I read an email from my little sister about gluten and I thought about posting this. There is this thing nobody told you about, such as there’s a protein named gliadin. It’s not gluten, and I’m not addressing people with gluten sensitivities and celiac disease.

I’m talking about everybody else because, everybody else is susceptible to the gliadin protein. But why I ask, and the answer is simple, it is an opiate. This thing binds into the opiate receptors in your brain and in most people stimulates appetite, such that we consume more calories per day.

Wheat is addictive in the sense that it comes to dominate thoughts and behaviors. Wheat is addictive in the sense that, if you seek it. Wheat is addictive in the sense that the withdrawal process can be provoked by administering an opiate-blocking drug such as naloxone.

But the “high” of wheat is not like the high of heroine, morphine, or Oxycontin. This opiate, while it binds to the opiate receptors of the brain, doesn’t make us high. It makes us hungry, yes hungry and that is why you start eating bread and you can’t stop. Just like Coke a Cola which doesn’t quench your thirst, it makes you more thirsty.

This is the effect exerted by gliadin, the protein in wheat that was inadvertently altered by geneticists in the 1970s during efforts to increase yield. Just a few shifts in amino acids and gliadin in modern high-yield, semi-dwarf wheat became a potent appetite stimulant. A nice move on their part, a bad move for us, and not knowing, is not right. Eat Gluten free but beware to beware.