Gluten-Free Flours

When starting on a healing journey at Healing Arts many patients are muscle tested to stay away from wheat or gluten and need to find alternatives.  Listed below are some of my favorite alternatives when baking or breading.   

Almond flour

Nutrition benefits - Almond flour is great if you are eating paleo or keto. Almonds help lower cholesterol.  Almond flour is high in fiber and full of vitamin E.  It’s also a good source of iron and magnesium.  Less calories and carbs than coconut flour for those who are counting.

I have used it in baking brownies, cookies, breading chicken.  Keep flour in refrigerator so the nut oils don’t go rancid.  

Coconut flour

Nutrition benefits  - High in fiber and healthy fats also makes it paleo and keto friendly.   One of the healthy fats in coconut flour is lauric acid which is hard to find in other foods and is good for the skin and thyroid.    Again, because of the high fat content keep coconut flour in refrigerator.  

When substituting it for wheat use only 1/4th the amount of coconut flour.  If the recipe calls for 1 cup wheat or white flour then use only 1/4 cup coconut flour.  Eggs are important in coconut flour recipes because without eggs the coconut flour is dry and will fall apart.  I have made breads with it, just know it will be a dense bread that is so good!  I also use coconut flour to make macaroons, brownies and muffins.   

Buckwheat flour

Nutrition benefits - Despite its name buckwheat is not wheat but a nutrient-packed, gluten-free seed that is high in both protein and fiber. Its health benefits include cholesterol-lowering effects, anti-hypertension effects and improving digestion by reliving constipation.

Buckwheat is beneficial because it’s high in fiber and contains high levels of rutin, which is a type of antioxidant. Antioxidants can help protect the body from damage caused by free radicals, which can cause oxidative stress, affecting your blood pressure and cholesterol levels. For more info on the health benefits of buckwheat, click here. 

My family loves buckwheat pancakes! Also for breakfast there is hot cream of buckwheat cereal you can make easily like you would grits.  I also use buckwheat flour to make chocolate chip cookies.  

Oat flour

Nutrition benefits - Eating oats helps lower cholesterol, lower high blood pressure and reduces the risk of heart disease and so does oat flour.  Oats are considered safe for those with a gluten allergy or gluten intolerance.   Oat flour is also high in fiber.  I suggest purchasing sprouted oat flour to get the most health benefits from it.  When oats are sprouted their more nutrient dense.  Easy to make oat flour at home by using a food processor.  1.25 cup of rolled oats makes 1 cup oat flour.  Oat flour is great when making oatmeal cookies.  I also love using oat flour with rice flour to make banana bread.

Rice flours

Nutrition benefits - Rice flour is high in fiber and contains an essential nutrient called choline which is important for the liver.  Therefore rice flour can help improve liver health.  Brown rice flour contains the husk and therefore has more fiber and B vitamins than white rice flour.  

I have used rice panko bread crumbs for breading. At the store a lot of gluten-free breads are made with rice. Brown rice pasta is my favorite, very similar to regular pasta which I’m sure if you are adventurous enough you can make your own brown rice pasta at home.  I have been adventurous enough to make homemade mochi using sweet rice flour which is different than regular white rice flour and I love making a pound cake with white rice flour.  

The Terror of GMO

Some of my patients have heard of genetically modified foods and some understand that they are harmful to our health while others have heard of it but have limited understanding of their harm, while some patients don't have a clue about it which is okay because that's how our government would like to keep it. I'm writing now to get the word out and make the gray areas more black and white so you can make better health food choices.

I'm going to expose two GMO crops of America now, wheat and soy. America's wheat was genetically modified in the 1970s from a long stalk to a bush with many shorter stalks that created 3 times the amount of wheat gathered per acre of wheat harvest. Sounds great but this genetic modification included 3 times more gluten in the wheat and I believe this to be the cause of all the gluten sensitivities/allergies. 'Heritage wheat' as it is now called is the non-GMO kind which is the type Standard Process harvests when making their whole foods supplements. Can you believe that? Wheat is the GMO kind and they came up with a new name for the original wheat.

When it comes to GM soy it was fed to rats for 15 months and showed significant changes in their uterus and reproductive cycles, compared to rats fed organic soy or no soy at all confirmed from Jeffery Smith, the director of the Institute of Responsible Technology. Dr. Stanley Ewen, a United Kingdom pathologist, says something in the GM soy was "wrecking" the ovaries and endometrium of the rats and strongly suggested one possible cause is the weed killer used on the beans. Further testing would have to be done to differentiate whether the hormonal problems were coming from the fact that the seeds have been genetically modified or from the fact that they were grown in soil poisoned with glyphosate. Monsanto, however, has a history of not allowing outside testing on their patented seeds.

Where there is GMO soy there is glyphosate. Monsanto's version of glyphosate is called 'roundup' and their genetically modified soybeans are called 'roundup ready'. The seeds have a bacterial gene inserted which allows the plants to survive a normally deadly does of Roundup Herbicide. Jeffery Smith further states that there is so much glyphosate in GM soy beans that when they were first introduced to Europe, the regulatory agencies had to increase their allowable glyphosate residue levels by 200 fold!

Europe changed their laws about GM soy for the worst and America's laws aren't great either. America's laws don't make food companies label GMO food but there are conscious food companies out there that will use the NON-GMO label

so for right now that is our best bet until Michael Taylor leaves the FDA. He is the Deputy Commissioner for Foods at the FDA and wrote the policy on genetically modified food in 1992. The Policy reads: "The agency is not aware of any information showing that food derived by these new methods differs from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way." This policy remains intact for the past 20 years despite strong vocal opposition from the FDA's own scientists.

Now here's the clincher. Michael Taylor was an attorney at Monsanto prior to writing the FDA policy on GMO's in 1992. He then left the FDA to return to Monsanto in the role of vice president and is now back at the FDA serving as the man in charge of our food safety. Such lack of integrity in government agencies is nothing new but buyer beware!

And JUST LAST WEEK Oregon lost the vote to label GMO foods by 3/4ths of a 0.1% and a recount is being pushed. So people are aware and fighting but we aren't winning yet. So if you know of any ways to support labeling of GMO foods please do not hesitate!

Wheat is a Genetically Modified Poison!

Eating gluten-free is hot right now. Many grocery stores and restaurants have gluten-free options but what exactly is gluten, why are people choosing to stay away from it and why do many of my patients who have food sensitivities eat wheat-free diets and not necessarily gluten-free diets? Burning questions, I know!

Gluten is a protein found in grains that include wheat, oat, spelt, rye, and barley and some people have a true allergy to it where their body cannot digest it so when consumed, their digestive track becomes inflamed, the intestinal wall damaged and over time celiac disease forms. Celiac disease is diagnosed by blood tests and examining a small piece of tissue from your intestinal track to see if it's damaged.

But a lot of people who feel that gluten may be an issue for them go for the celiac disease test and it comes back negative, yet they know they somehow feel better if they don't eat gluten. So even though there is no true gluten allergy causing a disease there could be a gluten sensitivity causing symptoms. That is why I muscle test to see if gluten is a problem for the body to digest and once off gluten their symptoms become dramatically better. Symptoms helped by not eating gluten when indicated by the muscle testing (also known at Nutrition Response Testing) include acne, constipation, diarrhea, gas, acid reflux, headaches. A lot of the times patients inform me about weight loss that occurs as a result as well.

Sometimes though, when testing the body, I don't find gluten as a problem for the body to digest but wheat itself is a problem. Whereas the other grains, oat, rye, spelt, etc. are okay for the patient to eat. So why would wheat be an issue but not gluten? The answer is because it has been genetically modified and the body looks at it as a toxin instead of a food. So for some bodies it is a "perfect, chronic poison," according to Dr. William Davis, a cardiologist who has published Wheat Belly. Davis said that the wheat we eat these days isn't the wheat your grandma had: "It's an 18-inch tall plant created by genetic research in the '60s and '70s." This thing has many new features nobody told you about, such as there's a new protein in this thing called gliadin. It's not gluten. The gliadin protein is an opiate. This thing binds into the opiate receptors in your brain and in most people stimulates appetite. Opiates include chemicals like morphine, heroin and opium.

So when people stop eating wheat, just like when people stop eating gluten, they tend to lose weight. My patients have also found relief in digestive issues, fatigue, headaches, acne, severe PMS and brain fog. When making food options while staying off of wheat you know if it's gluten-free then it won't have wheat so buying/ordering gluten-free is an easy way to go about cleaning up the wheat in your diet.

Besides staying off of the bread, pasta, bagels, pretzels which are obvious white flour/gluten containing foods one should be careful of gravies, soups and salad dressings which tend to use wheat as a thickner. Soy sauce has gluten in it as well and so a lot of my patients go to a health food store and get gluten-free soy sauce and bring that to the restaurant when ordering sushi or sashimi.