Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox (6 page)

This first step is unavoidable. You cannot succeed in this lifestyle without this critical first step and going the full distance with it, else none of the other steps will follow or achieve the effects you desire. So let's talk about how you can accomplish this all-important first step and banish all grains from your life.

Start
with a Grain-Free Kitchen

I recommend starting this lifestyle by creating a grain-free kitchen: Establish a grain-free zone that includes your refrigerator, pantry, and cabinet shelves purged of all foods made with grains. Grocery stores, fast-food joints, and schools may be stocked top to bottom with them, but your personal kitchen will be a grain-free safe zone, a haven for healthy eating.

Start by removing all obvious sources of wheat flour such as bread, rolls, doughnuts, pasta, cookies, cake, pretzels, crackers, pancake mix, breakfast cereals, bread crumbs, and bagels. Toss out all the coupons you've set aside to save a few dollars on delivery pizza or bakery items. Then remove all bottled, canned, packaged, and frozen processed foods with wheat among the ingredients. Check the labels for wheat in all its various forms, some of which are obvious and others that are not so obvious, with names such as modified food starch, panko, seitan, and bran. (See
Appendix B
for a list of hidden grain sources and names.)

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 cornstarch 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 $5.99 deep-dish 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
.)

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 that the foods you've eliminated are nearly all variations on the same processed food theme: wheat flour, cornstarch, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and food coloring, whether it was breakfast cereal, a pop-in-the-toaster convenience breakfast, frozen waffles, low-calorie frozen dinners, or crackers. They're
all
cheap filler in the modern diet, dolled up with the glitz of modern marketing.

Start by not shopping for obvious sources of wheat, corn, and other grains and avoid the bread aisle, the bakery, frozen food freezers, the breakfast cereal aisle, and the internal aisles stocked with packaged foods. Confine your shopping to the produce section, the butcher counter, and the dairy refrigerator; venture into the inner aisles only for spices, nuts and seeds, laundry detergent and other household supplies, and dog or cat food (though you might consider looking for grain-free pet food, as well). You may wish to consult the day-by-day shopping list for the 10-Day Menu Plan in
Appendix A
to be sure you have the ingredients on hand to create the plan's recipes.

You are aiming to achieve a diet filled with foods that are least processed. The most confident means of avoiding foods with grains is to choose foods that are naturally grain-free, such as vegetables, eggs, olives, and meats. That points us toward a solution, a policy that helps you easily navigate your new grainless life: Avoid processed foods that bear labels and return to real, unprocessed, naturally grain-free, single-ingredient foods without labels.

STEP 2: Choose Real, Single-Ingredient Foods

An avocado, intact in its skin, can be chosen with confidence, as no food manufacturer added grains to it. Eggs in their shell likewise. In other words, foods left more or less intact and unmodified by a food manufacturer should top your list of foods to choose from that are safe for your empowering grain-free lifestyle. Avocados and whole eggs are real—not fake, multiple-ingredient marketing conceptions of some food manufacturer—and there's no chance of exposure to grains, added sugars, high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, or other no-no's.

You
will find the majority of real, single-ingredient foods in the produce section, butcher counter, and dairy refrigerator. Depending on the layout of your supermarket, you may have to venture into those hazardous internal aisles for some of your baking supplies, spices, and nuts, but do so while ignoring all the packaged, processed, glitzy, eye-catching products.

Avoiding foods with labels simplifies the task of label reading. Cucumbers, spinach, and pork chops, for example, don't come with labels (except to display weight and date). Avoiding labels means you'll be buying foods in their basic, least modified forms. Sure, the pork chops were sliced from a larger piece of the meat from the animal, but they should not have been changed in any other way.

This simple policy of choosing real, single-ingredient foods has served prior Wheat Belly followers well, served our detox panelists well, and will serve you well, particularly as you are learning to navigate this lifestyle at the start.

Choosing real, single-ingredient foods that are nourishing and don't yield land mines in your Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox means enjoying unlimited quantities of the following:

VEGETABLES.
Enjoy all the fresh or frozen veggies you want, except for potatoes (see “
Step 3: Manage Carbohydrates
”—unless you're consuming the potatoes raw, as suggested in
Chapter 4
). Explore the wonderful range of choices: spinach, chard, kale, broccoli, broccolini, collard greens, lettuces, peppers, onions, mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, zucchini, squash, and so on. It may also be time to revisit vegetables you didn't previously like because of the change in taste perception you will undergo when grain-free. Don't be surprised if the Brussels sprouts you once despised now become your favorite. Minimize reliance on canned vegetables, especially tomatoes, due to bisphenol A, an endocrine-disrupting chemical, in the can's lining.

MEATS.
Choose from beef, pork, lamb, fish, chicken, turkey, buffalo, ostrich, and wild game. Consider pasture-/grass-fed, free-range, and organic sources whenever possible to minimize
exposure
to antibiotic residues, hormones, and other contaminants, as well as to do your part in encouraging a return to more humane livestock practices. There is no need to look for lean cuts; look for fatty cuts, often less expensive and full of the fats you need that facilitate success in this lifestyle. And try to overcome the modern aversion to organ meats, such as liver, heart, and tongue, the most nutritious components of all, especially liver and heart. Uncured liver sausage or ground liver added to meat loaf are easy ways to resume organ consumption. Only over the last 50 years have people developed an aversion to organ meats. Get over it: Have some liver. (Just as with humans, if an animal was raised in contaminated circumstances, the meat and organs will be contaminated likewise, so look for pasture-fed, organic sources here, as well.) Save bones in the freezer to make soups and stocks, excellent for joint, hair, and nail health.