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Who wouldn’t love freshly baked buns or pastries that we bring home from the store? Each of us probably knows that it’s not the healthiest form of eating, but as is often the case, we can’t help ourselves. You also ask why we should rather limit baked goods, how gluten affects the body and what exactly is wrong and incorrect? In today’s article we will try to explain it to you.
Baked goods
Experts are increasingly “blaming” wheat as the reason why obesity is becoming more widespread. Advocates of a healthy lifestyle raise a warning finger at it. And it’s not just about obesity. Allergies, heart disease, intolerances, intestinal problems, elevated blood sugar levels, an overburdened immune system and poor mineral absorption.
Why did our grandmothers and grandfathers eat bread every day and suffer no ill effects?
The reason is simple and plain. In the past bread was baked from basic ingredients; there were no stabilizers or preservatives. Fewer chemical compounds were used to give baked goods their proper taste and fewer colorings to dye them.
Today wheat is not the same as it used to be. It grows much shorter. Just remember when you ran around the fields as a child. Wheat or other cereals used to be huge, tall. But because that made farmers’ work harder—when heavy rains came the grain would immediately lodge—they decided to genetically modify it so that it would grow shorter.
They also wanted wheat to be hardier and grow faster. However, the digestive tract of some people lacks the enzymes capable of digesting the protein gluten that wheat contains.
What is gluten?
Gluten is a plant protein found for example in barley, wheat, rye, spelt and oats. For some people gluten acts like glue. When it gets into the digestive tract it sticks to the contents of the stomach, which causes problems such as diarrhea, constipation, bloating and food allergies.
Enzymes of the digestive tract cannot properly break down gluten and amino acids. Gluten decomposes into peptides, which are chains of amino acids, but still too large to be digested in the small intestine. Therefore digestion takes much longer. The result can, for example, be celiac disease and thus intolerance to foods containing gluten.
Scientific study
In 2013 a scientific study was published that brought interesting results. Scientists examined the effect of gluten on the digestive tract of mice. The question was whether gluten can cause obesity.
During the experiment one group of mice was on a gluten-free diet and the other received a diet high in gluten. The results showed that the mice on the gluten-free diet did not have such weight gain; their insulin was also within normal values and their internal organs showed no inflammation, compared to the other group.
The human body
With gluten it’s not that the calorie content influences weight gain. Rather it is a disruption of the external and internal structure of glands and intestines, and the alpha and gamma PPAR receptors, which are precisely responsible for the proper functioning of metabolism.
The results therefore speak clearly. The gluten found in cereals today already harms a large number of people. If you feel that you have health problems after consuming it, visit your doctor and get tested for its tolerance.
