Whole Wheat: Will it kill us all?

The Enemy?

December 29, 2013:

I got burned by the low fat diet craze. Growing up in the 80's, low fat foods were everything. Fat was the devil. Calorie counting was so 1970's. Behind the times.  Avoiding fat was everything.  Brands like "Snack Wells" flourished.

Low fat had a pretty long run. It dominated the "health news" reporting for much of the nineties. Product labels were scrutinized for fat content. We learned how to calculate fat as a percentage of calories. We choked down low-fat ice cream and low-fat peanut butter.

Then along came Atkins and South Beach, and now carbs were the devil and fat was a friend. Minds were blown. Low-fat slid lower on the labels and instead we counted "net carbs." Then Atkins ran its course, and we waited for whatever was next.

What's next appears to be wheat.

The hope is--that as part of our media analysis--we may be able to watch a new diet trend from birth to death. Americans long for the magical cure, the silver bullet that will strike down all of our dietary woes at once. This author suspects that the anti-wheat trend may go the way of low-fat and Atkins and South Beach.

To be clear, cutting wheat may be the key to good health. This author is not a doctor and this post is an exploration of health reporting, not medical advice. Millions of people (roughly 1% of Americans) do have serious gluten related issues such as Celiac. 

But for the rest of us, there's one big lingering question. If each one of these diet methods--calorie counting, low-fat, low-carb, wheat/gluten free--is the key to good health and controlling obesity, then why is there always a new method that comes along???