Use Carbohydrates From Whole Foods Not Refined Foods with Brenda Davis R.D.

Intro

step two is to select our carbohydrates

Select Carbohydrates with Care

with care carbohydrates are not the enemy Blue Zone in takes actually range from fifty to eighty percent of total calories so they’re the percent of calories in every blue zone ranges from fifty to eighty percent of calories carbohydrates from whole foods are very consistently protective to human health if you think about it and you look at the carbohydrate content of whole foods all of these plant foods whether it’s fruits starchy vegetables legumes and non starchy vegetables they range from fifty eight to ninety two percent of their calories from carbohydrates so how can carbohydrates be so horrible if they are the predominant macronutrient in almost every healthy food the only plant food that’s lower in carbs is nuts and seeds yeah but refined carbohydrates are very bad news why well when we refine a

Refining Grains

carbohydrate and I’m using wheat a wheat grain as an example we’re literally taking out the most nutritious part of the grain here we’re taking out the brand and the germ this is where most of the nutrients fiber protein etc are stored and what we’re left with is called endosperm which is almost pure starch there’s a little bit of protein and a few nutrients but in the process of taking a grain of wheat and turning it into white flour we lose 80 to 90 percent of the fiber 70 to 80 percent of the vitamins and minerals and 95 percent of the protective phytochemicals but nobody eats a bowl of white flour what do we do to it first we add fat sugar salt and a bunch of food additives before we eat it yeah there’s no possible way that when we consume our carbohydrates in this form that they could possibly support human health about 90% of the carbohydrates that people consume in in North America are refined carbohydrates and we wonder you know it’s understandable why people have blacklisted carbohydrates it’s just they don’t understand that there’s a difference between unrefined and refined carbohydrates you know diets that are rich and refined carbohydrates are consistently linked to overeating and obesity they adversely affect blood lipids blood pressure and heart disease they adversely affect insulin sensitivity and diabetes risk they increase our risk of GI disorders including GI cancers that increase non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and the increased inflammation impairing and impair immunity so we hear quite often that wheat is a chronic perfect poison we’ve all seen grain brain and wheat belly and so I just wanted to touch on this topic I don’t have time to go in detail but I want you to know that we don’t have serious scientific evidence against grains though there are very significant volumes of evidence that show that refined grains increase risk of disease but unrefined grains are actually protective they’re associated with reduced risk of heart disease diabetes and many cancers as well however it’s really important to know that even whole grains vary widely in how valuable are they are to human health and and so I’ve developed this thing called the whole-grain hierarchy at the top of the hierarchy is intact

Whole Grain Hierarchy

whole grains that’s the grain as it’s picked off the plant nothing added nothing taken way how do you make it healthier by sprouting it when you sprout a whole grain you decrease anti-nutrients you release the stored forms of nutrients and you absolutely magnify the phytochemicals and antioxidants because phytochemicals are the things in plants that protect them against predators they protect to allow the plant to grow so when you start sprouting those phytochemicals increase three four five hundred percent so very very good way to improve the value of a grain is to sprout it you also reduce the gluten content when you sprout very significantly next on the list would be broken whole grains then rolled then shredded then ground then flaked and at the bottom of the list would be puffed whole grains and so what are we doing as we go down this list we’re increasing the surface area of the grain we’re increasing the glycemic index we’re decreasing the nutritional value exposing nutrients to air the bottom of the list of puffed whole grain like brown rice cake for example many people think is a wonderfully healthy food because it’s low in calories but the nutritional value is quite dismal and it’s absorbed more rapidly than white sugar okay so we just need to understand that all whole grains are not created equal you know the recommended maximum intake this is the American Heart Association recommends men eat no more than nine teaspoons of sugar a day in women no

Sugar Shock

more than six the 2015 dietary guidelines recommend now for the first time ever no more than 10% of calories from sugar it used to be 25 25 percent was the recommended maximum but the average intake 22 to 30 teaspoons of sugar a day and everybody says no way nobody’s gonna eat 30 you know 22 to 30 teaspoons of sugar a day but 1/8 balance container of low-fat fruit yogurt contains nine teaspoons of sugar on average and that’s just not not just dairy yogurt it’s soy yogurt and coconut yogurt and almond yogurt and all sorts of yogurt that’s fruit flavored a soda is 10 to 13 teaspoons of sugar a slush is 28 teaspoons of shirt you know those things kids drink in the summertime the numbers add up very quickly to get under the six teaspoons for women you’d be eating no fruit yogurt and you haven’t eaten anything else all day so it’s it’s interesting the other interesting thing is about half of our sugar comes in the form of liquid beverages sweet beverages sodas and iced teas and sports drinks and all of these sorts of things and this is very bad news because when you drink a beverage that has calories it doesn’t register with your appetite control center the way that it would if you were consuming solid foods so your body feels as though it’s eaten no calories at all and and so it contributes of course to overweight and obesity well what about the sugar the natural sugar in in fruits the added sugars of course are very consistently associated with increased disease risk but fruit sugar is consistently shown to be protective when it’s in side the whole food why because fruit is rich in fiber it this slow sugar absorption it increases satiety they’re loaded with antioxidants so they reduce oxidative stress phytochemicals and fruits have multiple disease fighting actions so they’re also very protective and these foods are actually really important sources of potassium and vitamin C and other nutrients in fact it’s not that easy to design a diet that’s sufficient in potassium for healthy people without fruit however although we’re well equipped handle the small amounts of fructose and

Fructose Folly

fruit when we remove a fructose from food and we add it to beverages and processed foods our body’s capacity to handle fructose very quickly becomes overwhelmed it is metabolized only by liver cells glucose is metabolized by every cell of body excess fructose is turned into fat it’s turned into something called VLDL in the in the bloodstream and it’s stored as fat in the liver contributing to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease so all of the adverse effects of too much sugar are magnified with fructose over glucose and what’s really interesting if you look at the sugar content of various sweeteners

Types of Sugars in Common Sweeteners

whether it’s a Gavi syrup or coconut sugar or honey or maple syrup or molasses what you see is that almost all of the sugar is is fructose and glucose okay and and the only sugar that’s all glucose is corn syrup if you look at something like agave syrup it’s 57 to 90 percent of the sugar is free fructose in table sugar half is fructose half is glucose but they’re tied together so in order to absorb these things we have to split that sugar before the sugars can be absorbed so it seems as though things with the free fructose are even more damaging than sucrose and so you can see high-fructose corn syrup has a variety of levels of free fructose but also agave syrup a lot of people think coconut sugar is you know very low fructose sugar but it’s only about three to nine percent but the rest 70 to 79 percent is actually sucrose which is half fructose half glucose so you know my approach to has been very simple I use them like I would use oils so a teaspoon to flavor for culinary flavor in a dressing or something but basically I don’t use sugar as a food really I use if I want fruit or dried fruits to sweeten desserts and that’s it that’s sort of a reasonable direction to go where sugar is concerned what about the fructose in fruit well just so you understand that

Fructose in Fruit

20 ounce Pepsi has about thirty six grams of fructose you can see that’s just a 20 up some people get a 40 ounce so so you can see the amounts and fruits it takes a lot of fruit to add up to just one soda okay and there’s great differences in fructose content of different fruits but you can see by having a variety you’re not going to go over the top and what is the top we don’t really know some experts are saying 50 grams some say 25 grams but I think when people are consuming it and fruit and consuming fruit relatively moderately throughout the day it’s not a huge issue