Answer
Starch is the killer food not sugar. There is a distinction to be made – the sugar I am referring to is organically grown and unrefined other sugars have sulphites and chemicals in.
There is such a downer on sugar in health circles it boarders on illegal discrimination.
As Oncology Nutrition a dietetic practice group of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics states:
“While researchers continue to investigate the connection between sugar and cancer, it remains a source of anxiety-inducing speculation and misinformation in the media and on the internet. Of course, the undeniable answer is that glucose (the form of sugar used most in the body) feeds every cell in the body, and is so important to the function of your brain that the body has several back up strategies to keep blood sugar levels normal. Even without any carbohydrate in the diet, your body will make sugar from other sources, including protein and fat.”
The point that is constantly missed is that the brain must have sugar. Another point is that the brain will take sugar from other sources including protein and fat. The body will literally eat itself if the blood sugar is low and remains low.
The good, the bad and the downright ugly
The good thing about sugar is that it gets to the brain very quickly so a spoonful of sugar is a great pick-me-up.
The bad thing about sugar is not sugar itself but what it is generally put with – starch. Starch in cakes, pies, bread, pastries and biscuits.
Like eating salt, too much is too salty and makes you want to vomit. Eating too many spoonfuls of sugar would also make you feel sick, so you stop.
The consumption of too much starch on the other hand doesn’t make you feel sick or want to vomit, the body stores starch as fat, so you just get fat. Fat on your stomach, fat around your thighs, fat around your organs and fat in your arteries. A silent killer.
Sugar gets to the blood stream and therefore the brain, in an instant when it is in the mouth and dissolves under the tongue.
Starch has to be thoroughly digested by amylase in the mouth and again in the small intestine and is taken to the liver to be stored as, you’ve guessed it, fat. The liver releases this fat – glycogen, if it senses that the blood sugar (which the brain must have) is low. When the liver has too much glycogen and there is more incoming it sends the stored glycogen to the arteries as fat – hence heart disease.
Making bread
In the past, we didn’t have the machinery to grind grains into such fine flours. Bread was very coarse and dense. Cakes were lumps of bread. Biscuits were hard, dried pieces of bread.
The grain that formed the coarse bread would have been roughly ground using stones, the large bits of the outer husk removed by hand, and the rest of the ‘flour’ would have been soaked until a healthy bloom appeared which was the yeast and then the bread would have kneaded, allowed to rise and put in an oven to cook. I wouldn’t mind betting that one slice of that kept you going for days.
Nowadays all our food is made from wheat and a day won’t go by when we have not consumed a wheat product or two or three or four. This wheat is saturated in a variety of chemicals and processed without fermenting the grains, so no wonder there are so many people who cannot eat wheat. It beggars belief that anyone can!
Starch is everywhere!
Starch isn’t just in grains of wheat. Starch is found in all types of grains from rice grains to pulses and nuts. Flours are made from all sources: grains, pulses, seeds and nuts and they should all be fermented and grown without chemicals but they are not. Starch is also found in vegetables and fruits.
We don’t eat endless products made from vegetables and fruits but we do eat mega amounts of products from flours. The list is endless: bread, cakes, pies, biscuits, pastries, pizza bases, tortillas, wraps, pancakes, pasta, crackers, cereals, cereal bars, muesli, tahini (sesame seed flour) I am sure there are more.
Obesity is now a Number 1 killer because the stored fat can cause lethal problems to the organs of the body.
Good Food Menu
(Use organic produce and kindly cared for and fed animals)
Breakfast – 2 eggs preferably fried in butter and grilled tomatoes with organic dry cured bacon
Snack – a banana
Lunch – meat, cheese or fish and salad and fruit – grapes, oranges
Snack – an apple
Supper – a meal designed from meat/fish or cheese and green veg like kale, salad leaves and red and orange veg like carrots, red peppers.
References