What is Starch?
All starch is made up of SUGAR.
However, not all sugary food tastes sweet. For example, potatoes, bread and pasta consist of nearly all sugar.
Sugar whose molecules are joined together in long chains does not taste sweet. However, when digested, the sugar is released and pours into the blood stream. This is bad for health and bad for weight.
How Can Starch Be So Bad For You?
Bread is the ’staff of life’; rice is the staple for millions of people; where would Italians be without pasta; etc, etc.
However, science shows that our bodies have not adjusted to the high-starch diet we took up following the agricultural revolution.
Prior to this, we ate meat, fish, nuts, berries, fruit and vegetables. Only when we started to grow grains did we start to eat so many of them.
Some of the ways starch harms us are:
GLYCATION: sugar in the body combines with proteins to cause wrinkles in the skin as well as the major organs. These are a prime cause of aging.
DIABETES: a high sugar (starch) diet leads to diabetes for millions.
HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE: high blood sugar lead to high blood insulin which leads directly to high blood pressure.
We will be looking at these factors and others factors affecting our weight.
For now, hold the thought that “Starch=Bad” and you won’t go too far wrong.
The single change which will help you lose weight most is to reduce dramatically the STARCH eaten. The main STARCHES we eat are rice, potatoes, pasta and bread, as well as all types of sugar. Many people have lost weight easily simply by dramatically reducing the starch they eat. There is abundant science which demonstrates that frequently eating starch causes weight gain and obesity.
The view that eating fat makes us fat, is a myth propagated by health departments in the USA, then the UK, in the 1980s. Their recommendations were based on research since shown to be faulty. However, it takes a long time to reverse such deeply held beliefs - even when they are flawed. As well as leading to obesity, excessive starch also cause degenerative diseases such as heart disease and high blood pressure.
So, not just for reasons of obesity it is a particularly wise move to reduce dramatically the amount of starch eaten in the diet.