Wheat-a-Belly

A lot of people in the US these days are talking about the threat of genetically engineered foods. Wheat, for example, is now said to be especially dangerous. A heart doctor, William Davis, has written a popular book entitled "Wheat Belly", making the claim that the wheat we eat today is nothing like the wheat our ancestors enjoyed and is responsible for the blossoming of belly blubber in the United States today. Specifically, the wheat developed over the past 50 years has more gluten in it. To help us understand the danger that this poses, we met with Professor Colin Graankleefstof, PhD of the International Baking Society (IBS) and asked him about what gluten actually is.

Pterosaurish: Thank you for meeting with us today, Professor.
CG: You are very welcome indeed.
Pterosaurish: So please tell us in laymen's terms, what actually IS gluten in wheat?
CG: It's a protein. It's necessary for making bread products rise. We have strong wheat and weak wheat flours; the former are what we use in making donuts, bread, and pizza... did I tell you I know how to make a really great pizza dough, using two different kinds of high gluten flour?
Pterosaurish: Um.... no... but what about the weak flours?
CG: OH! Yes! The weak flours... you would never make pizza with them. Do you know why?
Pterosaurish: Er... not really?
CG: Their gluten levels are too low, so the pizza wouldn't rise properly. No... we use these weak flours in making cakes and the like.
Pterosaurish: So what are the differences we are talking about here?
CG: Well, the pizza dough requires a high gluten flour, so I use a flour with 12.5% gluten. To make a cake I would use a flour with about 8% gluten.
Pterosaurish: I see. Well, thank you very much for this enlightening information about this dietary danger.
CG: It has been entirely my pleasure.

No question about it. If you look at many popular foods, wheat is a major ingredient. It's the number one ingredient in Cinnamon Toast Crunch (breakfast cereal) for example. Cosmic Brownies also contain wheat. Twinkies (soon to make a comeback in the American diet) contain this dangerous substance. And even popular Krispy Kreme donuts have — yes, you guessed it — wheat, as the main ingredient! And that is not all! Even Entenmann's Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies and Pepperidge Farm Pretzel Goldfish are laced with this high-risk material! And every, single one of the 14 billion pizzas pumped out by the Pizza Hut chain (founded in 1958) last year was adulterated with wheat flour.
Who knew?!
Is it no wonder that Americans are getting fat? The good doctor is right! And not only fat, this viciously introduced "hybrid" wheat is responsible for "heart disease, diabetes, fatigue, acne, arthritis, IBS and even dementia"!
Dementia!
Some clearly deluded naysayers (maybe suffering from early on-set dementia?) make the spurious claim that baguettes (French bread) have been around for centuries and require a high gluten flour to make them, and nobody had "wheat belly" in Queen Antoinette's day (Her admonition, "Let them eat cake!" clearly showed her concern for the health of the masses, since cake contains less gluten than bread). But these naysayers don't have the anecdotal evidence that Dr. Davis has from patients to support their view.
What is next? What frightening steps will the food giants take to engineer their products to make them easier to grow and more profitable? Adding genes from migratory insects so that the wheat will migrate throughout the year, self-adjusting its sunlight and temperature for increased yields? Or engineer it with polar bear genes so it can be planted and grown throughout the winter in icy lands. Can adding squid genes to the wheat be far behind, setting the stage for underwater farming? It is a vast underutilized part of our planet after all!
It is critical that each and every one of us be aware of this grave danger and take immediate steps to correct our eating habits to avoid terrible health problems. I —for one— intend to
cut right back on the number of doughnuts I eat in the morning for breakfast. My health is too important to be left to the devices of unscrupulous companies like Krispy Kreme!