In Defense of Food Part 6 of 10: Refining Grains and Declining Health
August 20, 2009 by dr. lam
Since the Industrial Revolution, grains have become more and more refined. Corn and cereal grains have been pulverized into powder with all the nutritional content squeezed out. Rice has been freed from its healthy brown shell into a whitened significantly less beneficial product. By making our digestive systems work less, these refined products are quickly converted into glucose, which leads to our insulin resistance and weight gain. Making corn into corn syrup is perhaps the most blatant offense.
Realizing that diseases like beriberi and pellagra were a direct result of a loss of B vitamins from these refined products, millers started to add B vitamins back into powdered grain and rice products. But what valuable nutrients have we lost in the process? A study from the University of Minnesota by David Jacobs and Lyn Steffen found that despite adjusting for dietary fiber, vitamin E, folic acid, phytic acid, iron, zince, magnesium, and manganese in the diet (all the good things that we get from whole grains), there was still considerable health benefit to just eating the whole grains themselves, as none of the sum of these nutrients alone could explain. As they concluded, “This analysis suggests that something else in the whole grain protects against death.”
Interesting, the absence of these micronutrients that we can’t even label or understand how their synergestic actions may work may lead to even more hunger. Bruce Ames, a Berkeley biochemist, purports a theory that the hunger we experience in eating large quantities of non-nutritious food may stem from our body’s unrelenting desire to attain these missing ingredients so we consume more of bad food to get what we need and are missing.
A diet high in whole grains leads to fewer chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancers; whereas the inverse is certainly true. One of the biggest changes in American diet since 1909 has been the rise of calories coming from sugars, from 13 to 20 percent. Then add the percentage of calories coming from carbohydrates (about 40 percent, or ten servings, nine of which are refined!), we see that Americans are consuming a diet that is at least half sugars in one form or another. With the rise of fructose along with glucose, we have the perfect storm for our diseased state. The high sugars spikes our insulin levels leading to a crash as the glucose enters are cells, returning us to hunger.
It is not fat that is killing us, it is refined sugars and grains in our diet that no amount of scientific tinkering can overcome.
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4 Responses to “In Defense of Food Part 6 of 10: Refining Grains and Declining Health”
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Interesting, the absence of these micronutrients that we can’t even label or understand how their synergestic actions may work may lead to even more hunger. Bruce Ames, a Berkeley biochemist, purports a theory that the hunger we experience in eating large quantities of non-nutritious food may stem from our body’s unrelenting desire to attain these missing ingredients so we consume more of bad food to get what we need and are missing.
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This reads like a parable, many parallels in life. Nutrition is topic here today, and what Mr. AMe purports makes sense. (Oh and here at my house I just jumped up to pull horrific prefab cinnamon rolls out of oven for kids! Intervention time!
THANKS!
that is brilliant info. thanks nord! that last line was very funny too!
Amen! Dr. Lam, you’ve hit that on the nail! Great information!
Haha, Nord! Love your comments!
thanks heather!