Our food system is upside down because the food industry is more concerned with flattering our taste-buds than keeping us healthy. Nature offers us whole foods that are nutritious and palatable but we prefer them refined, so many aliments are heavily transformed to taste better. The trade-off is the loss of their nutritional value in the process.
Take bread. A major staple food since the beginnings of agriculture 10,000 years ago, bread has turned white over the centuries. White wheat bread has become the standard bread type in many countries and is consumed by millions of people each day. We’ve had it in our plates since our most tender age, so we can hardly believe it could harm us. And yet, there are a whole lot of reasons against incorporating white bread into our diet.
Even though it doesn’t taste sweet, white bread has, in fact, the same effect on your body as plain sugar. It rapidly elevates your glycemia (i.e. blood glucose concentration), thereby forcing your pancreas to release large amounts of insulin to lower it, which short-term wise stimulates fat storage and long-term wise may lead to insulin resistance.
White bread triggers this reaction because it falls in the high glycemic index (GI) foods category―value comprised between 70-100, with 100 corresponding to pure glucose―which should be avoided to prevent severe health conditions like diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular diseases. Continue reading →
