William Davis, MD, is a preventive cardiologist whose unique approach to diet allows him to advocate reversal, not just prevention, of heart disease.
He is the founder of the 
My friend, Dana Carpender, has just come out with a great new cookbook: 500 Paleo Recipes: Hundreds of Delicious Recipes for Weight Loss and Super Health. 
Anyone familiar with Dana’s earlier low-carb cookbooks, such as 1,001 Low-Carb Recipes: Hundreds of Delicious Recipes from Dinner to Dessert That Let You Live Your Low-Carb Lifestyle and Never Look Back, or follow her Hold the Toast blog and podcast, already know that she has a razor-sharp wit and a tongue to match.
So what Dana brings to the table with her new recipe book is not just a nice, smart, and well-organized compilation of 500 recipes consistent with popular conceptions of a Paleo lifestyle; she also does it with cleverness and style.
Witness:
” . . . we’re not going to replicate the caveman diet; we can’t. We’re not going to replicate the caveman lifestyle, either. Most of us have jobs that call for the same actions or inactions at least 40 hours a week, something Ogg never imagined. Most of us wouldn’t given up central heat, air-conditioning, or artificial lighting, either.”
Or, in comments about eating “natural” foods:
“Wake-up call: Many of the most toxic things on the planet are natural: rattlesnake venom, death angel mushrooms, tobacco. Natural stuff can ruin your health at least as quickly as artificial stuff. I whole-grained-and-beaned my way up to a size 20.”
I especially love Dana’s no-holds-barred personal commentary about her own dietary adventures over the years.
Among the 500 recipes:
Deviled Cod
Turkey Chili
Broccoli-Apple Soup
Mushroom Stroganoff with Eggs
Asian-Tex-Mex-Fusion Slaw
(That last one really sounds intriguing!)
Yeah, sure: There are a growing number of such “Paleo” cookbooks that have become available, especially over the past year. But Dana’s unique and clever style, along with her seasoned dietary pedigree, put her in a class of her own. If you need a laugh along with some wonderful new ways to enjoy healthy, completely manageable recipes consistent with the Wheat Belly lifestyle, you will love Dana’s new cookbook.
> … Dana Carpender …
Carpenter.
Link works anyway, but Amazon reports the auto-correction.
Never mind. It is Carpender. Amazon is confused.
I just bought this recipe book on my ipad and am very happy to have all this variety in my new Wheat Belly approach to eating. When I started on wheat belly I complained I had nothing to eat ( it took me a while to catch on to the program and eat fats and meat). But with the Wheat Belly cookbook ( which I love) and now this cookbook I have so much to choose from. My teenage daughter also loves that I am cooking more using real foods (as opposed to packaged) , we both can’t wait to try out all our new recipes.
I’m finding that the “habits” in my head are needing “auto-correct”. I even dreamed I’d made a corn dog for lunch THEN had to put it aside for something more healthy. Have the Wheat Belly cookbook so will look into this one as well. Thank you!!!!
Fantastic! I have several of Dana’s other cookbooks and have always found the recipes to be clearly and concisely written and not use a lot of ingredients that are expensive or hard to find. She tests her recipes relentlessly and is available to ask questions of (via her blog or email) should you get confused. Yes, she has a sharp wit, but she is a lovely, caring person also.
I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of this book!
Are the recipes pretty low carb? Paleo doesn’t always = low carb I have found. Have had trouble trying to keep our meals at 15 net carbs or lower, so I was just wondering if a good portion of the recipes meet this criteria. Thank you! As someone who loves to cook, has a huge recipe collection (which is now mostly useless to me!) and loves trying new recipes, I look forward to some more meal ideas. We are stuck in a bit of a rut….
You can preview the book by clicking on the link above which takes you to Amazon. The book gives a nutritional analysis per serving of calories, fat, protein, carbohydrates, fibre, and net carbs per serving. From looking at the net carbs per serving, yes most of the meals would be under 15 grams. I am new at low carb eating myself and find the more recipes I can get the better.
Thanks. I did try looking at the preview, but wasn’t able to see any of the actual recipes – I could only see the beginning pages with all the basic information. I did go ahead and order it though. If the doctor says it’s good, I trust his opinion! I bought another paleo books as well. Hoping for a good influx of new things to make.
What are thoughts about these “diets” or ways of eating for children? As a mother of 4 young children I’m not going to prepare 2 separate menus. What I eat, they eat. I’m actually not the one I would change for though. I’ve never had any weight issues and not even any health issues. My 9 year old however is overweight and needs to loose about 10-15lbs. She’s about 4.5′ and weighs 90lbs. Not hugely overweight but something I’d like to get under control sooner than later. The mystery is that she’s the only one, myself and my husband included. I’m 5’8″ at 115 lbs and my husband is 5’10″ at 160lbs and our other younger children are all under the 50th %tile for their height. I would NEVER put her on a diet but changing the way our family eats is an option. I’ve read the book and scoured the website but nothing is really said for children. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
I’ve recently become aware of diseases associated with anti-NMDA-receptor antibodies. Cells use NMDA receptors for importing glutamic acid, or glutamate. Glutamate is an hybrid sugar/protein molecule which cells can use for food. Anti-NMDA antibodies were only discovered about four years ago …..without my knowledge.
Generally anti-NMDA diseases are singled out when patients exhibit symptoms of early-onset dementia. About 90% of these cases are women. About half of anti-NMDA cases in women are accompanied by hormonal cancers, usually in the reproductive system.
These cases are interesting to me because my mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was about 37 years old. I was 10. Later I discovered that schizophrenia usually begins in people between the ages of 16 and 26. 37 was an unusually advanced age for schizophrenia onset. Following my mother’s diagnosis, she developed female troubles, the details of which were kept from me. She had an hysterectomy. The association between psychosis and female reproductive diseases goes back forever. I believe the root prefix “hyster” is from Aramaic. It applies both to female reproductive diseases and to psychosis.
A couple of Google searches revealed that, ballpark, 8% of schizophrenics have ANR antibodies, and that about half of all patients with anti-NMDA-receptor antibodies have either schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder. I only wonder how many other neural and psychiatric diseases have wheat and anti-NMDA antibodies in their causal pathways.
Because cells use NMDA receptors for importing glutamate, it would be no surprise to discover that anti-NMDA-receptor antibodies are associated with ingestion of wheat. Wheat gluten contains about 25% glutamate, the highest glutamate content of all primary foods. As I said, anti-NMDA-receptor antibodies are also associated with cancer. And cancer is associated with cellular glutamate uptake. So association between anti-NMDA psychosis and wheat ingestion would be consistent with evidence that cancer is associated with wheat ingestion.
In healthy bodies at rest, cells are protected from rapid glutamate uptake by tissue transglutaminase (TTG). Autoimmune diseases, such as those caused by wheat ingestion, concentrate their initial attacks against tissue transglutaminase. Secondary autoimmune conditions associated with glutamate uptake are generally associated with the autoimmune destruction of tissue transglutaminase. Cells which lose TTG protection become free to import glutamate at accelerated rates.
I think it’s safe to assume that people develop anti-NMDA antibodies because their bodies are attempting to attack the mechanism which allows cells to import glutamate. I would bet a whole nickel that cancer and many neural and psychological diseases use the same pathways, and are caused by ingestion of wheat and foods with related sugars and proteins.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutamic_acid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-NMDA_receptor_encephalitis
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/schizophrenia/content/article/10168/2124002
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/12/37
Grace, no the recipes are not very low carb. I believe Dana Carpender mentioned that in her blog (or somewhere!), that the recipes are not as low carb as her others. I’m assuming she’s using honey, etc. in her recipes, which I won’t touch.
Also, it’s been my experience that a lot of her recipes need to be tweaked a lot. She is very creative and has great ideas, and I recommend you spin off her recipes into ones that are truly your own. The coconut loaf I made from the book Glycemic Load Diabetes Solution (it’s a book by Dr. Rob Thompson and t I’m following his diet, only gluten free, and she wrote the recipes), was way too sweet, needed a lower baking temperature and way less salt, plus it was way too dry and needed more fluid. Personally, I’d stick with the Wheat Belly cookbook.
Thank you so much for the response. I did order the book already, but I will see what I can do tweak the recipes. As a very experienced cook, I think I can handle that. Otherwise I will just Ebay it!
But I do wonder why Dr. Davis “endorses” this book if it doesn’t really fit his criteria for healthy food? Just kinda wondering…
I do have the Wheatbelly cookbook and love it though! Thanks for your input. It helps a lot.
Hi Grace,
He probably endorses it because a lot of recipes probably do fit the criteria. I just don’t think they are as low carb as her normal recipes. If you’re an experienced cook you won’t have any problems with the tweaking. But I must say, I just made Dana Carpender’s Butterscotch oat balls cookies (the whole recipe uses only 1/2 cup oats), and they are awesome without any tweaking whatsoever. So now I feel badly about even mentioning that. Enjoy your new book and let us know what recipes you like!
Forgive me if this isn’t the right place to ask this question, but speaking of “net carbs”, I know we’re suppose to subtract fiber from the the total carbs but do we also subtract “sugar alcohols” to get the amount of net carbs, I’ve read where you’re suppose to subtract both fiber and sugar alcohols and yet I can’t find any reference to that here?
Thank you for any help.
Roye
Roye, I’m certainly no expert, but I believe in his book Wheat Belly, Xylitol is an ok sweetener, and there’s no mention of needing to count them as carbs. I wish I had the book in front of me, but it’s home right now. I personally don’t count sugar alcohols as carbs. I only subtract fiber from carbs. The only ones I use are Xylitol and Erithrytol. I read that Erithrytol is eliminated from the body within 24 hours, so why even bother to count it? I used to use a lot of Diabetisweet, but Xylitol is easier to find now. Perhaps the good doctor will clarify the use of sugar alcohols. But I do use them as a sugar substitute and they never affected my weight loss.
Sheryl thank you so much for your reply. I need to look it up in the book. I’m a little confused when you say you don’t count sugar alcohols as carbs, but you only subtract the fiber from the carbs. I’m afraid to use Xylitol because I have two Boxers and it’s suppose to be lethal to dogs. But I do use Erithrytol and it says 4g carbs per serving but it also says Erithrytol 4g so all the carbs are from Erithrytol and not necessary to count?
Thanks again for your reply.
Let’s get away from carb counting when it comes to sugar alcohols and ask instead, “What are the glycemic potential (blood glucose-raising) of these various sugar alcohols?” You will find that:
Mannitol, sorbitol, and maltitol act about half as bad as sucrose
Erythritol hardly budges blood sugar at all.
Xylitol raises blood sugar minimally and only with consumption of large quantities (e.g., several teaspoons).
I therefore suggest we all avoid the first 3, not to mention they also cause lots of gas and diarrhea.
Thank you so much Dr. Davis for replying, I think it’s wonderful how you answer our questions and try to continually help us.
The sugar alcohols are a bit confusing but will stay away from the 3 you point out are most harmful.
Thank you again for your reply.
Roye
Roye, I agree. It’s amazing that a busy M.D. like Dr. Davis comes on here and actually “talks” to people. I haven’t found that in years!
Roye, good luck with your venture into Wheat Belly and using Xylitol, etc. They are such great sugar substitutes. I also use Splenda. Have fun with this way of eating!
Here’s a great article regarding nutrition myths. It was sent to me from a friend who owns a beef company, so take it for what it’s worth. I still feel it’s right up our wheat-free alley!:
http://authoritynutrition.com/11-biggest-lies-of-mainstream-nutrition/
Other than that the author thinks carb super villain #1 is fructose rather than gluten-bearing grains, the message appears entirely consistent with the WB view as I understand it.
A commenter by the name of Grechen did a splendid job of touting the wonders of Wheat Belly and Dr. Davis. Concise, to the point, brought out the information without the hysteria of others over on that site…..gosh, you’d think the nutritionists and some nurses were the smartest on the planet.
I was tempted to jump in and ask how many were at their ideal weight and did any suffer any from aches and pains? Naw.
> I was tempted to jump in and ask how many were at their ideal weight …
Diet tip of the day:
Never take nutritional advice from an overweight person
Yes, Surgeon General, I’m looking in your direction.
Hi Dr. Davis,
Why do other countries like Italy, Greece and France not have the Wheat Belly problem? I believe they eat a lot of wheat.
There are a number of reasons why these countries have experienced less of a problem, though they are not entirely free of all the other effects of modern wheat. Among the reasons: more likely to eat with family at designated meal times, less reliance on processed foods made with wheat, higher fat intake, greater physical activity.
These countries are indeed experiencing their own crises in weight gain, diabetes, celiac disease, etc., but they are just not experiencing it to the extravagant degree we are experiencing in North America.
The paleo diet can lower the risk of cardiovascular disease, blood pressure, markers of inflammation, helps in weight loss, reduce acne, and encourages fitness and exercises. So better to start this diet with so much different varieties of paleo recipes from Dana, it will be more easy to work out the diet plan.
Hi Dr Davis,
you book was “reviewed” here:
http://www.weightymatters.ca/2013/02/diet-book-review-wheat-belly.html
my comment:
JillOz4:39 AM
Firstly,
you can have bread, muffins, cake etc as long as it is not made of wheat or the starches Davis lists eg tapioca, potato etc.
So your first fail is that you didn’t read the book properly.
I went off wheat and my asthma has decreased dramatically.
Perhaps next time you review a book you can concentrate on the book, look up the refs yourself instead of relying on silly reviews by others (yes i’ve read some of those), ask any questions you have to the author, and forget trying to corner the market on sarcasm when you’ve barely mastered book reviewing.
Did you follow up any agricultural research or techniques to see what’s happening with wheat in your country, to check out Davis’ claims against what is happening in the field (as it were?)
I did, adn i’m not even a scientists. But it seemed logical to me.
then i gave it a shot and my health is much better.
It’s “reviewers” like you that encourage people to ignore good books that can help them, unless they see that you’re more about the attitude than the substance.
Book review fail, sir!
I get really annoyed (cos i can’t say (*%$*%$_* f’d off) when these idiots lose the main emphasis of the book ie the change in the gliadin protein and decide to chuckle witlessly about WB. Sure, not erveryone is rendered practically disabled by wheat, but that’s more good fortune than anything, even if they do live healthy.
For those of us who do have serious issues with wheat, at least we can know why, and do something about it.
i’ve by no means fised mysleef up, bu even if I never lose another pound I’ll still be doing better than i ahve in recent agonising years.
It’s not that hard to check out what’s going on in the world of wheat engineering. IThey should make that a priority.
Thanks for the support, Jill!
It’s hard to take these kinds of “reviews” seriously when they refer to the other “reviews” that boil down to such arguments as “The Dietary Guidelines for Americans say we should eat wheat,” or “Most people can eat gluten.”
I make it a point to not help them by commenting and leaving a link back. I’m happy to deal with real scientific criticism, not the rants of people who have little to add.
Dana was the reason for my success with low carb eating many many years ago. I read her first book, How I stopped eating low fat and lost 40 lbs, not exact title, but sure most here know it. Then followed her Hold The Toast blog and list serve for years, exchanging recipes and advice/support with the members back then. It was eye opening to me, how she was able to come up with such wonderful recipes and low carb substitutes for the foods we mostly miss when going low carb. I’m quite an experienced cook myself, but her creativity is what inspired me to start really cooking with more enthusiasm, and I did quite well, was healthy and slim.
When my daughter went off to college, I went back to work full time, back in 2004, and within a few months, gained almost 50 lbs. I think it was mostly stress, and not having the leisure time to cook fresh meals daily, and of course, as I regained the lbs, I became more sluggish and unhealthy. Started eating out more, drinking more, snacking more, moving less. I let go of low carb totally, and went on a sugar and alcohol binge. I did lose some of the weight a few years ago, but not in healthy ways. I find socializing the most difficult thing of all. Esp. being invited to someone’s house for dinner. I try to avoid it like the plague now, most of my friends do not follow a low carb diet, and I have a difficult time saying no if I have pasta, bread and cake as my only choices, it seems impolite.
I still read almost all low carb sites, and bought the Wheatbelly book Christmas a year ago, for my daughter, actually. She was having very strange panic and anxiety attacks, which we at first thought were stroke or heart attack. She was in her early 20s, and would suddenly have numbness creeping up her arm, all the way to her face, trouble breathing, not like asthma, which she had as a child, but more like pressure on her chest etc. Three time she drove to the emergency room and would have full sets of tests, costing us thousands (no insurance at the time) to show she was perfectly healthy. The symptoms would usually subside, by the time she got to see a doctor, and after much searching and reading, we came to the conclusion it was hypoglycemia, which runs in our family. Made sense, and I got us the books to read, esp. Julia Ross, Diet and Mood Cures, and she now takes supplements that have helped to avoid most symptoms.
But every once in a while, she still would feel that creeping sensation of paralysis on her arms, or up her neck … and she would always text or call me, saying – Mom – it’s happening again! By then she knew it was probably just a food reaction, but it was still very scary to her and me too, of course. Her father died very young, age 36, of a heart attack brought on by severe asthma and the flu, so fear grips my heart each time she would have these horrible attacks.
Sorry about this lengthy post, but thinking back, it’s so easy to see what the culprit was: after reading Wheatbelly, she started cutting out all wheat products, low carb beer, low carb bread, low carb wraps etc. which we had still seen as legal up to that time. IT WAS THE WHEAT!!! The change was phenomenal: no asthma, no panic attacks, no depression and bad moods, premenstrual cramping …. all gone overnight it seemed! It was easy for us, because of my life long tendency to cook low carb for us anyway, and it’s been fun to bake and cook again, we love the Focaccia and Chocolate chip Cookies, the pizza crust, so many recipes we make now, and they are all fabulous! I also love the fact that I can now eat one cookie, and be satisfied, not having to eat the entire lot.
Thank you all for sharing ideas, experiences, recipes, encouragement, scientific explanations, it all has come full circle, and has been life saving to us all.
I have more to tell, but have to run, thanks for allowing us to tell our stories, it will be a long journey, for sure. And with my upcoming surgery, i have renewed incentive to stay on the straight and narrow.
Barb
Incredible, Barb!
You have liberated your family from the chokehold of this thing, now setting them back on the course of control over impulse, emotions, appetite, andh health.
Please feel free to share all your stories!
Thank you, Dr. Davis – it’s a rare day, that I don’t take the opportunity to spread the word on the evils of wheat. Just this morning, a coworker came in to ask for help with something trivial, and she started crying, it was strange. I asked her what was wrong, surely the subject she was asking about wasn’t that sad or upsetting? She told me a long story about medications she was on for depression, insomnia, constipation etc. So of course, I couldn’t help myself and sent her off with the addy to your blog. This happens more than I can recount, another coworker telling me about her 3 year old with acid reflux, another one with IBS … going through all sorts of testing, and all being put on countless medications! They each learned about wheatbellyblog, lol
But a quick story I wanted to tell about the fact that some people love to throw the “Placebo” word at me, when I tell them about the wonders of wheat free eating, and how so many symptoms dissapear I have a weapon in my arsenal, that they don’t expect. You see, about 5 years ago my daughter rescued a beautiful yellow lab from the Human society, his days were counted, and he wasn’t even a year old. Such a gorgeous and loving puppy we got. When we picked him up at the Vet’s where he had been taken to be fixed, they called him the Jumper, because he jumps like a little Circus pony, when he’s happy and he usually is.
So after bringing him home, we went and got some pretty good Chow for him, not the cheap stuff, but still had fillers like oats and rice and other grains. I noticed right away that he had very dirty and itchy ears, but figured it was some kind of infection from the pound. We took him to our Vet and they gave him the obligatory antibiotics and a thorough cleaning, and things got better for a few weeks. Then out of the blue – black stinky stuff was coming out of his ears, he would shake his head so hard, ears flopping, that we thought his brain would be rattled! He left black stuff all over the walls, as he shook his head non stop, and I was horrified. I did my usual thing when in doubt, went online to do my search for answers, and came across a great site, by a Vet who talked about allergies to grains, can’t think of the name right now, but might post it when i find it, because this guy was great! So next day I went to super market and bought bulk ground beef, and fed him nothing but the raw meat for a day. After ONE day, he had the cleanest ears you can imagine! It was truly like a miracle, and if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I might have trouble believing how fast it happened, but all the crud and head shaking was gone, he was happy and we went hunting for a better food, and found Taste of The Wild, which has no grains, and he does well with it. I supplement with fatty meat still, because it’s what canines should eat. But we all take short cuts I guess.
So. anytime a person asks me about Placebo effect, I tell them the story of Murray and his ears, and they have to agree, that he could not possibly have know, I was testing him for allergies to grains.
I have so many stories like that, and it’s frustrating that we can’t just make people see the light, over night. But I’ve come to realize, you can lead a horse to water, so to speak, but you can’t make him drink. Share the information, enforce with the experiences here, and let people decide to try it or not, just as you’re doing.
As others have said, I think you’re a true hero for taking the heat and sometimes ridicule that is being heaped on you by ignorant folks, but it’s reassuring to know there are some doctors and other medical professionals out there, who are not afraid to stand up to the powers that be, who are all about greed and megalomania.
Many thanks, again ….
Barb
Thank you, Barb! Yes, we discover so MANY solutions to so many health problems with this simple notion of removing wheat!
I see patients every day who transform their health evidenced by metabolic measures, such as drops in blood sugar and HbA1c, triglycerides, small LDL particles, blood pressure, inflammatory measures, etc.–none of which, of course, can be explained by a placebo effect!
Keep on fighting the good fight! You will transform the health and lives of those willing to listen.
PS – found the website, and remember now, that the Vet himself has allergies, and his website is a great read!
http://dogtorj.com