The Nation's Health

Men's lingerie is on the second floor

Consume wheat products, like poppyseed muffins, raisin bagels, and whole grain bread, and you trigger the 90- to 120-minute glucose-insulin cycle.

Blood glucose goes way up (more than almost any other known food), triggering insulin release from the pancreas. Glucose enters cells as a result, blood glucose plummets. You get hungry, shaky, and crabby, reach for another wheat or other sugar-generating food to start the roller coaster ride all over again.

Repetitive insulin triggering grows this thing I call a "wheat belly," the protuberant, hang-over-the-belt fat you see everywhere nowadays. Wheat belly fat is really visceral fat. Visceral fat means you have fat kidneys, fat intestines, fat pancreas, and fat liver, all causing the belly to protrude in the familiar way we've all come to recognize.

Visceral fat is special fat. Unlike the fat in the backside, thighs, or arms, visceral fat triggers inflammatory responses that are evident in such measures as tumor necrosis factor, interleukins, and leptin, as well as drops in the protective hormone, adiponectin.

Visceral fat also, oddly, triggers estrogen release. Estrogen triggers growth of breast tissue. That's why females with wheat bellies have up to four-fold (400%) greater likelihood of breast cancer.

Men also experience excess estrogen from the visceral fat wheat belly, causing "man boobs." This B-cup phenomenon means that inflammation is raging beneath the surface, all due to this thing you're wearing around your waist.

I wasn't aware until recently that male breast reduction surgery is a booming business growing at double-digit rates. So are special clothes to help men conceal their expansive breasts.

Perhaps the USDA is in cahoots with Playtex.