Scan barcode
A review by libellum_aphrodite
Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health by William Davis
3.0
[to state my biases upfront: I have been following the paleo diet for about a year and have studied some nutrition and biochemistry in college]
I found this book to be very readable and compelling case for correlation of health problems and wheat consumption. While eliminating wheat may not be the irrefutable answer for everyone's ailments, the changes Dr. Davis has witnessed in patients who have given up wheat are quite astounding, as are the trends of increasing occurrence of disease with increasing wheat consumption. Furthermore, Davis's explanation of how genetic modification has impacted its interaction with the human body is the most cogent and least scaremongering criticism of GMOs I have ever read, especially notable for a popular science book.
To those crying "anecdotal pseudo-science!": yes, I agree that Davis doesn't address every corner case, his suggested diet is very similar to paleo and its low-carb friends, and a large portion of his tales are anecdotal; however, such imprecision is the nature of nutritional studies. Despite all we do know about cellular processes in the body, our knowledge is still extremely limited, not to mention that in practice, between genetics and epigenetics, half of what we think we know falls by the wayside.
I found this book to be very readable and compelling case for correlation of health problems and wheat consumption. While eliminating wheat may not be the irrefutable answer for everyone's ailments, the changes Dr. Davis has witnessed in patients who have given up wheat are quite astounding, as are the trends of increasing occurrence of disease with increasing wheat consumption. Furthermore, Davis's explanation of how genetic modification has impacted its interaction with the human body is the most cogent and least scaremongering criticism of GMOs I have ever read, especially notable for a popular science book.
To those crying "anecdotal pseudo-science!": yes, I agree that Davis doesn't address every corner case, his suggested diet is very similar to paleo and its low-carb friends, and a large portion of his tales are anecdotal; however, such imprecision is the nature of nutritional studies. Despite all we do know about cellular processes in the body, our knowledge is still extremely limited, not to mention that in practice, between genetics and epigenetics, half of what we think we know falls by the wayside.