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 ;)