Is Wheat Bad For You?

Because it's so common as a daily food stuff, it's hard to believe there could be a problem.  Toast for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, pasta for tea, what could be wrong with that?

The problem is that it may be overdose.  Would you eat a diet so heavily dependent on eggs, tomatoes, bananas or even red meat?  Is it surprising that people's bodies rebel?

Some argue that wheat is highly allergenic, anyway.  It is high in gluten, a component of which is a toxic substance called lectin.  Some people (maybe as many as  1 in 250) suffer from celiac (or coeliac) disease, which is a systemic intolerance of gluten (affected people come out with all sorts of nasty symptoms).  One theory about why this may happen is that the lectin is the actual allergen causing the immune response.  Although lectins occur naturally in all sorts of foods, they are particularly high in wheat.

Excess consumption of grains has also been implicated in osteoporosis.