[.ca] Going Against the Grain: How Reducing and Avoiding ... (ISBN 0658017225)

This Book Has Changed My Life:
I decided to stop eating "bread stuff" as a new year resolution (2004) because I had a number of friends that were losing weight on the Atkin's Diet. I did not want to go on a "diet" but I wanted to do something. In making this decision I needed to read more about my eating which led me to Dr Mercola's site and his book. I used the EFT (emofree.com)meridian tapping techniques to help with any of the cravings that I may have had come up while doing this. Reading the reviews on his book led me to this book "Going Against The Grain". So here I am and writing my first review. I received this book 2 weeks after I stopped eating bread/stuff. This book is precise and informative. It may be a bit dry...no big hype or products being sold, but well worth the read. I did have to process out, at times, the idea that I have been eating something all my life that wasn't meant for my body. ( My personal viewpoint) Within 5 days of not eating wheat (bread,pasta,cakes,muffins cookies etc)my craving for sugar lessened by 90%. I was amazed at how easy this was for me. My energy level went up and I just knew that something had changed. This book explained to me precisely what was happening in my body when I ate these grain foods. That alone gave me much self-empowerment and validation for my action to stop comsuming grains and increasing my vegetable intake. I also saw the pattern in my life from the way I ate that took away from my over-all health. I am not a dieting type person. I like eating pasta...my heritage is Italian. I have since lost weight easily and quickly as she mentions happened to clients in her book. I even get excited about eating veges !!! And I have lost great interest in these other foods. Never thought I could do this, but I have and I am truly grateful for having read this book. It should be on the shelf with the cookbooks in every home. On an aside. I am 2 1/2 months in my new lifestlye. I have eaten some sugar in the form of icecream, and chocolate. I am able to bypass the wheat foods easily and without longing. I have eaten one hamburg on a bun, and a small slice of cake. I have no more interest in potatoes and rice. And if someone told me 6 months ago that this would be me within a year I would have said NO WAY. I'd never have the discipline. Thank you Melissa Smith

Going Against the Grain by Melissa Diane Smith:
This is an excellent supplement for your personal health library. The author discusses classic allergy components of wheat, gliadins, glutenins, albumins and globulins. Surprisingly, oats are deemed to be safe for celiacs. Scientists believe that gluten doesn't distill soy which is considered a hidden derivative. Soy-based veggie burgers and meat substitutes are said to contain gluten. The wheat free diet consists of Ancient Harvest Quinoa Flakes, Omega-3 Muesli, Quinoa Flakes, Trader Joe's Gluten - Free Waffles and Lundberg's Organic brown rice pasta. The author provides a sample grain-free breakfast consisting of eggs, fruit, spinach, onion omelet, strawberries, grilled fish taco etc. In some patients, autoimmune disease is aggravated by an increase in Lectins which disturbs gut permeability thereby causing bacterial overgrowth and the classic leaky gut syndrome. The author provides a scientific discussion to show how the immune system actually attacks itself and how patients can deal with this phenomenom. The book is very valuable if you have a medical history which is adverse to gluten products. This book will be valuable if you have a history of Crohns Disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Ankylosing Spondylitis, Celiac Disease and a whole host of autoimmune and digestive system ailments and manifestations.

I'm looking for answers and this book helped me:
It does take courage to write a book telling people to stop eating foods that they have eaten, and yes, trusted, all their lives. I have IBS (30 years) and most recently food sensitivities (6 years) which have made my life sheer misery. I have gone many places (outside of traditional medicine of course) to look for answers, and this book is my latest stop. I was very interested to hear about the way wheat affects some people and compare it to my own experience, having given it up 2 years ago. I wanted to know why several good (and unexpected) things happened and here I found answers/hypotheses. Melissa really needed to have a good editor look at this book before she published it as the writing style is uneven and sometimes amateurish-sounding, never a good thing in a "scientific" publication. I do appreciate her effort, her willingness to share her experience, and, as I said before, her nerve--- it's not easy to come out against something as popular as wheat.

A total perversion of research on diet-related diseases:
Instead of asking Ms. Smith, perhaps readers would be better suited to turn to the recommendations of the National Cancer Institute, National Cancer Society, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the World Health Organization, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and countless university-based studies. A diet consisting only of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables is the best defense against diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and cancer. The fiber in whole grain food escorts carcinogens and other toxins out of the body, while vitamins and minerals otherwise ensure proper functioning. In time, this latest version of the low-carbohydrate fad will look as ridiculous and baseless as every other fad diet. This book is just another example of commercial exploitation of people looking to be healthy without making any meaningful changes to their diets and lifestyles.

A Vital Signpost, even Billboard.:
Though every diet "simplification by food-type elimination" is necessarily a distortion of nutritional reality, which is complex, Smith's simplification by grain elimination is VERY helpful for many, if not most, typical eaters. Since most grains must be cooked to be chewable/digestible, it's obvious that grain eating is not natural in humans' evolutionary past. (Chew on raw wheat kernels to appreciate this fact.) In addition, most grain consumption, among Americans at least, is unfortunate in that wheat is the most-consumed, the most problematical regarding allergenicity, and the most commonly debased by bleaching and removal of higher-nutrient portions such as the germ and bran, etc. Refined grains, especially the bleached variety such as typical bakers' white flour, are simply an abomination and as much a health scourge as hydrogenated fats which, tragically, are often combined with refined-grain products in packaged crackers and chips of many varieties. In the nutritional counseling I've done for four decades (I'm 72, very fit w/no gray hair, etc.), I've always recommended NO refined flour products, and greatly prefer the grains quinoa, amaranth and spelt over the more commonly available grains. In my experience, Smith's recommendations are very much on track, including her comments on the advantages of increasing pH toward the alkalinity side (away from the acidic side) by reducing grains and eating more dark-green, leafy vegetables. (Spelt and millet, by the way, are less acidic and therefore more conducive to better human biological terrain in the body than are wheat, rye or oats.) There is no single key to the ideal diet, but Smith points most readers in a direction that is highly probable to improve their eating pattern, their energy and their emotional well-being.