This essay is cross-posted at http://yourhealthisonyourplate. 

Have you ever heard anyone say that all you have to do to have a more nutritious diet is to stop eating white flour and sugar?  That seems pretty radical to most people.  What’s the point?  What’s wrong with white flour and sugar?  And what would such a change accomplish?  Simply put, why? 

By now, if you’ve been following the blog regularly, you probably know me well enough to know that I’m not going to say you can never eat white flour and sugar.  I’ll never say never — moderation is my motto.  I think that most people can tolerate a little bit of most things now and then.  But that’s not what’s happening.  Let’s look at what the standard American day looks like, food-wise. 

If you’re like more than 80% of American households, there is a broad selection of “breakfast cereals” in your kitchen.  On a typical morning, you and the children eat a bowlful.  Then you head out to work.  At the office, sweet Dora has brought in a box of doughnuts, and you enjoy one with your coffee, to which you have added non-dairy whitener.

At lunchtime, the group heads down to the cafeteria and you select baked ziti.  It comes with 2 small meatballs, a small packet of parmesan cheese, and a small, anemic-looking salad that consists mainly of iceberg lettuce, with 2 thin slices of cucumber and 1 grape tomato.  You add “a little bit” of salad dressing.  The ziti also comes with garlic bread, made from a white flour roll and margarine. 

Or you decide that you’d prefer a burger and fries.  Or today you’re going to “eat healthy,” and you select a container of low-fat, peach yogurt, and a granola bar.

Later in the afternoon, you head back into the break room hungry, and eat “just half” of the last doughnut.  Or pretzels.  Or chips.  Maybe baked ones.  Or a peppermint patty.  Or another granola bar.  And a can of soda from the machine down the hall. 

Dinner?  Fish sticks, instant mashed potatoes, and frozen peas and carrots.  Chicken nuggets, tater tots, and canned tomato soup.  Pizza and more garlic bread.  [I have nothing against pizza, but store-bought, frozen pizzas are generally not made with a whole-grain crust, generous amounts of real mozzarella cheese, and tomato sauce that contains no sugar or corn syrup.]  Chocolate pudding for dessert.

We’re not eating just a little bit of white flour and sugar.  We’re drowning in them.  No wonder cruising the cabinets after dinner is one of America’s favorite pastimes.  We’re really hungry.  Two-thirds of us are overweight or obese.  Why?  Because the standard American diet is so nutrient-poor that most people are literally hungry all the time.  Then they eat.  It’s not about willpower.  It’s about nutrition. 

White flour and sugar are are relatively recent inventions of human beings.  And herein lies the problem.  We aren’t designed to eat them.  We didn’t evolve to eat them.  And our bodies don’t know what to do with them when we do.

Recent inventions?  How so?  In nature, carbohydrate is almost always found with its fiber matrix intact.   It’s human beings who have figured out how to remove the fiber and eat what remains.  The main industrial sources of sugar include dates (high-fiber), beets (high-fiber super food), and sugar cane, a grass.  The sugar in these foods isn’t absorbed fast.  We make it that way.  In Cairo many years ago, I once saw a man on a bus chewing on a stalk of sugar cane.  It occupied him for hours.  The same amount of sugar in crystal form, extracted from that piece of cane, would have been eaten and absorbed in a matter of minutes.  He was kind enough to offer me a taste, but I declined. 

White flour is made from grain that has been stripped of its germ and bran, the fiber-rich seed coat.  The germ and bran contain valuable nutrients and are essential to normal gut function.  Remove them, and the rates of absorption (and constipation) skyrocket.   That’s why food made with whole-grain flour has a lower glycemic index than equivalent items made with stripped flour.  White flour makes a great glue for papier-mache.

So what’s the attraction?  White flour is lighter in color than whole-wheat flour.  The fragile oils in the germs of whole grains are the first thing to become rancid, so white flour has a longer shelf life.  White flour looks cleaner and lasts longer.  It’s a decision based on economics, not nutrition. 

Remember that you are voting each and every time you purchase items that are made from fabricated foods.  If we stop buying them, the message will echo loud and clear.  Our nutrition is on the line.  Our health is on our plates.