Don Wiss wrote:

> On Saturday I will be attending an all day celiac conference. The same
> dietitian will be speaking that spoke last year. As part of her talk she
> will be pushing the non-gluten grains and saying how good they are for
> you.
> One of the slides will list all their vitamins and minerals. And no doubt
> she will argue eating grains for fiber. (She'll also push dairy, but
> that's
> another issue.)
>
> I'd like to get up in the question period following and rebut her on the
> grains. I'm sure for each nutrient that grains have some other food has
> better. Can someone help me with what she will be pushing and what I can
> use to argue that it isn't the best?
>
> Thanks, Don.

I would imagine she'll be pushing oats, among other things.  I'm not
sure that oats are non-paleo, since oat groats are edible raw and widely
available, so I wouldn't use that argument.  They have a low glycemic
index, so I suppose they are among the least objectionable cereal grains
as far as that is concerned.  That said, they do contain phytic acid,
which interferes with mineral absorption.  And like most grains, their
fat content is heavily skewed toward om-6.  And they contain
phytoestrogens.  The latter is controversial, but a good comment would
be that anyone who is concerned about the estrogen injected into feedlot
animals to fatten them should surely avoid oats (and soy!), since the
estrogen level in these is many orders of magnitude higher than what
ends up in meat.

Personally, I don't think a modest amount of oats is going to hurt
anybody whose diet is otherwise sound.  I recall Weston Price extolling
the health of those Scottish islanders who ate little else but seafood
and the oats that grow wild on the island.  But I still think they're a
marginal food:  acceptable, maybe, as an ingredient, but hardly
something to be pushed as a staple when there are so many more
nutritious foods.  And that's precisely the trouble.  I imagine that
these grains will be "pushed" as a foundation of one's diet, the base of
the food pyramid, etc.  That is what's problematic, in my opinion.  It's
one thing to say it's acceptable to eat some oats, or buckwheat; it's
something else to use these as a way to implement a "grain-based diet,"
because such a diet is flawed from the start.

Todd Moody
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