Questions for Mertdawg

@mertdawg your responses have for me come across as rather factual as you tend to be able to provide sources backing up your claims. Now I have a question for you, but no thread to hijack for that purpose.

You have in the past mentioned the dangers of wheat, but I do not recall you having written extensively on sourdough?

Disregarding the argument “best not risk it” I was curious if you’d read anything that suggests that sourdough is comparatively safe to consume compared to bread in general as there can be significant differences between store-bought bread and say a homemade sourdough bread.

My curiosity stems from a hypothesis that gluten intolerance (leaving allergies aside) is maybe a side-effect of different manufacturing processes as many a civilization has been built on bread (although, maybe not many envious physiques…)

Side-bar: it would be interesting to know if there is anything there nutritionally making the trade-off between inflammation and nutrition worthwhile.

So, natural corn and beans are fatal at fairly low doses. Humans found ways to destroy most of the anti-nutrients to allow us to utilize the starches for energy.

I do not believe that the modern manufacturing process makes bread harmful, but I do believe that long fermentation destroys many of the inflammatory compounds. The same is basically true of fermented beans and even corn, beer, etc. Bacteria break down problematic compounds. So I would not say that “whole wheat” like boiled wheat is therefore better because it doesn’t undergo a process of manufacturing. I think that modern manufacturing doesn’t take full advantage of the fermentation process that improves the nutritional quality of the wheat. I know people who are wheat sensitive who do much much better on sourdough.

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Neither do I, but rather as you point out that the way things are produced today side-steps the fermentation process somewhat in relation to how it would have been produced before. For instance, maybe things were let to ferment for longer periods of time before and so forth. And, seemingly, white flour is processed to such a degree that there isn’t as much “life” left within the product as there might have been before when using a stone grinder to produce flour all the same albeit not processed to the same degree.

@mertdawg is there something with wheat that is particularily troublesome for us humans, or does the issue extend to other grains such as rye as well?

There is a long answer to that-detailing each of the lectins, lignins and polypetides in each kind of seed, and this extends to beans and nuts as well, since grains, beans and nuts are all “designed” to be eaten but not destroyed by the guts of animals.

The short answer is that there is evidence and biochemical reasons to believe that wheat is the most inflammatory in general, and several steps up on the next level of seeds. Rye has gluten, so you can’t eat it if you are gluten intolerant, but has probably less of an inflammatory affect than wheat, and most rye breads have fairly long fermentation, but most store bought rye breads are mostly wheat anyway. If I could get pure rye I might eat is, similar to sourdough, on occasion.

In fact, one of the reasons that people subsisted on wheat bread for centuries in the middle east and north African may have been that wheat caused a little dose of cortisol to be released into the body to get people going much like caffeine. Also, when high gluten wheat is combined with fat or oil, it becomes very low GI meaning that it can deliver a slow trickle of glucose for many hours, combined with a slow release of cortisol and glucagon in response to gut irritants.

White rice is very low in gut irritants. Banana flour and Tapioca flour and potato tend to be very low for most people too-they may cause gas but they don’t irritated intestinal cells. Then SPROUTED brown rice, whole kernel corn and lentils and sorghum, wild “rice” are all things that I might eat in moderation. Then maybe buckwheat, barley, rye, then cornstarch and oats and beans, and lastly wheat which is a couple steps beyond those. Beans that are prepared for several hours with rinsing are best and I assume that canned beans are not so bad, though they tend to be trigger foods for people.

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Thank you for another fantastic reply!

If you ever want to move to another country this is not true in Sweden, fortunately.

This is super interesting, where did you learn this? I’d like to learn more without taking up all of your time. Any recommended reading?

Where do you group quinoa and chickpeas? Do you sprout your nuts?

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What are your thoughts on sprouted grain breads, like the ones from food for life?