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low dietary intakes of three B vitamins—B , B12, and folate—increase your blood level of an amino acid called homocysteine. A high blood level of homocysteine, in turn, increases your risk of heart disease. Whole-grain cereals have no vitamin B12, their vitamin B is poorly absorbed, and they are at best a meager source of folate. So excessive consumption of whole-grain cereals instead of lean meats, fruits, and vegetables is a formula for disaster for your heart. Again, lean meats are rich sources of vitamins B and B , and fresh fruits and vegetables are our best food sources of folate. By eating the foods nature intended, you will never have to worry about your B vitamin status, homocysteine level, and heart disease.

Folate Deficiency

Since most Americans don’t eat enough fresh fruits and vegetables, our dietary intake of folate is often marginal or low. Folate not only protects us from heart disease, it reduces our risk of colon cancer. Taken by pregnant women, it prevents spina bifida. Because of these healthful effects, the U.S. government now enriches our refined cereal grains with folic acid (a form of folate). So, somewhat paradoxically, you can now eat white bread, doughnuts, and cookies to increase your folic acid intake—but when you eat whole grains, you won’t get this benefit.

The bottom line is that grains are an inferior food. No matter how you slice your bread (whole or refined), grains are not good for you. Even when they’re artificially pumped full of vitamins and minerals, they cannot measure up to lean meats, fruits, and vegetables.

Minerals

On paper, whole grains appear to be a fairly good source of many important minerals, such as iron, zinc, copper, and calcium. Actually, cereals are lousy sources of these nutritionally important minerals.

Iron

Remember the antinutrients that block our absorption of B vitamins? Other antinutrients, called “phytates,” chemically bind iron, zinc, copper, and calcium within grains and block their absorption during digestion. Phytates do their job so well that the worldwide epidemic of iron-deficiency anemia—which affects 1.2 billion people—is universally attributed to the poor availability of iron in cereal- and legume-based diets. Iron-deficiency anemia weakens you and hinders your ability to work; it also makes you more susceptible to infection and more likely to develop a severe infection. It increases a mother’s risk of dying during childbirth. It can permanently impair a child’s learning ability. Iron-deficiency anemia—like the other deficiency diseases caused by agriculture’s new foods—would not have been possible with Paleo diets. Lean meats and animal foods are rich sources of iron. More important, the type of iron found in lean meats and animal foods is easily assimilated by the body.

Zinc

Zinc deficiency is another disaster caused by whole-grain cereals. In much of the Middle East, a whole-wheat flatbread called tanok contributes more than half of the total daily calories. Studies done by Dr. John Reinhold and colleagues have shown that tanok causes a zinc deficiency that stunts growth and delays puberty in children. We need zinc to help us fight infection and colds, to sustain our strength, and to enable us to work. Once again, lean meats are excellent sources of zinc. In fact, the “bioavailability” (the amount you receive of a particular nutrient) of zinc from meat is four times greater than from grains.

Calcium

Most American women, and many men, have gotten the message about calcium: insufficient dietary calcium can eventually lead to bone loss and osteoporosis. Few realize that cereal grains and legumes are a catastrophe for your bone health. As with iron and zinc, the little calcium that’s present in whole grains is bound to phytates—which means that most of it never gets absorbed by the body. Cereals also contain high levels of phosphorus. We know that an unfavorable calcium-to-phosphorus ratio can speed up bone loss. Also, cereals produce a net acid load to the kidneys—and this, too, increases calcium loss in the urine.

Whole grains