Before you really understand what happens to your body when you eat bleached flour, you need to know what bleached flour is and in which foods you will find it. This fine white flour is the main ingredient in many foods, such as bread, pancakes, waffles, breakfast cereals, crackers, pasta, pastries and cakes.
Bleached flour is, as the name suggests, bleached white. But first it is refined, which means that the wheat grain that started is completely deprived of soft, rich in nutrients and the germ of wheat grain, leaving only softer endosperm. “The refining process results in less protein, less fiber and fewer vitamins and minerals than whole grains,” he says. Eat this, not that! member of the medical examination commission Molly Hembree, MS, RD, LDregistered dietitian.
After purification, the ground flour is bleached in grain mills by treating the flour with chemicals such as chlorine gas or benzoyl peroxide. The final product is light white flour that is super fine and velvety soft, ideal for the production of delicate pastries.
Although it is a staple food in the household, bleached flour is not the best choice of flour when it comes to your health. “Regularly choosing foods made from refined flour not only causes you to miss an important diet, but can encourage you to be less satiated and have poorer blood sugar control,” explains Hembree. Therefore, foods made from whole grains are advised; contain the most nutrients, including dietary fiber, which minimizes the impact of carbohydrates on blood sugar. “Opt for 100% whole grains for at least half of all grain choices made daily,” advises Hembree.
Over time, consuming many simple sugars - such as those in bleached flour products - can make your insulin response less effective, requiring your pancreas to pump more insulin, a hormone that carries sugar (glucose) into your cells where it can be used as fuel. This can cause insulin resistance where your insulin becomes less efficient at moving glucose into your cells, so it builds up in your blood. This can lead to the following health problems. Read on to find out more, and for more on how to eat healthy, don’t miss the best No. 1 juice to drink every day, says science.
Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease characterized by insulin resistance, which leads to very high levels of sugar in the bloodstream. While genetics, race and ethnicity and your age play an important role, lifestyle is a major contributing factor to type 2 diabetes, so the disorder can be reversed through diet and exercise. Thirty-seven million Americans have type 2 diabetes, and an estimated 96 million have pre-diabetes, a precursor to the disease, according to the CDC’s National Diabetes Statistics Report. Type 2 diabetes is a serious disorder that can lead to blindness, nerve damage, kidney disease, heart attack and stroke.
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Obesity is another sign and symptom of high blood sugar and low insulin sensitivity, often due to consuming too many bleached flour products. When foods lack fiber, they do not satisfy hunger for a long time, so in the end you want to eat more and more. This is a huge conundrum for anyone trying to lose weight — and sheds light on the solution: Don’t eat refined flour; get more fiber. Dietary fiber slows down digestion, the breakdown of food into glucose, so you feel full longer after eating. Clinical research, such as this study in Nutritionshows strong evidence of the ability of fiber to promote weight loss and weight maintenance.
We have all experienced it, some worse than others. And if it occurs regularly, it can literally become a pain in the ass - hemorrhoids and anal fissures are common side effects. Although there may be many reasons for obtaining backups, some require medical diagnosis and assistance, often as a result of a lack of dietary fiber. You may be eating too much fiber-free food, such as those made from refined bleached flour.
Dietary fiber is essential for your digestive tract to work properly and to poop properly without the need to push. Studies show that high-energy foods and low-fiber, high-sodium sugar products are associated with higher constipation rates. If you eat too many simple carbohydrates, start consuming more fiber in your meals, but do it slowly and drink plenty of water to keep the stool soft and undisturbed.
Dietitians keep telling us: Consuming white bread, cakes, cookies, cereals and pasta from refined cereals and white rice does more than quickly raise blood sugar - it also tends to replace healthier foods. If you snack on crackers and cookies, you probably don’t snack on apples, grapes and carrot sticks. If you eat a roll of bread with spaghetti noodles that are not made from lentil flour or whole grain flour, you are probably hungry for dessert soon after you finish your meal. When you eat a lot of bleached flour products, you effectively eliminate a lot of nutritious, whole foods that you should eat.
Officially called “low-grade chronic inflammation,” it is when your immune system is in a constant, long-term standby state, pumping out immune system chemicals that can damage cells over time. “Chronic inflammation can cause weight gain, skin problems, digestive problems and a range of diseases, including diabetes, cancer, depression and heart disease,” he said. Mike Zimmermanauthor of our book 14-day anti-inflammatory diet. Several studies have suggested that high carbohydrate intake, especially from foods with a high glycemic index, such as cakes, cookies, pasta and other bleached flour products, is associated with high concentrations of immune system compounds against inflammation.
Cardiovascular diseases, heart attack and heart failure are all associated with metabolic disorders - inflammation, high blood sugar, diabetes and obesity. In 2017, an article published in The Lancet presented evidence showing that consuming a lot of refined cereal products is associated with higher mortality than CVD, while consuming fat is not. A few years earlier, a meta-analysis in The BMJ showed that people who ate the most fiber had the lowest risk of coronary heart disease. The BMJ The study found that every 7 grams of extra fiber ingested per day reduced the risk of CVD by 9%.
So the evidence continues to grow: Consuming foods rich in dietary fiber has many positive effects on your body, while bleached flour foods without healthy fiber and nutrients offer little, if any, benefit from satisfying your gourmands. Hungry? Check out this popular high-fiber oatmeal food.