What Grain Is Doing To Your Brain

Forbes ^ | 11-14-2013 | Gary Drevitch

[Renfield]

It’s tempting to call David Perlmutter’s dietary advice radical. The neurologist and president of the Perlmutter Health Center in Naples, Fla., believes all carbs, including highly touted whole grains, are devastating to our brains. He claims we must make major changes in our eating habits as a society to ward off terrifying increases in Alzheimer’s disease and dementia rates.

And yet Perlmutter argues that his recommendations are not radical at all. In fact, he says, his suggested menu adheres more closely to the way mankind has eaten for most of human history.

What’s deviant, he insists, is our modern diet. Dementia, chronic headaches, depression, epilepsy and other contemporary scourges are not in our genes, he claims. “It’s in the food you eat,” Perlmutter writes in his bestselling new book, Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar – Your Brain’s Silent Killers. “The origin of brain disease is in many cases predominantly dietary.”...

[yldstrk]

can I come to dinner?

[yldstrk]

It is hard because I love cookies

[yldstrk]

I can go with that except I hate scotch, got drunk under age on scotch and Coke (blech!) and hated the stuff ever since

[Smokin' Joe]

Eat what your great-grand-parents ate.

Imho, that makes sense. If digestive systems, genetically speaking, are adapted over generations to a certain diet and the people eating that diet have done well, it makes sense it would work for their offspring.

If it isn't working (sickly, short lived, etc.), maybe changes should be considered.

Considering I still have a grandparent alive and am a great-grandparent, I'm not looking to change much.

[Wiser now]

The Biblical Ezekiel bread contains beans and legumes as well as several flours. Together they provide a complete protein and all of the nutrients needed to sustain life for several years. You can find recipes online. Most of them make a batter bread that doesn’t require kneading. It’s also delicious.

[yldstrk]

My grandmother ate Russian food, piroshki, pelmeny, borscht and lots of yummy pastry

[Dr. Sivana]

Doctor, have you read his book?

I read both Poulan books; I have not read the Perlmutter/Logan book, though I have a pretty good idea where they are going. I am sure there is good information in there, and am very much for low carb/moderate fat and protein. But I am leery of anybody who recommends a one size fits all diet, or anything that requires modern technology &/or wealth to make plausible. When the recommended breakfast is wild fresh salmon, free-range chicken eggs with extra-virgin olive oil, and organic goat cheese, I want to ask myself what I shall do when Fritz, my Swiss-raised full-time chef, has his day off. If this is an implausible diet for a 16th century king (salmon and decent olive oil come from different parts of the world), it isn't meant for use by mankind on a large scale. It can become, in effect, as much of a mania as Marlo Thomas' miso soup diet (cf. That Girl and Phil).

Exagerrated claims and one size fits all solutions are very tempting, and sell more books. However, the same goat cheese that works wonders for a Dutchman may not agree with the digestive tract of a typical Japanese person.

[Dr. Sivana]

I should mention, lest there be any confusion among those who were underexposed to 1940s Fawcett comic books. I am NOT a medical doctor, or any kind of doctor at all. My nom is based on the mad scientist variety of doctor who was described as the “World’s Wickedest Scientist”.

[babble-on]

i think you are probably right. It’s not WHAT we’re eating that’s causing the problems, but HOW MUCH we are eating. Also we are living so much longer that things like Alzheimers used to effect a much smaller number of people because so few lived long enough to experience it.

[cuban leaf]

I just knew this was coming...

---

Well, you can substitute. You can replace the fruits with Tequila.

[cuban leaf]

I can go with that except I hate scotch, got drunk under age on scotch and Coke (blech!) and hated the stuff ever since

---

Yeah, I have more than one friend that will not touch Tequila. It’s because there is a story there. :-)

[mazda77]

As I suspected, you did not, or you just cherry picked the others to fit in your nice little box. Your characterization of a one size fits all diet is not what he is proposing. His point is directed squarely at the genetically modified foods we as a society eat today. He makes the case that our DNA cannot change enough in the relative short amount of time as these changes in the foods have been with us. Is it not a point of your inquiry to ask the question;

Why are the sudden rise in all sorts of maladies parallel with the advent of these foods? He goes further to identify the Pharma association in this as well? Why is it always solution to take a pill for a symptom but not focus on the problem of the symptom?

All he is saying is to get back to basics of which the DNA of our bodies is, the basics.

[reformedliberal]

So this explains why we live three times longer than the ancestors of yore....and are much stronger and bigger
_____________________________________
Also have higher IQs.

But those ancestors were so much easier to control.

[Gennie]

Would love to hear more about this, got a recipe or link you’d be willing to share?

[Gennie]

Did I understand this correctly: You have a living grandparent and you yourself are also a great grand-parent?

[daniel1212]

And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart. (Psalms 104:15)

But i stick with grape juice, not wine.

[Dr. Sivana]

As I suspected, you did not, or you just cherry picked the others to fit in your nice little box.

Give me a break. An article was posted from a reputable publication. I read the article, and based my response as such. My box is not so nice nor so little, as I emphasized no one size fits all. The article emphasized the idea of grains bad; not only modern hybridized, gmo stuff. My quotation from the article is a quotation from the author, recommedning that we would all eat a $15 breakfast, unless we have our own goats, free-range chickens and access to a good stock of salmon nearby to fish and smoke.

Your last three questions are excellent, but the article, possibly mischaracterizing the bulk of the book, zooms in on the carbs bad ... grains bad. If you can get free range chicken eggs, you can get legacy grains or even bread made from legacy grains. If the article is misleading, continue to explain the author's actual presentation, as it was the article, not the book that was posted.

[Mase]

Michael Pollan is a journalist. When people start looking to journalists for an understanding of complex issues of a scientific nature, we are doomed. Pollan represents everything that is wrong with how we look at nutrition today.

He's the worst kind of charlatan, who is laughing, all the way to the bank, at the people who buy his books and believe he actually has something of substance to contribute to the debate.

[Mase]

Good thing the brain doesn’t need glucose to function properly. Otherwise, we might actually need carbohydrates in our diet.

[Smokin' Joe]

Yep.