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Wheat: What’s the Story?

• March 2011
• Hi Steph Climb Vegan

Steph,
Love what you do – because I can’t do it! – and your videos scare the living crap out of me. You’re a bad ass, plain and simple. I’m a guy who spends a lot of time in the gym and a lot of time preparing my meals so that I can eat the right kind of foods. What’s up with avoiding wheat? Our gym mags all advocate getting enough whole-grain and I thought wheat fell in line with that thinking.

Am I missing something? There are so many opinions on the net, IDK who to trust, so I’m coming to you.

Only, when you got time, I’d appreciate your thoughts.

Regards,
Steven
Sweetwater, Texas
(via San Diego, California)

Hi Steven,
Thanks for writing to me!

I have found it really hard to figure out what’s the best way to eat, for performance, health and responsibility. I am not an expert on nutrition. I have been trying to pinpoint what works best for me for the last ten years, so anything I know is based purely on my personal experience and results, as well as researching and asking questions like you.

About ten years ago (before I became vegan, but at the same time I quit eating refined sweeteners), I had a hard time with indigestion and stomachaches at night. I would wake up in the night, and feel bad in the morning too. I ate pasta for dinner a lot, and I somehow got the idea it might have to do with pasta. So I stopped eating pasta, and I noticed a real improvement.

Especially when I turned vegan, I found myself eating a lot more bread and flour products. When traveling, it seems like the fast, easy food is almost always some kind of bread or cracker or baked thing. And I was still bothered by the occasional upset stomach and difficulty sleeping because of it. Sometimes I felt very low energy for no clear reason, and I learned that I had occasional iron deficiencies. I also noticed that whenever I traveled to Europe, I ate twice as much of that stuff, and generally felt twice as bad physically. In Pakistan, despite hard travel and altitude, I felt great, and I mostly survived on dal and rice for two months each time I went there. By that time, I’d been vegan for several years, and I felt a lot more in tune with my body and its response to different foods. I started cutting back on bread, especially at night, and noticed a difference right away–just like when I’d stopped eating pasta for dinner, that I didn’t wake up all night with a stomachache.

I couldn’t stand the idea (because I love bread and pretty much all baked goods so much) but I had the feeling it was related to wheat flour–as well as wheat pasta, which I’d known without a doubt for years. So for a while, despite lots of complaining and feeling sorry for myself, I wouldn’t eat any wheat products, and my iron levels returned to normal (though I do take iron supplements still). I no longer had problems with occasional, inexplicable fatigue, low energy and upset stomachs. Now I eat bread only very occasionally, if it’s really good bread or if I end up with a flour tortilla or some couscous when eating at someone’s house or traveling, but I try to be very moderate and avoid regular wheat products as much as possible.

And since I bake a lot, I try out substitute flours for wheat. I have found that kamut flour (apparently an ancient strain of wheat flour, which says to me that it has not been hybridized to death like modern flour) and spelt are fine for me. I also feel good eating Ezekiel sprouted grain bread, which does have sprouted wheat. Some people are celiac, which means that they are super sensitive to any type of gluten or wheat, but I am definitely not that, since kamut, spelt and sprouted wheat make me feel just fine. Beer too! 🙂 What I’ve learned, through trial and error, is that if I avoid standard wheat products, in general but not to the point of obsession, I feel and perform better. So though I am also skeptical about the current “gluten free” craze, I do appreciate it since it makes it easier for me to cut down on the amount of wheat I eat when traveling, which in the past has been difficult.

I think wheat flour is one of those things that has been so overproduced, overprocessed and overused in our food culture (like sugar) that it’s easy to eat too much of it–and too much of anything always seems to be too much. That’s just my theory.
🙂 Steph