Tackle barley-containing foods next. This includes any food with malt listed on the label, as well as barley itself. (Beer and some other alcoholic beverages have grain issues, but we will discuss this in Appendix B.) Any foods made with rye, such as rye breads and rye crackers, should all go, too.
Now remove all obvious sources of corn, such as corn on the cob, canned corn, corn chips, tacos, and grits, as well as processed packaged foods made with obvious and not-so-obvious corn ingredients such as hydrolyzed cornflour and polenta (also listed in Appendix B).
Other grains, such as oats, rice, millet, sorghum, amaranth, and teff, are usually listed by their real names; purge the kitchen of these foods.
Why are grains found in so many processed foods? Sometimes they are there for legitimate reasons, such as to improve texture and taste or to thicken. But grains are also a way to bulk up a product inexpensively, causing you to believe that a frozen pizza is a bargain. In other words, grains are cheap filler. It is a way to feed people cheaply with plates piled high and appetites satisfied—at least for a few minutes, until they are hungry again. Note that fast-food restaurants are monuments to the use of cheap filler, so it is very difficult (impossible in some outlets) to navigate a meal free of them in such places.
But I believe that grains are present in nearly all processed foods for reasons beyond cheap filler. The dirty little secret is that grains increase food consumption by yielding opiates that increase appetite, adding an average of 400 more calories per person, per day, every day (averaging the food intake of everybody: adults, infants, and children). It’s not uncommon for grains to provoke consumption of 1,000 or more additional calories per day in an adult. Top off processed foods with high-fructose corn syrup, a highly processed derivative of corn, with its low-cost, intense sweetness, and you increase the expectation of sweetness and further amp up appetite in the consuming public, further increasing our desire for other sweet, processed foods. (Grain-free people, by the way, find the taste and sweetness of high-fructose corn syrup overwhelming, something you will lose all desire for, another reflection of sharpened taste.) As a consumer of “healthy whole grains,” you were doomed from the start, but now you know.
Just as there is no way to make a cigarette healthy, there is no way to salvage any of the grain products you had in your pantry or refrigerator. Toss them in the trash, give them to charity, use them for compost or cat litter, but get rid of them. This removes the temptation to “just have one cracker” or think that “just one bite won’t hurt” or try to avoid waste. We will discuss why it is so important to not allow this to happen and avoid the reactivation of appetite and addictive behavior, as well as triggering reexposure reactions that involve bloating, diarrhea, joint pain, and other annoying, even painful, effects. Making the break abruptly and cleanly is very important for success. If you are unable to completely purge your kitchen of grain products because, say, a spouse or other family member refuses to go along with your lifestyle change, make it clear that you are going to have food set aside to suit your new eating choices. (In Chapter 7, we will discuss how to quietly and cleverly convert such people over to your way of living. It can be done.)
There is no need for a panic attack, worrying that you will never have a pizza, muffin, or piece of cheesecake again. You will, though we will re-create them using truly healthy ingredients that will not cause weight gain or reverse the health benefits you’ve worked to achieve. (You will be introduced to these in the 10-Day Menu Plan in Chapter 5.)
Start Your Grain-Free Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox
Clear your kitchen of all obvious wheat and grain sources
Wheat-based products: bread, rolls, breakfast cereals, pasta, orzo, bagels, muffins, pancakes and pancake mixes, waffles, doughnuts, pretzels, cookies, crackers
Bulgur and triticale (both related to wheat)
Barley products: barley, barley breads, soups with barley, vinegars with barley malt
Rye products: rye bread, pumpernickel bread, crackers
All corn products: corn, cornflour, cornmeal products (chips, tacos, tortillas), grits, polenta, sauces or gravies thickened with cornflour, corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, breakfast cereals
Rice products: white rice, brown rice, wild rice, rice cakes, breakfast cereals
Oat products: oatmeal, oat bran, oat cereals
Amaranth
Teff
Millet
Sorghum
Then eliminate hidden sources by reading labels
Eliminate hidden sources of grains by avoiding the processed foods that fill the inner aisles of the grocery store. Almost all of these are thickened, flavored, or textured with grain products, or grains are added as cheap filler and/or appetite stimulants.
Living without grains means avoiding foods that you never thought contained grains, such as seasoning mixes bulked up with cornflour, canned and dry soup mixes with wheat flour, soy sauce, frozen dinners with wheat-containing gravy and muffins, and all breakfast cereals, hot and cold. (You will find lists of the hidden aliases for wheat and corn, in particular, that can be found in so many processed foods in Appendix B.)
This does not mean you will never have a crunchy breakfast “cereal” again or a salad topped with delicious dressing. You will learn to either make your own versions with no unhealthy grains to booby-trap your lifestyle or to identify the brands that have no grains or other unhealthy ingredients added.
Go Grain-Free Shopping
You have purged your kitchen of grain-containing foods and need to restock with new, healthy, grain-free alternatives. Go to the supermarket or the stores where you shop for meat, vegetables, and other foods. (Some of our detox panelists observed that they needed to shop at more than one store in their neighborhood to find all the starting ingredients.) One observation you are sure to make as you remove all grains from your life and carefully examine labels is, “This is impossible. Grains are in everything!”
Indeed, grains—especially wheat and corn—are in salad dressings, seasoning mixes, licorice, frozen dinners, breakfast cereals, canned soups, dried soup mixes, rotisserie chickens, soft drinks, whiskies, beers, prescription drugs, shampoos, conditioners, lipstick, chewing gum, and even the adhesive in envelopes. Wheat and corn are in virtually every processed food on grocery store shelves and in many cosmetics and toiletries, as ubiquitous as (how can I resist?) white on rice. (By the way, steal a look at the contents of other shoppers’ grocery carts and you will be amazed at the number of foods that contain wheat and grains. You’ll be hard-pressed to find foods that don’t contain them.)
It also means bearing some greater up-front grocery costs, since you are restocking much of your kitchen with new foods. Don’t be fooled, though: The increased costs of following the Wheat Belly lifestyle will not continue forever. It’s just part of getting started. Recall that, as you progress in your wheat- and grain-free lifestyle, food and calorie consumption will drop naturally. If your family follows suit, multiply the reduced food intake by the number of family members, and it all adds up (in the experience of most people) to reduced long-term costs or no increase—making no dent in your monthly food budget, despite getting rid of all the foods made with cheap filler and replacing them with higher-quality substitutes.
Of the 60,000 or so processed food products that pack the shelves of the average supermarket, your options will be whittled down to about 1,000, but you should never feel deprived. You will discover