Because humanity cannot return to a perfect state of nature (whatever the hell that means), we have to judge as best we can whether our actions are mostly good or mostly bad. Wearing shoes may not be great, but the alternative is to not wear shoes, which is fine in the summer, but in the winter not practical. Maybe we should all move to the tropics from whence we came, but that has its own problems. So, is the ill of wearing shoes, if only some of the time, at least balanced by what they allow us to do the rest of the time? I don’t have any answers. But I will say that simply being aware of the issue can have positive side effects, and if we act in a way that is cognizant of a variety of issues, we might muddle our way through with more good than bad.

You know, hb, it occurs to me that you haters of bread, that hallmark and ARXH of civilization, ought to maybe read the first chapter of *Courtesans and Fishcakes*, which is a decent account of all the stories related to the eating of bread, *opson* (trans. by Bloom not well as ‘relish’), and sacrificed meat, in the Greece we know and a little after it.

It’s notable for trying to explain, with rather more scholarly and poetic acumen than your average Straussian (who insist on opson meaning meat, quite wrongly), what it means when Glaucon objects to the first city in the Republic Socrates describes, on account of people not eating *opson* there.

Hell, we could even have a semi-formal discussion of it. Hb and Nate, perhaps it would help us have a more coherent argument about why you think bread sucks and why I think it’s important to eat it.

Anyone? Neil, you strike me as someone who would defend bread against its enemies.

Bread is quite straightforwardly bad for the body; that part seems to me to be somewhat uncontroversial. It breaks useful organic matter down into insulin-spiking sugars that cause immediate system imbalance and long-term organ problems. That said, the body exists for the soul and not vice-versa, therefore it does not seem to me that this closes the discussion on whether bread should ever be eaten. Bread is undeniably delicious, and is a reasonable treat. But to eat it for sustenance is foolish indeed.

Nate, exactly. Bread is bad for you to eat, health-wise. Men used to be able to life rocks twice the size of the ones we lift now, because they used to eat more meat and less bread. (HB says I should make this more clear, that the cave-man diet is predicated on this Homeric truth, that when civilization makes the move away from meat-and-greens, it get weaker. And more civilized.)

I guess I want to argue about why we should still eat bread, why it’s really important (to something other than health) that we do so.

So the book, _C&F.s_, is good about providing a lot of little stories, in contrast to the more main ones, like what Glaucon says in the Republic, or what Odysseus sees in his travels, specifically the Cyclops’ method of getting food, or even Herodotus’s stories about the Scythians and the Egyptians, and their diets. (The Egyptians are rather over-civilized, the Scythians under-so.)

As you say, health is not the final end of man. There might be something better than health.

I hope you all are joking.

I didn’t even realize bread had enemies, except possibly Dr Atkins and his zombie minions. It is quite clear that if we were designing civilization from scratch now, we’d do things quite a bit differently than the people who did it last time, and no doubt better, too! Why, they had never even heard of forward planning!

(I tried posting this yesterday without success. Maybe it will work today.)

Yeah, I was surprised by this too, Martin; I went poking around wikipedia (like, under “low carb diet”) and could not verify the uncontroversy of this “straightforwardly bad for the body” business.

(And why would, say, Italy not be a much unhealthier country?)

Well, I’m glad you guys think Nate and HB are joking about how much they think bread is bad for you. Count Rebekah, myself, and KJ all as bread-widows. Whenever our men bring up bread, and its evils, we groan.

Martin, I’m glad a person with more potential schooling in nutrition might put up an argument, because as they both know, the Odyssey one is the best one I’ve got.

Robbie, search for the cave man diet.

“Mr. F.”, I haven’t forgotten this is YOUR fault.

Ok, I posted last night and nothing happened; I’m going to try again. My understanding is that bread, far from being bad for you, is a good way to render grains digestible, though the farther it gets from the grain, the worse for you it is.

But where bread really excels over porridge and cornmeal mush, over millet and even over rice, is in the fermentation process. Bread, like cheese and wine, represents a human triumph over death. The corruption, which has seized on our foodstuffs to snatch them away, instead transforms them. The world gave us rot, and instead of trying to find ways to hold it back, we embraced it, and were rewarded with intoxicants.

“bread, far from being bad for you, is a good way to render grains digestible, though the farther it gets from the grain, the worse for you it is.”

Exactly. Isn’t the key distinction between blood sugar-spike-inducing white flour bread and fiber-rich bread made with whole wheat or other whole grains?

This guy has some interesting arguments on why grains, in general, are not good for you, either in unprocessed or processed form. The gist: grains are not meant by the plants to be eaten and contain various poisons and other unpleasant chemicals in their unprocessed form, while when processed they do provide simple sugars that spike one’s insulin levels. Rather, foods that are less readily adaptable to the body’s immediate energy needs (such as vegetables and protein) are what men ate for millions of years and contain untold micronutrients that our bodies need, not to mention providing the pain and work of digestion that prevents us from becoming fat, even if we do eat large quantities of them. In any case, check out further reading here.

The idea, however, that to be civilized one must turn a poisonous seed into a substance that is bland, provides cheap energy, and possibly saps other nutrients from your body, but which allows for humanity to flourish in number and leisure, is an interesting one.

Oops, forgot that I’d linked to that Balzer guy already. Well, read it if you hadn’t already.

Incidentally, Mary’s other argument about the design of these websites I’m linking to counting against their credibility is also a pretty good one. Still, I’m at least partially persuaded that protein from animals not fed on corn, fat, and carbs derived from vegetables and fruit are a good foundation to a healthy diet.

Most of what I’ve been reading lately suggests that the difference between white and whole-wheat flours is negligible. Also, whole grains are perfectly digestible when cooked (an excellent way to prepare them) rather than milled.

Mary, my conversion to this diet is almost wholly due to a speaker my boss brought in to speak to us who, incidentally, maintained similar things to the Paleo diet. I always thought that most of the arguments rested upon the kind of evolutionary speculation that HB brings up, which it doesn’t. (Which is why, in my opinion, it’s not always helpful to bring up that aspect of the argument.)

I’ll say a few things that I think are relevant. For those with less time skip to the final paragraph.

Katherine writes, “My understanding is that bread, far from being bad for you, is a good way to render grains digestible, though the farther it gets from the grain, the worse for you it is.” I think that summing it up this way is somewhat skewed because by saying that something is made worse implies that it was bad to begin with. I would say that it gets less beneficial. For the most part I don’t think that the processing of grains introduces bad elements, but instead it dilutes what has been termed “nutritional density”. Pumpernickel bread has more nutritional density than wonder bread. Mostly this means that the fiber has been removed and the fiber is helpful to regulate the GI tract.

As for the spikes of blood glucose and the subsequent insulin, I would not worry. Think of sound for a moment. When we see the readouts of those machines that can measure sound waves we see spikes when we talk. Are we concerned? Of course not. We have an apparatus (the ear) than can handle normal amplitudes of those spikes. The same is true of the blood with regard to blood glucose. I’d like to see Nate and HB try to prove their point by attempting to eat enough wonder bread to put them into a hyperglycemic coma. It’s not going to happen. Any excess blood glucose will simply be converted by the liver into glycogen for future use during times of fasting. Moreover, eating meat will give the same amplitudes of blood glucose levels as eating bread because the body will turn the protein into glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis. The spike will simply be delayed by an hour or two. One might argue that doing this process to excess is potentially harmful because this process involves making byproducts that have to be handled by the liver and kidney, and that are toxic at high levels.

I also don’t know where this argument comes form that grains contain poisons and various other unpleasant chemicals. We have enzymes in our body that have evolved to break down starches made by plants into less complex sugars. I read the article that HB cited. I don’t find many facts to disagree with but the interpretation is a little strange to me. Take his list for example.

Eat none of the following:

· Grains- including bread, pasta, noodles
· Beans- including string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peanuts, snow-peas and peas
· Potatoes
· Dairy products
· Sugar
· Salt

Eat the following:
· Meat, chicken and fish
· Eggs
· Fruit
· Vegetables (especially root vegetables, but definitely not including potatoes or sweet potatoes)
· Nuts, eg. walnuts, brazil nuts, macadamia, almond. Do not eat peanuts (a bean) or cashews (a family of their own)
· Berries- strawberries, blueberries, raspberries etc.

Try to increase your intake of:
· Root vegetables- carrots, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, Swedes
· Organ meats- liver and kidneys (I accept that many people find these unpalatable and won’t eat them)

Increase fruits and vegetables while reducing salts and sugars? Is this novel? This list, except for the exclusion of grains, could have been written by the USDA because it is remarkable close to the current guidelines.

The final point I will attempt to make is that while I believe in absolutes in regards to morals I rarely do in science. The body attempts to maintain a state of homeostasis and thanks to entropy and other factors it cannot do it on its own and requires inputs. These inputs are never simply good or simply bad. Moderation is the key to keeping the body closest to its goal of being on the track it wants to maintain. Eating too much simple sugar in the form of grains can tip the scale in one direction by padding too much fat onto the body. Eating too much meat can blow out your liver and kidney. Your BMI may creep up from excess grains; your cholesterol may creep up from excess meat. Personally, I think the creator of this Paleo-diet believes too much in the noble savage. Is it not the hallmark of civilization through works to render the cosmos more fitting to the dignity of man? Bread and wine may be the most emblematic symbols of such works of man upon the world.

Martin wrote:

“As for the spikes of blood glucose and the subsequent insulin, I would not worry. Think of sound for a moment. When we see the readouts of those machines that can measure sound waves we see spikes when we talk. Are we concerned? Of course not. We have an apparatus (the ear) than can handle normal amplitudes of those spikes. The same is true of the blood with regard to blood glucose. I’d like to see Nate and HB try to prove their point by attempting to eat enough wonder bread to put them into a hyperglycemic coma. It’s not going to happen. Any excess blood glucose will simply be converted by the liver into glycogen for future use during times of fasting.”

A couple problems. First of all, variations that the body may be able to cope with may also be destructive. There are plenty of things that the body can cope with; many of them leave it worse off than it would be otherwise. Secondly, we are sorely deficient in “times of fasting”, and tend to live our lives in an almost constant state of elevated insulin. Of course one can’t eat one’s way into a coma: but one can easily eat one’s way to diabetes, which more and more people in America and around the world are doing every day. My claim is about the cumulative effects of a diet involving flour products, and the aggregated effect is always a negative one. The longer-term the scope, the more substantial the negative effects.

As long as we’re talking solely about health, moderation is not relevant in terms of flour products. More relevant is a cost/benefit analysis, where the cost is always paid in health and the benefit always paid in something else. Sometimes, that’s a transaction worth making. (It was for me on Friday, for instance, when I ate a delicious banana cupcake.)

If we want to talk about other ends (which you switch to at the end of your last paragraph), then, as before, I acknowledge the debate to be open.

Oh my. I did not realize I was an insurgent, bringing bread to Koine Cinema.

Mike: I must admit that your bringing bread to KC is older than my conversion to The Old World Order. (I’ve been doing this for… three weeks now?) Also, I don’t really feel that compelled to foist my dietary beliefs on others, which is why you may have noticed that what I make for KC doesn’t fall in line with these standards, either.

This is otherwise known as the “I’m so grateful for any food contributions for KC that I deny anyone any contrition” comment.

I should also point out that this has only been made public because HB and I are zealots, and HB’s spouse brought a pointed debate to the surface here. I don’t really think it’s an appropriate belief to go around oppressing friends and acquaintances with, personally.

Nate writes, “As long as we’re talking solely about health, moderation is not relevant in terms of flour products.”

That is a false statement. Eating a single cupcake does not deleteriously affect your health and I don’t know what makes you say that it would. Please elaborate on who told you that and their argument because I am not seeing it. I will give an account as to why moderation is beneficial. I can justify this because it helps me study for my endocrinology final occurring next Monday.

The acquisition of diabetes is a multifactorial event. It first requires that there is a PERPETUALLY high amount of glucose in the blood. That the glucose levels are constant in pre-diabetics is very important. As background, hormone receptors on cells are necessary for the cell to be able to respond to that hormone. Insulin is such a hormone and for it to work on a cell it is required that the cell possess the receptor to insulin. A key (insulin) won’t open a door (cell membrane) without a lock (insulin receptor). Hormone receptors are up-regulated when a cell receives a pulsatile pattern of a hormone, and down-regulated when a cell receives a constant supply of a hormone. Ergo, insulin receptors are not down-regulated by spikes of insulin as you suggest, but instead by a constant presence of insulin. The only way to achieve a perpetually high blood insulin is to have a perpetually high blood glucose level, and the only way to do that is to over eat. Eating moderately leads to a pulsatile pattern of blood glucose, which leads to a pulsatile pattern of insulin, which in tern makes glucose receptors on cells more populous than if there were a constant low level of insulin because this pattern up-regulates the amount of receptors. Eating moderate amounts of glucose in short bursts (i.e. sporadic meals rather than constant snacking), therefore, makes the cells more capable of removing glucose from the blood than not eating glucose at all. Greater efficiency of clearing glucose from the blood means that it is less likely to achieve the concentrations necessary to cause the body damage. Note that this is an argument for moderation, not an absolute prohibition. An absolute prohibition of eating glucose may cause a less pulsatile pattern of glucose in the blood which could actually make the body less efficient at clearing glucose from the blood than if a person were to eat glucose moderately.

Second in the multifactorial process is that the acquisition of diabetes is correlated with low physical activity. The very act of stretching muscles causes additional insulin receptors to be added to the cell which again lowers blood glucose. This is why exercise is recommended both to avoid and attenuate diabetes.

Who are we worried about getting diabetes? People who over eat and don’t exercise. This is because they 1) have perpetually high levels of insulin which down-regulates the body’s ability to uptake insulin and 2) they are not augmenting their normal supply of insulin receptors through physical activity. This leads to the glucose being attached to parts of the body that it should not.

The point of this is that while it is true that glucose can lead to bodily harm, it can only do so under specific conditions whereas you claim that such harm is universally present with every banana cupcake. It so happens that these specific conditions of over eating and physical stagnation are easily capable of being created in modern western societies. The problem then is the not the grains but instead the way we eat them.

Hail to the Aristotelian means.

The problem, Martin, is that the process you’re describing ignores other essential elements such as “subclinical inflammation, as determined by high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP) levels” (from here).

Eating a single cupcake not only increases CRP levels, it “steal[s] B vitamins from your tissues”, and it “signals the liver to produce cholesterol”. Now: all of these are moderate forms of damage that can often be “coped” with. However, we put our bodies in a constant state of battle and end up with lifelong climbing CRP levels, high stress on our pancreas and liver, and, ultimately, shorter lifespans.

Now, moderation in regard to flour products is a lot better than excess. But let’s ask your moderation question in a more sensible fashion: is there a level at which a person could err by eating too little flour, health-wise? No: eating the same amount of grains unmilled is unequivocally better for the body. Thus, the only way to include consumption of flour products in a “moderate” lifestyle is if one introduces non-health-related goods.

Eat none of the following: · Grains- including bread, pasta, noodles · Beans- including string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peanuts, snow-peas and peas

You wretched, wretched mortals, keep yourselves from beans!

All is number.

How does eating a cupcake strip your body of its B-vitamins? There is no food that I know of that can strip anything out of your body. True, certain foods (coffee) can inhibit the ability of the body to uptake other nutrients (calcium) but glucose does not operate this way. The website you cited seems highly suspect to me.

How does eating a cupcake increase your levels of CRP?

“People also engage in lifestyle habits that deplete the vitamins and minerals they’ve managed to absorb from their foods. These habits include the consumption of caffeine, soft drinks, tobacco, white flour, added sugars, and other ingredients that actually strip nutrients away from your body.”

The answer as to how, Martin, is simple. If it costs $6000 to rent a space in the mall for a month, but one’s income after other expenses is less than $6000, the net result is a deficiency. Bodily processes require nutrients, which is exactly what the “suspect” book I linked to claims. It’s fine to call it suspect; I’m certainly doing nothing more than looking for references via Google. But it seems like you didn’t understand the claim.

Also, as to your last question: “How does eating a cupcake increase your levels of CRP?”

“Simple carbohydrates such as sugar and white flour are very inflammatory.”

“Meanwhile, there’s plenty of evidence that sugar intake will contribute to health problems over the long haul. … Dietary glycemic load has been associated with elevated C-reactive protein (CRP).”

Let’s pull back for a moment to re-evaluate where we are.

You said, “Bread is quite straightforwardly bad for the body; that part seems to me to be somewhat uncontroversial. It breaks useful organic matter down into insulin-spiking sugars that cause immediate system imbalance and long-term organ problems.”

I disagreed. To support my position I presented an argument of how the body handles glucose in the short term. I also pointed out that excess meats may damage the body.

You responded by saying that just because the body handles something doesn’t mean that the very process of handling doesn’t leave the body in a worse position: “First of all, variations that the body may be able to cope with may also be destructive. There are plenty of things that the body can cope with; many of them leave it worse off than it would be otherwise.” You also said that such a coping can lead to one “eating his way to diabetes”, and that furthermore moderation was not possible in terms of flour.

I again disagree. I responded by explaining the particular way that the body responds to glucose definitely does not harm it as you claimed, and instead I demonstrated that the spikes of glucose enhance the body’s ability to remove it from the blood. I did however, cede that many diabetics acquire their disease through over eating glucose and lacking physical exercise. This was to point out that there is nothing inherent to the flour that leads to diabetes, but instead it was the way it was being ingested and used.

You responded by claiming that flour increases CRP and citing someone who said that flour “strips” the body of B-vitamins (Bobak).

I asked how this occurs.

You then made a statement that retracts that flour actually strips vitamins from the body, but that it doesn’t provide them in the first place. As to CRP levels rising from flour, you cite someone who says so without providing an argument. This is where we are now.

Now that I have summarized, I think that it must be clear that this matter is not uncontroversial as you initially claimed to Mary. But your thesis’s controversiality is not the end of this conversation; you want to prove that bread is straightforwardly bad. From my above synopsis it seems that your entire arguments rests on whether CRP levels are increased by flour, because I have demonstrated that insulin spiking is not an issue and that a balanced diet will provide far more B vitamins than is required (flours are in fact fortified with extra B vitamins to prevent spina bifida). The only support for CRP increases due to carbohydrates comes from dubious studies, or studies that exclusively study diabetics or obese people.

I did a literature search for “paleodiet” on Medline (OVID) and the only paper that exists is a 1997 article from the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences entitled “Paleodiet and Its Relation to Atherosclerosis” written by J. LIETAVA, M. THURZ, and A. DUKÁT. In it it states that the modern American diet is 46% carbohydrate, and that the paleolithic diet was 45% carbohydrate. There is only a 1% difference between the late paleolithic and now. If this is so, then the entire basis for the paleo-diet is unfounded. The article concludes that modern America’s greater incidence of atherosclerosis is due not to a change of diet but to a quantity change of the same diet. This is my argument; greater moderation of a diverse diet including grains is healthy. I think that this is what we should expect from our everyday experience. If bread were so bad for us would we not be dropping dead left and right?

Does any of this serve to dampen your admittedly zealous belief that bread is categorically unhealthy? I know you to be a highly critical thinker and as such I am also a little surprised that you have acquired such a zeal from such dubious internet sources.

I have no detailed arguments about food to offer, but I just had to say that this thread makes me really want bread and butter every time I see it. I think i may have to go out and buy some RIGHT NOW.

I find the salt limitation the most troubling to imagine, because I simply wouldn’t know how to cook without salt. And I find the bean limitation bizarre, but that’s because I half-heartedly subscribe to the gylcemic index stuff, but beans are pretty good that way.

I’ve been keeping track of what I eat for over two months now, and I find just the very act of keeping track has made me lose weight, because I know when I’ve had enough. I no longer live in a state of dietary disorientation.

Oh, and since I’ve read that, I’ve been trying to walk with my toes: that is, bend my toes with each step. It’s kind of fascinating: it forces you to take smaller steps, and really does reduce the shock on your heels. My feet get tired after about half a mile. But it really just isn’t possible in regular shoes. In crocs, however, it is. Also, I don’t lift my feet as high, so trip over sidewalk cracks.

I’m glad we’ve been talking about bread. Like Julia, it makes me want to go and make some so as to eat it.

Martin, you’re heroic. Or rather, my hero, since I’ve decided to be lazy about ‘learning the facts’ about food. (It’s fun to see OVID being used for something other than Phil. papers on non-substantial individuals, for instance.) Perhaps wrongly, I retreated to my Odyssey argument a long time ago; I really don’t feel like I know enough, or could really learn enough, about food to be particularly useful about knowing about it. (I did learn some things about bobbin lace this weekend, however.) I like to find good authorities when things aren’t string/needle related, or ph. related, somewhat Sherlock Holmes style: my aunt, a dietitian, seems to be particularly good at riding out the waves of fad; she’s never stopped saying, everything in moderation—even back in the day when fat was an unqualified evil. So my praise of you is perhaps limited in value, coming from only, perhaps, a sense of how moderate you sound; but I’ve been convinced of the need for moderation in food from perhaps better principles.

But I did perhaps hijack the more general reflection of HB’s post, which only mentioned bread as one of many examples where contrivance failed to be as good how we’re built, where art just couldn’t come up to nature. But I did criticize what HB said, or thought, about bread, because I think that he was having trouble thinking through contrivance’s relation to nature and to the city in just the same was as he seems to be, must be, wrong about bread, no matter how healthy or unhealthy it turns out to be for you.

HB says,
“Actually, even posing that question about the right response makes me despair of anyone finding a solution that will be sustainable enough to sustain our civilization. Every contrivance we make has unintended consequences, many of them negative, and we cannot fully know them.”

I quite agree that contrivance—will it help to say this is mechane is Greek, as in, polla ta deina, but none as much as anthropos, he makes many mechanai?—always, always, has a ‘negative effect’—that’s exactly the point about contrivance. It’s not nature! It’s not whole, and it will always be broken, precisely because it was never alive.
To be more particular, a contrivance is in itself a partial fix. Shoes are a partial fix for the need of walking-around-in-not-foot-safe-places, among other things. This doesn’t mean shoes are bad! They are a necessary evil, and if you think you can contrive something better, that does away with particular-shoe-evil, you’re going to ultimately fail because you’ll just be making another contrivance, another partial good. Our job is to be prudent contrivers, and choose many partial goods that are the best partial goods around. Sometimes, we have to pick the partial good that is bad for health but better for things we want more, and are more beautiful and good, like people being able to live close together long enough to make beautiful shoes for each other, have good conversations, maybe compose poetry or something and try, try, try to raise their children right. If contrivances manage to do this, then they’re working as well as they can, as well as they ought, and thank goodness for them.

The other part of what I quote HB saying, is the next level of the argument: he’s worried about that large contrivance of the city. The city isn’t whole either, in the same way a contrivance isn’t whole. And therefore by its nature, it’s not ultimately sustainable, even when it’s far less hubristic than the one we live in; a city is not an organism, it’s only capable of being Partially Good. And that’s just how it’s always going to be. Some cities are now great that were small, and many great cities are now nothing but dust. (We’re all just crossing our fingers that one city, at least, remains around to keep city-ness going.) But the whole point is, it’s still choiceworthy, we still want it, and we’re right to want it, because that’s how we try to live up to being just a little bit different from the other animals, how we get to be the political one, the one with the logos. That’s how we complete our nature, or give it a go, at any rate. And the goods and beauties that the contrivance of the city makes possible are, at least to me, worth it.

Martin,

You’re trying to press rigor in an argument where you have not proven the points you later claim to prove.

You wrote:

“I have demonstrated that insulin spiking is not an issue.”

This is false. You have provided an argument that insulin spiking is not an issue. It rests upon the factual verification of those claims, it rests upon the unproven claim that your description is fully satisfactory and does not leave out aspects of the digestive process which are also pertinent to general health. Neither of these is obvious, nor is either easily provable. The detailed nature of your description serves as an argument for its legitimacy. To call it “demonstration” is tyrannical, and serves to undermine your credibility.

You wrote:

“You then made a statement that retracts that flour actually strips vitamins from the body, but that it doesn’t provide them in the first place. As to CRP levels rising from flour, you cite someone who says so without providing an argument. This is where we are now.”

There was no retraction. Or are you arguing that there’s a meaningful difference between saying “flour strips vitamins from the body” and “the process of metabolizing flour strips vitamins from the body”? Are you claiming the first person should be understood to mean that a pot of flour sitting next to a person strips vitamins?

In general, what you’ve proven is that you have greater knowledge of specific accounts. Congratulations: the same thing can be said of most creation scientists, who could put you to shame in their knowledge of actual DNA, cellular processes, or what-have-you. But you have very good reasons not to trust them, despite their possession of a certain kind of knowledge.

Similarly, you’ve effectively argued nothing more than that you’re a vehement supporter of establishment thinking in regards to diet. That’s fine: I certainly respect the fact that you’ve learned so much about this. But I find the experts I’ve read and heard speak far more persuasive than you have been.

Why? Partially because whenever you retreat to more general empirical concerns, your arguments are straightforwardly incorrect:

“This is my argument; greater moderation of a diverse diet including grains is healthy. I think that this is what we should expect from our everyday experience. If bread were so bad for us would we not be dropping dead left and right?”

We are dropping dead left and right. We are developing diabetes at a rapidly accelerating pace. We are seeing a substantial increase of inflammation-related disorders. We are seeing a substantial increase of heart disorder. In general, we seem to be having shit go wrong at an escalating rate. Which, happily, we’re able to treat more and more… though that cost is quickly becoming astronomical, and essentially privileges wealth with longer life.

It’s possible that people who live to 80 or 90 are living to the natural limits of a healthy human life, and that the only things that go wrong are normal (and, diet-wise, inevitable) parts of being human. But that’s neither a clear or necessary interpretation. So your experience data do not prove what you claim.

Instead, they seem to argue that you have a very limited set of criteria for judging your own experience: you eat things, you do not immediately keel over, therefore those things are good. Do you know what your bone density is? Do you know what the weight of your lean body mass is? Do you know what your insulin levels are at the particular moments you experience fatigue? Do you watch what other measurable elements in your blood do in response to dietary changes? To lifestyle changes? If not, congratulations! Neither do I. We’re equally unqualified to deduce very much from our own experiences about how our diet affects us.

Also, fyi, I have not acquired my zeal from these internet sources. I acquired it from hearing speaker after speaker, and person after person who’d taken courses to be certified as a nutritionist, make essentially similar claims about food. I’m grabbing sources, as I stated, from quick Google searches in an attempt to engage your argument. I’m sorry if I could have made that more clear.

I’m also sorry if I’ve contributed to the combative feeling of this exchange. I’m not really interested in it, Martin. I don’t care about earning expert status on this issue, though I’m happy to talk about the reasons it’s convinced me.

What on Earth is going on here?! My husband just pointed me to this conversation, thinking that I might be interested to read it.

Let me just say first that eating a whole foods, non-processed diet is the ideal way to go. No question. But that means all whole foods. Anthropology has unarguably shown that Humanity THRIVES on a huge variation of diets, tragically excluding our typical American one.

My mother really, honestly believes that microwave ovens give you cancer if you are in the same room with them when they are running, and she also believes that electric blankets give you cancer too. Someone once gave her a very impassioned speech about these, and it really affected her. But that doesn’t make them true or even sensible.

I too have often been very interested in such topics as you guys have been talking about: Diabetes is my genetic heritage, and I realized long ago that if I ate that beloved banana cupcake, I would feel horrible afterwards. I’ve even done lots of extra-curricular, non-medical school reading of popular books talking about this very subject.

Here are some medical facts:

Nate is right about post-meal insulin spikes. Someone who feels lousy after a sugary meal, to include refined breads, is on his way to diabetes. This is actually the first sign of insulin resistance, which is how I knew that I was on my way just like everyone else in my family. However, after losing 20 lbs of fat and gaining some muscle, I no longer feel that way when I eat sugar: I even have taken my post-meal blood glucose levels to prove it to myself. I’m still careful with refined foods, but now I can have a piece of cheesecake or a glass of wine and not pay for it.

HOWEVER:

According to the head Diabetes researcher at the National Institutes of Health, a man who gave up a lot of money as a “real” doctor in order to do something he loves (bench research and large patient observation trials) has learned over 30 YEARS OF HARD WORK AND RESEARCH that this is 100% reversible and preventable. Here’s how his patients do it:

1) Lose the excess fat since fat is an ACTIVE, HORMONE-PRODUCING tissue, not just excess baggage. It increases estrogen which messes with insulin/glucose uptake, shrinks your penis and testicles, increases breast tissue in both sexes, drops sex drive, decreases your body’s ability to heal quickly, etc. Bad stuff.

2) FAST once a day every week (Friday is a great day for Christians of the high-church persuasion), or at least miss a meal once in a while, allowing your body to clear out the glucose from your system and to clean out your liver from glycogen, as Martin described above. You can also do this by rigorous exercise to include running, circuit training, etc. of a sustained duration, probably at least 40 minutes several times a week.

3) Follow the “glycemic index” diet. This basically means cut out most simple sugars most of the time, and eat things together or prepared in such a way that your body doesn’t break anything down quickly. There are lots of books about it that are easy to read and helpful. It’s basically the scientific, evidence-based way of doing what Nate and HB are suggesting. For example, eating by the glycemic index means that even if it’s marked “whole grain” you make sure that it really is. If it’s bread, I won’t eat it unless the first ingredient is one of the following: “stone ground” or “100% whole wheat flower.” If it says “enriched” anything, forget it. But again, this is because of the way it is broken down into a simple sugar by my body, not because there’s anything inherently bad about wheat.

4) If someone with type 2 diabetes loses his excess fat using the above means, he will completely reverse the disease 100% of the time unless he has developed type 1 diabetes too (complete destruction of the pancreas’ insulin producing cells). If he loses just 10% of the weight he will still gain a benefit according to this doctor’s research.

And that’s it. This is a guy who’s devoted his entire life, 30 years of work and millions of dollars of government money to this question. And he’s not trying to sell you anything or make a name for himself so that he can be in the lime-light for some public speaking gig: he likes doing stuff in a lab and that’s it. I only met him because he was merely a lecturer for our biochemistry class, invited by a colleague from the medical school across the street.

Some other facts:

CRP is the most non-helpful and useless marker in our bloodstream that we can currently test for. It is 100% useless for almost everything unless you are tracking a rare rheumatalogical disorder. ANYTHING can make it go up or down. You get bacteria in your blood stream every time you have a bowel movement, raising your CRP. If you take a test, have a bad dream, drive a car, think about something negative, get cancer, fight with your wife, get bit by a mosquito, your CRP is bound to go up. Anybody who’s making claims based on a CRP is trying to sell you something or get himself attention.

Some people have what’s called “Celiac Disease,” which is an auto-immune disease in reaction to the presence of gluten, one of the proteins in wheat. This is a very poorly understood kind of condition, but basically one’s body attacks its own cells in the presence of a particular substance. It’s similar to being allergic to peanuts or bee stings: in the presence of a particular thing, your immune system overreacts and does damage to itself. To diagnose it you need to biopsy the colon lining to look for the immune cells. It has nebulous symptoms to include fatigue, aches, diarrhea, even mental symptoms, but to treat it you have to cut out EVERYTHING with gluten in it, to include almost every manufactured food product in the world, such as barbecue sauce and so on. Cutting out just wheat products won’t do it. This is the ONLY condition that causes “leeching” of nutrients from the intestines in the exposure to wheat products, and you have to eat NOTHING with gluten in it for 3 weeks to several months before you will feel better. Slip up once and a truly ill Celiac patient knows it for weeks. Unless you are truly suffering severely from this disease, the diet is impossible, and all but the sickest of patients tend to break the diet and just suffer the consequences.

In summary, the burden of proof is on the shunners-of-bread, not the other way around. We know that the sedentary, refined-foods lifestyle is no good, and leads to Diabetes: even in cultures such as Asian ones where bread is not a primary food, but refined products are ubiquitous. We also know that that wheat in many forms has been the backbone diet of everywhere that doesn’t primarily eat rice since mankind began stop being cave dwellers and started cultivating the land. There are certain, very specific medical conditions that might predispose one to being sensitive to gluten, but this is not synonymous with bread, and can be found in many, many foods.

You can accuse me of being pro-establishment, but I have gone through the exact same process as you: I believed some of this stuff, read a bunch of convincing things, didn’t eat anything with gluten in it for 2 months, etc. But ultimately, I did what the establishment recommends, and for the first time I reaped real benefits. If you want you can believe that microwaves cause cancer despite the fact that we know microwaves merely accelerate the movement of fat and water particles, taking advantage of certain frequencies. But since you are all much more sensible than my mother, in the long run you will look back on it as a fad, and ultimately realize that a balanced, overall healthy diet that includes good-quality exercise and good basic habits (teeth brushing, enough sleep, not too much of anything, etc.) are ultimately the way to go.

P.S. I totally agree with HB’s assessment of shoes, however.

I have 2 pairs of these: http://www.orthotebb.net/

By way of a followup to Julia’s earlier post, I’d like to thank this thread for triggering the arrival of a loaf of delicious, delicious bread in my house.

And I would like to thank Rachel for her clear and informative comment. The ingredient list on our delicious bread starts with stone ground wheat, which I feel smug and secure about now, although I am not exactly sure why. What makes stone ground flour okay?

I’ve been absent from this thread in part because I’ve spent this weekend (and today) enjoying various products of grains (Katherine’s right: fermentation is great), so the seriousness with which I assert these thoughts as practical guidelines should be taken in light of that fact (although, of course, alcohol does not spike blood glucose, being broken down by the liver). As for what I believe to be good practical guidance, I will claim only as much as I have already: I’m at least partially persuaded that protein from animals not fed on corn, fat, and carbs derived from vegetables and fruit are a good foundation to a healthy diet. As Martin has pointed out, this isn’t essentially novel (nor, indeed, was a claim made for its novelty). It does seem to me to contradict certain misguided, low-fat diet proscriptions and to indict much of what is eaten by many Americans as too sugar- and carbohydrate-heavy. But, as Martin says, it’s pretty much what the USDA recommends with the exception of the fat content and elimination of grains, so the practical difference between following this list and the USDA’s while also exercising is likely to be minimal, excepting cost and influence on the gallbladder (about which I’d like to hear more, Martin and Rachel, if you have any thoughts on what effects deriving 30-40% of one’s calorie content from fat might have).

I also don’t know where this argument comes form that grains contain poisons and various other unpleasant chemicals. We have enzymes in our body that have evolved to break down starches made by plants into less complex sugars. I read the article that HB cited. I don’t find many facts to disagree with but the interpretation is a little strange to me.

Well, that’s a relief, that you didn’t find non-facts. As for not knowing about where the argument about poisons and other unpleasant chemicals comes from, Balzer is pretty specific, I thought: he lists enzyme blockers, lectins, and glycoalkaloids as substances in grains only some of which are broken down by cooking and all of which are at least somewhat harmful. He has this whole section on how lectins are like Hannibal Lectors (a truly terrible pun) of the body, doing all this bad stuff. I’m surprised you missed this very colorful language, Martin, since it is a long section. I’d be interested in your scientific and evidence-based thoughts on what this guy says (and Rachel, too!) about this stuff. I’ll repeat the link for the third time. I certainly don’t know a damn thing about whether this guy’s right or not about the science behind what he’s saying; I’ve just heard his arugments, seen them to not be extreme and to be admitted as such (even when he has that line about al dente pasta), and haven’t heard them refuted (because he’s pretty limited in his practical claims), although I’d be perfectly happy seeing them so refuted if he’s wrong. I mean, not eating grains won’t kill you, right? (Right? Please, I’m dying for information that more doctors and doctors-to-be might have on this question.)

It seems to me that the crux of Nate’s and Martin’s disagreement (and it’s one I cannot share) is whether there’s a safe level of grains to eat in one’s diet, by which I mean, Nate appears to say that grains just aren’t adding anything you can’t get elsewhere and are doing so in a harmful way, such that they should be eliminated if one wants to eat only the most health-maximizing foods possible (although Nate has not claimed that any individual human, himself included, should actually only eat the most health-maximizing foods possible). Martin responds that grains are not so inherently destructive (because they’re not destructive at all, perhaps) as to preclude a scientist’s allowing them to be a moderate place in the general person’s diet (although I think Rachel’s experience with muffins is an important rebuttal to the scientist’s generalism, since individuals are going to be refuting science’s generalism at every turn). Essentially, Nate’s saying “wouldn’t we all be better off eating complex carbohydrates, ideally from fresh fruits and vegetables, and not from energy-dense but nutritionally empty sources?” and I don’t think Martin would disagree with that statement, in its limited claim that we’d be better off, but would say that eating energy-dense but nutritionally emply stuff some of the time won’t kill you immediately, even if it’s not a habit to get into. It comes down to that age-old dialectic between purity and moderation, and I don’t think you guys actually disagree about that, insofar as you both have enough experience with that dialectic to know that both purity and moderation must win and lose in the final account. I happen to think that the best life includes significant amounts of a nutritionally indefensible substance—a genuine poison—so I can’t side with Nate in saying that there’s not a moderate level of even a potentially harmful stuff like grains, since I think moderation includes poisons. (Alcohol is not adultery.) So, that’s why I can’t take part in your disagreement; I agree, in essence, with what both of you are saying. (And I think both of you agree, in essence, even if the particular claims, as listed in rather ghastly form above, produce all kinds of disagreement.)

Let me just point out that I started this off by saying that science is showing that grains have a downside (NOT that they should be eliminated entirely from one’s diet) and that I wasn’t sure whether I agreed with the critique of shoes. So, Rachel, I’m happy to know more about your opinions about shoes, but it’s inaccurate to say that you agree with me, because I don’t know what I think beyond “this person said shoes are bad in some respects.” Words cannot express, however, how minimally that and other misinterpretations of my words matter to me. If we were all in a room, I’d let little things like that go, no problem, since I feel everyone here to be my friends and there’s no need to demand perfect accuracy from friends about most things and most of the time. (Thank god, too, since my initial post was perhaps the most confused, partial, wrong, and unhelpful thing I’ve ever written here.) But since honor and people’s good opinion of me get so quickly wrapped up in the words written here (Martin, in particular, has seemed horrified by the only partially accurate things I’ve said on Monadology in the past, and the tones I’ve been perceived to use), I feel the need to correct even the slightest mistake, when I spot it and am capable of correcting it. So, thanks, Mary, for responding to what I actually wrote in a helpful way. Thanks, too, to everyone else for disregarding what I actually wrote and having some interesting discussions about stuff that was tangential to that. Seriously, thanks—the actual content of what’s been said here has been awesome, even if it can only be partially right and even if along the way it has misrepresented me and my thoughts. I say this as a preface to what I’m about to address, namely, the painful feeling that Nate and Rachel have referenced that also appears to have shown up in this thread. I hate that shit.

I’ve been called a zealot here, and by a putative ally. I suppose that’s a fair characterization, given the humor and self-deprecation with which it was said, and my image (shared in part, I think, with Nate) of zealots from the gospels and The Life of Brian as being well-intentioned but bumbling characters, mainly good for comedic effect and being pointed to for their error. I can’t deny my categorization, either, along these lines even if I think it’s only partially true (and do go look at me in the awesome sweater made by my lovely wife). But if I didn’t know Nate well and speak with him in person on about a weekly basis, and if I hadn’t known rheintochter4 well for a long time such that my not speaking to her on a weekly basis is only a painful absence and not destructive of my past understanding of her, I could terribly misinterpret their statements about me as quite insulting (when, in fact, they’re correct and insofar as they’re correct only partially insulting; gotta know oneself). These are just examples that occur to me of potential error into which I could fall based on reading the internet, but from which I am saved by entirely non-internet experiences.

Honestly, this and other threads are turning me off to internet-based conversations entirely, even as I’ve enjoyed this thread’s tremendous usefulness. So much terrible miscommunication is possible when words intended for conversation are made permanent and stripped of their tone in writing. None of this or other miscommunication would have happened if Nate had been in the room with his interlocutors; instead, he comes off like an asshole (or maybe just kind of a son of a bitch) in some potential readings, Martin comes off as sanctimonious and unfair in other potential readings, and the true charity that comes so easily to in-person conversations (and which would correct for the partial truth of these potential readings) of free men seems nearly impossible. The interet’s allowing people to stew about the errors or partiality of their interlocutors, error made permanent by the ability to view nuance-less text in a void instead of hearing and letting pass away partial accounts, has already bred the destruction of one friendship this week. Please, gods, don’t let it happen again (so, Martin—take a step back for real this time; the burden falls on you by chance, and nothing that’s been said here is truly permanent). There’s no fucking reason why that has to happen, except accident and error. As this post started, I’m kind of off contrivances, since they can start to control our lives more than we intended. (And, yes, I know that contrivances definitionally have good and bad effects, but I still have this impulse to think that fewer and simpler contrivances are the better way to go.)

Some of us are going to see each other in person on May 17, right?

Yesterday, on the Red line going to Shady Grove, I saw a profound ad:

::: SHOES.COM Life is better with shoes. :::

I need to consider carrying my camera with me at all times. If I had done this, I would have had a picture of the Stop Eros stop sign at CUA.

Health faddism and religion occupy a similar space, conversationally. There are several old, established fads that people have learned to tolerate, and not take as an affront to their own eating habits, and have learned aren’t useful topics of conversation (veganism, macrobiotic, etc). Then there are new ones, which people react to completely differently. Apparently gluten-free is still in the same box as the Raeleans.

Hb, I think your aporetic posts are extremely helpful. Don’t stop!

Even though I wanted to clarify the ground on which art and nature stand, I think your connection of grain, shoes, and petroleum was very just, and that connection on your part helped start some decent conversation.

Thanks, Mary. I’m not as worried about blog posts (though I am that) as I am these approximations of conversations in comment threads. And I’m not disappointed in the post because it’s aporetic, so much as that it wasn’t supposed to be.

(Confidential to all those Monadology haters out there: Don’t think the problems I’ve identified are specific to this one blog, associated with a certain poster, or even caused by the spirit of inquiry and dedication to discursive argument displayed around here. In fact, it’s the attitudes and actions of many of you, whom I know in real life not to hate inquiry or argument, when you get on the Internet that has spawned much of my concern.)

(Confidential to HB: You have my sympathy. I am essential to this place, but other spirits hold sway over other places. I don’t know of any Monadology haters, but if there are any, they won’t see this.)

All right, I suppose I deserved that, being cryptic and all: I can’t tell if the ole Spirit of Inquiry is being sarcastic or not. I was trying to make a point I really should leave to other places of elucidation, though, so I’ll take the lump. I will say, though, that I first read the Spirit as saying, “I am essential to this place, but other spirits hold sway [here],” and I thought it wasn’t entirely wrong. Regardless, the point is that we’re trying, dammit.

I intended no sarcasm, and your first reading is what I intended. My sympathy for your position abides.

Okay, now humility dictates that I remind the Spirit, and others, that I’m no saint when it comes to tailoring my words so as to minimize the chance of giving offense. But now that I know your intentions, thanks for the sympathy!

I realized the second I hit post that I miss-wrote: I knew all along that you weren’t endorsing the shoes, but I was so tired after a long post that I got myself mixed up: I meant to say that I agreed with the author you quoted. I REALLY had to go to bed, so I stopped myself from making a correction and hoped you’d forgive me.

As for the link to Dr. Ben Balzer: I can tell you with full confidence that no self-respecting medical professional would EVER make a website like that. He has NO sources, no footnotes, no research, no links to anything peer-reviewed, evidenced-based, or scientifically conducted ANYTHING. In FACT, he MERELY makes lame ad hominem attacks on anyone who might question him. For example, raw potatoes are NOT poisonous. There are medical guidelines for how to treat every poisonous substance in the books, and that is not one of them.

Cooking foods he lists does not kill the “toxins,” but instead breaks down the physical structure of the food into something our bodies can easily digest (so yes, eating a bean that isn’t cooked will upset your stomach in the same way eating a rock of equal size would).

In response to Julia: wheat is particularly susceptible to this: stone ground wheat is better because griding by stone doesn’t beat the crap out of the grain’s inherent structure the way true refining does, making it harder for your body to get to the sugar so fast that your insulin could spike (and again, your insulin WON’T spike unless you are already pre-diabetic, like I was, because healthy bodies are good at regulating that). Whole wheat just means that the outer husk is left intact before milling, whereas enriched wheat flour means that the outer hull was removed, the inner carbohydrates were pulverized, bleached and then some vitamins were put back artificially (this was done by law because the govt. realized that neurological birth defects were being caused by the lack of folic acid in pregnant womens’ diets once white bread became ubiquitous). Whole wheat in and of itself can indeed be pulverized completely, and therefore release the same amount of simple sugars and cause the same glucose spike as white bread, so you have to be careful. However, it at least has all of its own nutrients in there, even if the hulls have been pulverized, so it’s still better than white bread.

If you want to know what a reputable medical website looks like, here’s an example:

http://www.emedicine.com/MED/topic807.htm

Please note the footnotes, the qualifications, the lack of unsubstantiated claims, etc.

Or another, less technical one geared more for laymen. Again, note the references and links:

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/QAA400088
.
Okay!

Now for the REAL FUN! To address some specific claims:

enzyme blockers: this is not a technical term, and therefore can’t really be addressed properly. However, there are millions of things that act as “enzyme blockers” in our bodies, in plants, in medicines etc. Some therapeutic drugs are “enzyme blockers,” such as Nexxium, and some enzyme blockers are horrible poisons (curare from poisonous frogs, for example). Other’s aren’t really noteworthy unless you are a very very boring biochemist.

He’s pretty vague, but this one made me laugh out loud:

Most commonly they block the enzymes that digest protein (proteases), and are called “protease inhibitors”.

Protease inhibitors are what we use to treat HIV and other viral infections, and have NOTHING to do with digestion. Hilarious!

***

“Hannibal” Lectins:

Lectins occur ubiquitously in nature as enzymes that are necessary for all sorts of important bodily functions. Life as we know it would not be possible without these, and their roles aren’t really important here. WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS THAT all enzymes when exposed to the acid in our stomach “denature,” meaning lose their natural shape and become therefore inactive (an enzyme is 100% dependent on its shape to do it’s job, since it fits with the chemicals like a lock and key). There is no way they are active by the time they get to the intestine, so there’s no chance that they cause leaky bowels. This is why diabetics require insulin to be INJECTED: it’s an enzyme, so anything pill form gets destroyed in the stomach juices. Please help me find a way for this to be otherwise, and we can then be rich on all the by mouth enzyme medications that we could invent. Rich I tell you!

By the way, lectins are most definitely in all muscle tissue, meaning all meat, and are also in all raw veggies of any kind. But his narrative sure is gripping! (Yes, one of the things lectins can do is clot. By the way, sometimes you want your blood to clot, so the presence of an enzyme that does so isn’t shocking. If I’m bleeding to death, please get me some lectins, stat! These sound dangerous on their own, but your body has a very, very boring to memorize and complicated way of making sure you clot when necessary and don’t when not. take a look at a somewhat simplified diagram of it if you’d like: http://www.kingsnake.com/toxinology/hemotoxinology.html )

***

he states “cows milk is low in critical nutrients for brain development, particularly omeg 3 fats”:

Not true: millions of babies in the world still grow up on cow’s milk, not formula. And they do FINE. Cow’s milk can be rich with omega 3’s also, if the cow eats things that have omega 3 in them. I remember reading a study in the journal of Preventive Medicine saying that infants who had lots of omega 3’s gained at most 2 IQ points compared to infants who got none at all. I know I wouldn’t miss 2 points much. Also, when my mom was born (the 1940’s) EVERYONE fed their U.S. children cow’s milk mixed with sugar syrup as formula, because they were told that human milk was very bad for babies. Good luck trying to convince somebody that everyone currently in their mid- to late- 60’s didn’t develop a brain just fine!

***

Oh, and the claim that our “genes were never developed alongside grains” is bunk. Our genes are developing every day, otherwise evolution would be over, right? Asians were all thought to be all lactose intolerant because they didn’t traditionally drink milk and lacked the enzyme to digest it. This is true to some extent: their bodies don’t tend to make much of it. But if an Asian drinks milk on a regular enough basis, he will start to make lactase on his own. Please don’t ask me to explain how: it’s a very, very boring process. You can look it up.

***

He lists as vital nutrients: “vitamins, fats, protein, fats, carbohydrates, antioxidants and phytosterols” But antioxidants are not vital nutrients (you certainly don’t need them to survive) and phytosterols are often actually bad: the sterol in soy products can be mistaken for estrogen in the human body and has been known to cause all the damage that excessive estrogen can cause, to include increasing the rate of growth of breast cancer.

***

Exorphins: this is a great made-up word! Love it! Doesn’t exist. Either something is an endorphine (i.e. made by the body) or it’s an opiate (does the same thing, but not made by the body). No evidence so far that any foods other than poppies make opiates. Please let me know if you find any so that we can create a new painkiller and make millions upon millions of dollars.

Please let me know if you have more specific questions.