Review of
Instaread Summary of Wheat Belly Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to
Health By William Davis, MD
Three out of five stars
This summary
describes a book that reads like so many of the self-help books based on diet,
simply change the primary cause of the problems in the text and the message is
a repeat. In this case, the cause of all the problems is wheat, specifically
modern strains of wheat. Davis’ claims are listed without any semblance of
critical analysis, although there is a long set of references at the end.
The tone of the
summary is set very early, the following sentence appears in the third
paragraph of the overview.
“For one, wheat has a powerful addictive quality that
interacts with the same brain receptors as opiate drugs, providing a surge of
pleasure when consumed and a pang of withdrawal when avoided.”
Clearly, one of the worst things that can be said
about a food type is comparing it to an opiate drug. Furthermore, eating almost
any food will trigger the pleasure centers in a hungry person. In a fortunate
coincidence, while I was writing this review I encountered the following line
in another book. “Food manufacturers strive to make processed foods addictive
by using three crucial ingredients: salt, sugar, and fat.” Note that there is
no mention of wheat or any carbohydrate.
This position is furthered in the statement of the
first key takeaway.
“Wheat is the number one problem with the contemporary
American diet.”
This is a potentially dangerous oversimplification.
Davis cites the rise of the levels of type II diabetes in Americans as one of
the consequences of eating modern wheat. However, the percentages of type II
diabetes in the populations of nations all around the world are rapidly rising
and many of those people have a diet that does not include a great deal of
wheat. The changes in health problems are extremely complex and not due to the
consumption of one type of food.
This summary is
one that generally parrots what Davis states in the book, unlike other, better
summaries, there is no critical analysis or questioning of the broad and
misleading content.
This book was made available for free for review
purposes.
