Audiobook Review: Wheat Belly by William Davis

Wheat Belly

by William Davis
Narrator: Tom Weiner
Published: August 30, 2011
Genres: Audiobook, Non-fiction
Format: Audiobook (7 hrs and 37 mins)
Source: Library

A renowned cardiologist explains how eliminating wheat from our diets can prevent fat storage, shrink unsightly bulges, and reverse myriad health problems.

Every day, over 200 million Americans consume food products made of wheat. As a result, over 100 million of them experience some form of adverse health effect, ranging from minor rashes and high blood sugar to the unattractive stomach bulges that preventive cardiologist William Davis calls “wheat bellies.” According to Davis, that excess fat has nothing to do with gluttony, sloth, or too much butter: It’s due to the whole grain wraps we eat for lunch.

The author, William Davis, had a lot of really good points in Wheat Belly some of which I hadn’t thought about before like how much wheat there really is in a grocery store.  It’s pretty much on every single isle.  When you look at all the over-processed and packaged foods, it’s easy to see why he says that we’ve traded cheap food for our health.  Ain’t that the truth.  I also didn’t know how high the glycemic index for wheat bread was.  It’s higher than a Snickers bar.  So the next time I went to the store I totally bought a huge bag of Snickers.  I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the point he was trying to make but man – I could have been eating candy this whole time!  It was interesting when he went into some science and research about how addictive wheat really is.  It causes us to crave food constantly and eat more than we need.

I didn’t really agree with the implication that he made that even if you eat healthy and exercise, you don’t lose weight if you eat wheat.  I do see the value in reducing wheat in our diet after he drives home how much we overeat it.  I can also see the value in reducing wheat in your diet if you are diabetic since wheat does have such a high glycemic index.  But there are enough healthy people who eat wheat that I just can’t see how this would be true all the time.

I learned some cool things about your body and how it works.  Your body’s ph balance is so important that it will draw calcium from your bones if you have too much acid for your body to neutralize (like from drinking too much soda).  The author explained how abdominal fat (which he believes comes mostly from wheat) can cause inflammation becuase it spikes your blood sugar which causes your body to make more insulin and then insulin makes more fat which causes inflammation.  It keeps going around in this vicious circle.  And when he had a study that said Rheumatoid arthritis was shown to improve with gluten removal I convinced my husband to go on a gluten-free diet to see if it will help his arthritis.

The last chapters got kind of boring to be honest. To sum up – wheat makes you old and gives you heart disease. It was kind of technical and hard to follow a lot more than that.  Then he generalized the findings and research he had about wheat and turned it into not eating any starch at all (is this guy serious!!?) to limiting the amount of fruit you eat (say what??).  He summarizes his diet in the back of his book to eating unlimited amounts of meats, veggies, and raw nuts, and then limited amounts of non-gluten grains and fruits.  I’m really not sold on that. I don’t see anything wrong with eating fruit and gluten-free grains as a main part of your diet.

I decided to go on a gluten-free diet after reading this because we eat mostly a gluten-free diet already since my son has celiac.  Since I don’t like making two dinners and I usually eat leftovers for lunch, I’d say half my diet was already gluten-free.  We eat more fruits, vegetables, eggs, cheese and meats now.  We still eat gluten-free grains.  I feel much better (e.g. I have more energy and I’m not starving by 10 am).  Even though our food costs more, I find that we are eating less like the book says and my food budget has stayed about the same.  Not to mention our diet is healthier with things like fruit and yogurt and cheese sticks for snacks instead of over-processed crackers.  So far, I have enjoyed the gluten-free diet that we are on.  I find that the food tastes better.  We buy this gluten-free cereal that fills me up longer and tastes better than the wheat cereal I was getting even though they have similar amounts of fiber and protein.  The wheat cereal actually had more calories than the gluten-free kind.

Narrator Rating: ★★★★

The narrator was easy to understand and made the novel interesting but I had to kind of roll my eyes at how many times during the book he said “healthy whole grains” sarcastically.  He really couldn’t resist saying it every other page.  I looked at the print version – healthy whole grains is not in quotes every time it’s mentioned (it is in quotes a few times) so I didn’t understand the need for “sarcastic” pronunciation every time it showed up.

Overall, the author convinced me that we eat way too much wheat in our diet but he did not completely convince me to go to the extreme diet that he suggests in the back of the book.

Content Rating: None.

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Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

• Audiobook Challenge 2014