With the introduction of his powerful book
‘Wheat Belly’ Dr. William Davis completed
a triad for me that I have been talking
about for well over twenty years.
I knew flour turned to sugar in your stomach
and that was enough for me not to feed it to
my children growing up (or ingest it myself).
But his book has taken my understanding of what
I call flour addiction (or just plain powder addiction)
to a much higher level. He details why flour has
become so addictive through it’s hybridization and
processing.
Let me explain my theory of the three little
drugs we all take for granted in our daily lives.
Three to five hundred years ago we ingested very
little sugar, flour and caffeine (SF&C for the rest
of the article). They were luxuries and taken in
very small amounts.
So over the ensuing three hundred years all three
creeped into our diet and our society in such a
way that there is literally no history and very
little written record of life without them. Add HFCS
(high fructose corn syrup) in the last 30 years and
we have an explosive combo.
Up until the last thirty years or so, very few people
even worried about them or studied them. Except you
would be shocked to know about the crusaders against
both sugar and caffeine, for their effects on the body
not political reasons, in colonial England.
There is a very nice written record of how scared the
medical professionals of the day were of the abuse of
both sugar and caffeine. This was long before “tea time”
in England was a social ritual.
Words like “the scourge of society” were used by doctors
of the day when describing the use of sugar and caffeine…
and this is the 1500’s through the 1700’s & 1800’s!
It is my belief that SF&C are three of the most powerful
psychoactive drugs on the planet. They hook people
so effectively that quitting becomes very, very difficult.
Add to the fact they are available for effectively zero cost,
or so near zero as to not figure in the decision to use them
and that they are effectively 99.9% socially acceptable – and
you have a recipe for disaster.
Many people squirm just a little when they ponder the idea
that these substances are “psychoactive – like drugs”. But of
the over one hundred drug and alcohol addicts I’ve interviewed
who have also quit flour sugar and caffeine AFTER they quit
drugs, many describe the experience of getting off F, S & C
as much harder.
Why is it that every successful diet book ever written and
every successful diet story you’ve ever heard talks about
“getting off the white stuff”?
This is not just about weight loss. This is about emotional
management. It’s about a society hooked on managing their
emotions, or trying to manage their emotions, with a triad
of perfectly legal and effectively free drugs and then passing
that coping behavior on to their children – physically, by
feeding them to them at way to early an age and in modeled
behavior.
Every truly successful diet story you’ve every heard where the
person lost over fifty pounds and kept it off for years, includes
a story of wild emotional swings and work walking through the
wild emotional swings. The truly honest that have come off both
alcohol and/or drugs and then tackled sugar, flour and caffeine
admit that the later was just as hard emotionally.
If any of this rings true please leave a comment below and let’s
get the discussion going. I believe this is a discussion that is long
overdue.
