Are Grains Really Dangerous to Human Health?

Summary of the investigation of the main anti-grain claims

In this report we have looked at the basic claims and arguments of the members of the gluten-free movement. In the process of investigation we have found on the basis of good arguments that:

Human beings are not genetically predetermined to any kind of food, but they can evolve and adapt to new types of food. Human genes can be evolved and modified by the change of environmental conditions, including dietary ones. This means that people have adapted to the consumption of grains after the emergence of agriculture in prehistoric times.
Grains were serving the needs of humanity as the proper staple food in the past – as is demonstrated by many old civilizations – up until the beginnings of modern agriculture. The modern problems with consumption of grains have been emerging since the middle of twentieth century which is coinciding with the global spread of modern agrochemical farming and high-tech food production.
The recent increase of gluten intolerance and other illnesses linked to consumption of grains is obviously providing the medical evidence about the negative health impacts of foods made from pseudo-grains and other forms of junk food, including those which contain the vital wheat gluten as a food additive. The evidence of the astounding healing effect of a change of diet is visible manifestation of the great significance of nutrition for the state of health or disease of human beings.
These impacts must be put into the wider context of the standard American diet – highly imbalanced, over-processed, nutrient impoverished food, made from the cheapest ingredients, with residues of pesticides, loaded with additives and added sweeteners (white sugar and high fructose corn syrup), and with unlabelled genetically modified ingredients. Such a typical modern Western diet will have numerous negative health effects wherever on the globe people adopt it.
The key to a proper solution of the modern health crisis is to improve the quality of food people consume today. This means that instead of eliminating the grains from human nutrition we need to eliminate junk food and return to the consumption of real food. What is really astounding is the high degree of loss of healthy eating instincts of modern people who are continuing eating modern fake foods without noticing their negative impact until they become ill. And even then many of them will still perpetuate the illusion that the quality of food is not an important issue.
When we take into account the issue of food quality we need to distinguish two groups of grains: real grains (good quality traditional grains grown and processed in natural ways) and pseudo-grains (bad quality modern hybridized grains grown and processed by conventional methods).With this distinction between real grains and pseudo-grains we have the key which helps us to unravel the key claims of the members of the anti-grain movement.

The first thing which becomes evident is: If the quality of the grains were taken into account by the anti-grain health experts, then they would have to say – instead of "There are no good grains!" [1] – "There are not good pseudo-grains!" Then we could agree with them and thank them for providing scientific evidence for the negative health impacts of modern food production on humans. For all scientific and medical facts which are presented by them are pointing to the cumulative effects of the decades of consumption of pseudo-grains on human beings. These unnatural grains in combination with all other bad quality foods are the real culprit behind the modern health crisis.

There are plenty of people who vigorously object to any suggestion that this might be the case – mainly those who are gaining profits from the existing system of food production, including many doctors. There are even more people who simply ignore the issue of food quality and are continuing to eat junk food because it is cheap. That is, until they become ill; then they are willing to pay as much as they can afford for medications and therapies. For such people it would be very beneficial if they were listening to the indisputable message of the anti-grain health experts – that is something very wrong with modern food – more seriously as before. An extremely important thing the anti-grain health experts manage to expose without doubt is the extent to which highly processed and denaturalised grains have become dangerous to human health.

However, with the omission of the crucial issue of any nutritional question – the issue of the quality of what we eat – their conclusions and messages conveyed to the public are really deceiving and sometimes even absurd. For example they say (italics mine):

"Through religious beliefs, history classes in our schools, and our culinary traditions, grains have been given our cultural seal of approval in the absence of any scientific investigation." [2]
"Gluten grains, which are late arrivals to the human diet, lack many of the nutrients we need. They also contain substances that they are harmful to us." [3]
"Respect your genome. Fat – not carbohydrate – is the preferred fuel of human metabolism and has been for all human evolution... The human dietary requirement for carbohydrate is virtually zero." [4]
"Our modern belief that grains make for good food, is simply not supported by the facts." [5]
"I believe that most people's health is improved by avoiding all grains." [6]

One just wonders how they can utter such things and at the same time still consider themselves to be unbiased scientists in the search for truth. For scientists should not believe; they should not say things which simply cannot be checked; and they should take into account all existing evidence and not flatly deny its existence; there is more than enough scientific evidence about the high nutritional value of whole grains and about the positive health impacts of consuming them. [7] Such attitude can be even dangerous when is used for the promotion of general dietary recommendations. There is no good argument given as to why modern people should revert back to the diet of hunter-gatherers and exclude grains completely from our diets. But it makes perfect sense to exclude from our diet pseudo-grains and other forms of junk food!

The next thing which becomes evident is: With the help of the distinction of the quality of the two groups of grains we can properly modify the arguments of the anti-grain proponents that we have not yet genetically adapted to the consumption of grains. It is not – as they claim – that we have not genetically adapted to the consumption of grains since prehistoric times when grains were first introduced into human nutrition. When we take into account the issue of quality the more than obvious conclusion is: We have not adapted to the consumption of pseudo-grains which came on the plates of modern humanity in abundance only after the Second World War. Or, more precisely, we have not evolutionarily adapted to the consumption of junk food – as is demonstrated by the pandemic of modern health problems. Our bodies are evidently still craving for real natural food!

The last thing which becomes evident is: Modern nutritional science based on the materialistic view which is only able to count the endless list of substances and their chemical structures, and on the reductionist approach which separates a small number of metabolic pathways from the staggering number of metabolic interactions in the human organism, is incapable of properly grasping the key characteristic of any food – that is, the quality of food. This is also true in the case of the grains, the staple food of humanity in the past and in the present. The stark message of the anti-grain movement which should be taken extremely seriously is: If we continue in this way we are going to destroy one of the main sources of food provision – the real grains which have been nourishing us for millennia. But it took just about 170 years to replace them more or less with pseudo-grains! Here we have a call to awaken to this burning issue of nutrition.

However, if we are serious about the intention to overcome the present dietary and health crisis, we cannot use the same way of thinking which has created it; instead we need a new, truly holistic understanding of the nature of the human being and the role of nutrition. There are many attempts and steps in this direction. On this website are presented the outlines of a spiritual scientific approach which provides fruitful insights into numerous burning questions in relation to human health, disease and nutrition, including into the questions related to the consumption of grains.