fiber. Obviously, in the Smarter Science of Slim Jennifer and I are getting tons of fiber through the vegetables and the fruits, but other than that we really don’t eat any other kind of whole grain anything, we really haven’t been eating beans, just haven’t done it. I will tell you that recently I have been getting a craving again for a product called GG Crispbread that we ate them by the boatloads on the ranch, but I am hesitating to because ever since I have read Wheat Belly, which is a fascinating book, it’s kind of scared me to eat anything grain related when you read what’s in here.

It’s fascinating read, but these GG Crispbreads they are like only 12 calories per slice, there is like 50 percent dietary fiber in them and then there are these other things that are called GG Fiber Sprinkles, I sometimes put them in pancakes, I put them on fish, and I haven’t eaten them in a long, long time, but I am getting this craving to eat them and on the ranch we used to have them with like truvia and a little bit of cinnamon and it kind of satisfied this kind of — sometimes like a [indiscernible 00:00] but it was like a texture crunchy crispy thing because we don’t really eat chips or things like that either.

So, I am just really curious how you feel about wheat in general and specifically if I start eating these again, what do you think? Is this something I should do or is it something that I should stay away from? So, not knocking the product, just curious because it happens to be something that I know a lot of people like and I liked it and it seemed to help me a lot. So, very curious to see how you weigh in on this. Thanks a lot Jonathan.

Jonathan: Hey Jay, so no surprises here. I am right there with Dr. Davis, the author of Wheat Belly in saying that wheat is an absolute no-no and in fact I take it one step further and Dr. Davis does in his book as well which is wheat is just one set of food AKA grains which we would all be better served avoiding, this isn’t meant to say that if we eat grain occasionally, we are going to die immediately. Obviously, that’s not the case. That’s not the case for just about anything in this world, but the key point is that everything that “whole grains” are said to do even fiber, you talk about fiber, it’s a great example to bring up because researchers have actually looked, researchers of University of Colorado [indiscernible 00:00] 20 common whole grains and found that on average in a 250-calorie serving we are going to get about 6 g of fiber.

If you look at common fruits, we get about 10 g of fiber, but here is really the key, if you look at common non-starchy vegetables, the cornerstone of a SANE lifestyle, we are going to get 46 g of fiber in 250 calories, 46 compared to 6 g of fiber in 250 calories of whole grains, 46 in 250 calories of non-starchy vegetables, really driving home the point that anything at all that grains can do and that wheat can do, non-starchy vegetables, whole food fats, low sugar fruits and nutrient dense proteins can do better.

There is nothing uniquely nutritional about grains and they are not required for [indiscernible 00:00] human health, heck how could they be? They were only introduced into our diet about 12,000 years ago and humans were around a lot longer than 12,000 years. So point being, grains not going to kill us, of course they are inSANE, they don’t need to be a part of our diet to the extent that we can eat SANE foods and not eat them we will be healthy, but the goal is not perfection, the goal is to stay as SANE as we can, the crispy cracker things, forgive me I forgot the name exactly, if those are the one indulgence you need, your leg is not going to fall off tomorrow of diabetes, but I would highly encourage you to not go crazy on them and to look for other SANEr options.

If you need something crunchy, try the kale chips that you e-mailed me about the other week. Those look like a fantastic option or even try soy nuts. I am not a huge fan of soy, but they are going to be preferable to anything that’s wheat based. So, remember anything that any grain can do, is better achieved through SANE foods, but again our goal isn’t perfection. So, if you’ve got to do a grain, it looks like the ones you have identified are the best of a bad situation, let’s put it that way. Hope that helps Jay and I will see you next week.