How to Break Up With White Flour

Let's face it, it's not going to be easy.

You two have known each other practically your whole life. It's been there for you. Comforted you. Made you happy.

But it's an abusive relationship and it's got to stop. It wont let you wear those cute jeans you love so much. It wont let you button up your shirt. It makes you tired and more hungry. It's hurting your body.

It's time to break up with white flour.

And it' doesn't have to be as painful as white flour wants you to think it's going to be. It has a smarter older brother it doesn't want you to have anything to do with, but I think it's time you two meet.

Meet your new relationship: Wheat Flour.

Stop rolling your eyes and gagging, it's not that bad! I mean sure, this might seem like breaking up with the popular jock everyone loves to start dating the nerd in glasses who only wants to talk about star wars, but if you take his shirt off you'll find rock hard abs because he is one healthy son of a bread.

So let's think of foods you might start replacing: bread, pancakes, pasta, etc.

Pasta is pretty simple. You can use whole wheat pasta, you can find corn and quinoa pastas at health food stores, or you can cut pasta meals down to once a month or once every two weeks and have your white flour pasta if you really can't give it up.
I only have it on special occasions when I eat out. I don't like the texure of wheat pasta personally and don't feel like going to a different grocery store and spending $5 a box just so I can have mac and cheese.

Okay, breads. You have to be careful with this one because not all wheat breads are good for you. Lots of them have extensive ingredient lists, with one ingredient in particular called azodicarbonamide. It's a dough conditioner. Which is also an ingredient in YOGA MATS and the SOLES OF YOUR SHOES.

YUM.

So, ideally, you need to find a wheat bread with a minimal amount of ingredients. My local Target carries a brand that a local bakery makes. It's really soft and doesn't have a terrifying, extensive ingredient list. Pay attention to ingredients and what your store carries. Buying local is always better anyways because you support local business and help keep and create jobs in your community.

But that's a bandwagon for another day.

So pancakes and waffles and such. You're going to want to stop using Hungry Jack and Bisquick and start making them from scratch. It's not as hard as it sounds, and once you've done it a few times you practically memorize how.
I like to use Wheat Montana Prairie Gold White Wheat. To me, white wheat is a nice compromise. It's not as...wheaty as hard red wheat. It makes for lighter tasting results. Where I am, I can find it at Walmart and Target and a 5 lb bag is something like $4 and it can last me a while because we don't have things I would need to use it for often.

Fifteen Spatulas has a great pancake recipe for light fluffy pancakes with wheat flour here.

So that's how we broke up with wheat in my house.

Did I forget something? Any questions? 

Comment below and let me know!

Why You Should Break Up With White Flour

In our food culture, it is pretty hard to avoid flour in your food. For breakfast, we have toast, bagels, cereal, pancakes, waffles... If you think of lunch you typically think of a sandwich. Or wraps, pasta, pizza, burgers...and I know growing up we always had a piece of bread with butter on it with dinner. And snacks are no different. Flour is everywhere. And it's typically very refined white flour.

As our appetite for flour has increased, coincidentally so has our waistlines. However, many nutrition experts don't think it's a coincidence at all. When they compare the evidence linking food choices and obesity and disease, they see flour's white, dusty fingerprints everywhere. 

So, what does flour really do? Why would flour make you fat?

Any carbohydrate containing food affects your blood sugar. When you eat flour, white or wheat, your body breaks down the carbohydrates into glucose (simple sugar). The glucose circulates into your blood stream to provide fuel for your cells, which is why carbs aren't bad. You need them. BUT food with higher glycemic indexes are bad. The glycemic index (GI) refers to how fast that glucose gets to your blood. High GI foods leads to a quick spike and subsequent crash of your blood sugar making you feel hungry again soon after eating. 

Remember when your mom told you not to eat too much sugar because you'll have a sugar high and then you'll crash? Like that. Any food with a high GI can cause that effect. 

Foods with a lower GI cause you to feel more satisfied and prevent that blood sugar spike.

The GI Index is rated 1 to 100. White flour has a GI of 71 and wheat flour 51. To give you and idea, table sugar has a GI of 68.

So wheat flour has a medium glycemic index, BUT it is obviously much better for you than white flour. The best choice would be to change over to maybe an almond flour or coconut flour but that can be pretty expensive and a tough jump to make. 

I like taking baby steps to healthier habits because I know they'll stick. And sometimes, a medium level GI is worth not spending $5 extra for half the amount of flour with a low GI. Especially if you can cut down how much you eat it.

So now that you know this, what do you do?

You break up with white flour, that's what. In my next blog post I show you how I've changed over from white flour to wheat flour with out hating life and feeling grossly un-American ;)