3 Grains You Should NEVER Eat (and 3 that are GOOD for you)

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the best grains all the way down to the worst grains based upon different categories ones that affect your blood sugar your gut microbiome inflammation not all grains are created equal there is a lot of difference between them and if you must have grains you should know which ones you can get away with having more of so let's just jump right in we'll get into the nitty-gritty of it the first thing we have to talk about is the difference between refined and whole grain okay there is a very big difference there but another thing is there's a very big difference between when something is put on a label as a whole grain bread okay just because it was once a whole grain doesn't mean that it is now a whole grain like if you take a whole grain and you mash it up and turn it into a flour you could probably still say whole grain but you're not consuming it in its whole form where it would actually affect glycemic index and when you look at the research it's very clear the difference between a true whole grain and even partially refined the difference on blood glucose is ridicul list plus the difference in inflammation is unreal as well so first off know what a whole grain is versus a refined grain so the first one that's going to be the top of the list is buckwheat you can get away with eating a fair bit of Buckwheat for one it's gluten-free so if that's a concern to you you don't have to worry about it okay the other piece of the equation is as far as fiber is concerned 10 percent of the weight of Buckwheat is fiber to begin with but it packs a powerful punch there was an interesting study that took a look at over 3 500 Mongolians because in Mongolia they eat a fair bit of Buckwheat maybe that's what was up with Genghis Khan maybe it just worked for him right but certain regions don't consume as much as others so one particular region consumes a ton of Buckwheat throughout their entire life and when they look epidemiologically at how much their overall levels of hyperglycemia were throughout their lifetime it was a little over one and a half percent for those that consume buckwheat now for a region that didn't consume buckwheat 7.7 percent of the popular nation suffered with hyperglycemia so definitely a big difference there when you look at very large data now the reasoning here is a the fiber content but there's also interesting nuance and detail there there's something called D Cairo inositol which when isolated has been demonstrated to be very powerful at improving insulin sensitivity and it's a compound that's not exactly easy to get so it's pretty scarce and it's quite abundant in buckwheat there's also an antioxidant called Rootin which has some powerful effects of combating high levels of glucose so what we have to address here is that it's not just this narrow myopic way of looking at glucose and like proteins and things that could be bad okay we do have to look at the different compounds that are in these breads or in these grains that could be bad or could be good it's like saying all fruit is created equal just because mangoes are high in sugar it automatically means that strawberries are going to be really bad right it just doesn't really add up now the next one on the list is going to be barley now barley it's not gluten-free so that's a little bit of a bummer and I understand the issue there even if you're not Celiac there is potential concern for what are called prolamines like when you look at the different proteins where some people might still have issues with gluten Breads and gluten foods even if they're not Celiac so having that okay this might be one that you could slowly introduce gluten with because barley as far as all these different grains are concerned is a pretty decent one now there's a decent level of fermentation that occurs with barley that's what makes it unique so a certain level of resistant starch that's naturally occurring so when it enters your gut it ferments to a certain degree and that increases what's called glucagon like peptide one now glp-1 not only satiates you but you're seeing glp-1 used as pharmaceutical intervention with like semiglutid things like that to actually bring us back to glucose homeostasis so my point with this is that because of the level of fermentation Barley's high up on the list it does some interesting things in your gut there's a study that took a look at Barley bread versus wheat bread for four days okay they found that after just three days The Barley increased insulin sensitivity 25 the wheat group didn't have any change the barley group also had an increase in their fasted glp-1 levels glucagon like peptide one of 56 percent whereas wheat did not have any difference so we have a huge change occurring in this glp-1 but also improvements in insulin sensitivity and it's all having to do with how the gut is getting remodeled here so it makes a very big difference now how our gut handles grains and how our gut handles proteins and fibers from these Breads and from these grains could be a big reason as to why some people respond differently to different grains if you're trying to introduce new grains maybe you want to try dry barley you want to try Mill it you want to try something you may want to add in some kind of probiotic to help stabilize things I popped the link down below for the one that I recommend it's called seed very straightforward but really cool technology with that capsule inside of a capsule super unique to them so that link down below will save you 15 really cool deal awesome price but they're also a big sponsor on this channel so it allows us to kind of create content that talks about the gut and we can actually address this stuff so that link is down below right below this video in the top line of the description the next one is millet now cool thing about Millet is millet is gluten free but the reason it starts coming down towards the middle of the pack is because the glycemic index scale starts to creep up there okay in some cases you're getting like North of 60 65 all the way up to like 68 69 glycemic index which is pretty high scale okay so even in its whole Grand form now what makes it unique is it does have more protein and more aminos than a lot of the other grains so if you were say vegan or vegetarian you're not getting a lot of meat and coaching in it's a better source of protein and aminos than some of your other grains but here's what makes it super unique specifically for people that might be insulin resistant or diabetic there's a pretty cool study published in recent research and Science and Technology that had subjects consume a millet for about 90 days okay and they found that over the course of 90 days compared to other grains there was a 19 reduction in hba1c this is pretty wild so hba1c it's like you're lagging 90-day indicator it's called glycolated hemoglobin so it shows like how glucose that's been high for a long period of time is affecting your cells and affecting your blood now they think that this has to do with what are called non-starch polysaccharides basically sugar molecules or glucose molecules are bound together really tightly in certain ways that have to be broken down by the gut once again so therefore it remodels the gut microbiome but there's also something called ferulic acid there's other research looking at this okay so the rule of thumb with Millet is you want to go for as dark as you possibly can the darker the Millet the higher the ferulic acid content now this ferulic acid seems to modulate inflammation specifically within the brain so remember that old book Grain Brain where we talked about like back in the early 2000s or mid-2000s talking about how the different protein strands can actually cross-contaminate and cause effects with the brain there's Merit to that but with Millet there seems to be a net positive impact on inflammation specifically as it has to do with the brain and crossing the blood-brain barrier so Millet is gluten free too so if it's something that you're trying to like experiment with new grains maybe like a millet barley blend it would be a nice thing to try to see if you were like maybe trying to test out gluten here or there now we need to move into the ones that are a little bit more questionable okay unfortunately Rye ends up in this gray area sort of questionable list now the thing is rye is rich in quite a few minerals namely like selenium so we get some powerful benefit there but there's other foods that are rich in selenium shellfish is rich in selenium other things that you could do the reason that rye starts making the questionable list because if you look at the research it's a little bit confusing because there's one larger piece of data that's out there that shows like oh when subjects consume the rye bread their glucose went down that's not the case it was actually like when rye bread was alongside resistant starch so Rye plus resistant starch would affect Prosperity glucose but if you looked at straight Rye Rye actually increased glucose and didn't have a positive effect it had a negative effect so we get the benefit of the selenium we get the benefit of some Fiber but really it's almost like a null grain it's not one that you really want to be adding in to try to get any nutritional value so if someone is trying to like toot the right horn and say that they've added Rye for nutritional value it's probably a gimmick okay next up down this list and one that you probably should start avoiding more is good old-fashioned wheat okay even when it's in its whole grain form it's still a very high glycemic grain right the other thing we have to consider is at least in the United States like wheat is heavily GMO not that I have any particular data to say that GMO is good or bad it's the mass production and the mass consumption of it okay there is potential evidence looking at Frozen Sarah from like the 1950s that like the amount of wheat that we consume now is so high compared to the 1950s that there's a chance we're starting to develop antibodies and issues with it which might be why people are starting to have gluten sensitivity now that's all speculative I can't say with certainty it's not evidence-based but it does kind of make some sense like anytime you consume something so so so so so so much you're going to start to have a problem with it so part of the issue is with the actual wheat itself part of the issue is are we having a hard time dealing with it now there's a study published in the journal nutrition that took a look at wheat took a look at Barley took a look at rye and took a look at resistant starch plus white bread as and then also just straight white bread as a control okay they found that barley actually improved interleukin-6 improve improved inflammation actually had positive effects but then when you go down the list wheat even whole grain wheat was worse on the list it was like bottom of the list so it had negative effects on glucose negative effects on inflammation so not something we'd really be having a ton of when we have other options and in the very bottom of the list is going to be refined rice I don't have a problem with rice in general especially if you heat it and then cool it but when it's heavily refined especially into a flower rice flour is probably one of the worst ones you could have and it's crazy because you think okay wheat flour is going to be terrible I don't want to cook with wheat flour because it's got a bunch of gluten and this and that and sure I understand that if you have a gluten issue that's one thing okay but when we start opting for the gluten-free options we start cooking with rice flour well rice flour is ridiculously high glycemic compared to wheat flour so we have an issue there there's a study published the American journal of clinical nutrition that took a look at the postprandial effects of like wheat with Rye with wheat plus resistant starch with a bunch of different grains right they ultimately found that Rice was the only one that had a negative impact on postprandial glucose that's saying a lot that it actually underperformed even compared to wheat which is not all that great it doesn't mean avoid rice but when you start looking at all these gluten-free options out there that have a bunch of rice flour in them that's not exactly a good swap like I understand you're trying to get gluten out of the equation but if you don't have Celiac issues you might be kind of making a weird decision by saying I'm going to go with rice flour instead of wheat flour however I understand the sensitivity around gluten so you may want to opt for something more like maybe a millet or maybe the buckwheat buckwheat is becoming much more prevalent and the fiber content actually makes it so you can cook with it quite well and get some good weight to things so hope this video clears some things up and I'll see you tomorrow