Alkaline Diet

The Hidden Truth About White Flour

Posted on 13. Mar, 2010 by George Tee in Alkaline Diet Tips, Blog

The American Dietetic Association recommends 8 to 11 servings of white flour products daily. That’s not hard to follow at all, with the overwhelming number of mainstream white flour products in the market—from pretzels and bagels to pasta and gravy. However, were you even remotely aware that these white flour is just as unhealthy as eating raw refined sugar and has absolutely no positive nutritional value?

What I just said might come off as a shock, especially since the intensive marketing of these white flour products state the exact opposite: that ready-to-cook pasta (among many other products) is filled with fortified vitamins and will get you going through the day. Now is the time for you to know the absolute truth about white flour will really do to your body.

Deficiency of Essential Nutrients

Flour derives its name from an Old French word that means “finest”; that’s because white flour is supposedly the fine end product of an intensive milling process that strips away the coarse part of the whole wheat. This includes the outer bran layer and the germ, the two richest sources of vitamins and minerals in the whole grain.

On the contrary, white flour is anything but the “finest”. The raw wheat is filled with nutrients and antioxidants such as fiber, B vitamins, vitamin E, potassium, manganese, zinc, calcium, and copper. During the milling process and the removal of the bran and the germ, these nutrients are stripped off by and replaced with synthetic nutrients such as B vitamins. The synthetic vitamins are all that the manufacturers need to market it as a product “fortified with essential nutrients”.

Whole wheat also contains beta carotene, an important source of Vitamin A. It helps in the growth and regeneration of tissues, especially for pregnant women. When beta carotene is taken away during the milling process, taking it in supplement form just isn’t as beneficial. It can increase the risk of imbalance and even cancer! In fact, nutritionists agree that beta carotene taken in its raw form along with all the other nutrients in whole wheat is much more natural and better.

So you’re probably wondering, why are these natural nutrients taken away? That’s because manufacturers think it’s far better to prevent white flour products from aging too fast than to retain the nutrients in whole wheat. By subjecting the whole wheat to a chlorine gas bath, the nutrients are destroyed and the shelf life is prolonged.

Added Ingredients that are Harmful and Poisonous

Have you ever wondered why white bread looked so different from whole wheat flour? That’s because white bread has been bleached in flour mills with chemical agents. Some of the bleaching agents used to produce white bread are benzoyl peroxide, nitrosyl, chlorine, and many other chemical salts.

During the bleaching process, the chemical processing done to the whole wheat result in alloxan, a decomposed product of uric acid. There is no other way to describe alloxan other than it is a poison, the very same one used during laboratory experiments for experimental animals to have diabetes. Make no mistake, once you take alloxan, your pancreatic beta cells—which produces insulin, which regulates your blood sugar—are destroyed. This will make you vulnerable to diabetes, when insulin can no longer be produced by your body.

The Drastic End Result

Another problem with white flour is that it enters your body system in its basic form: as carbohydrates and simple sugars that require no further breakdown. In other words, eating white flour is similar to eating refined sugar — both are in its basic form, no longer need to be processed, and go straight to your bloodstream. It may not taste as sweet as refined sugar, but your blood sugar will react to it in the same way. It will have to release insulin in enormous quantities, which will result in increased blood sugar levels. It will be followed by a rapid decrease once there is nothing more to process. That’s why you get a sugar rush after you eat cereal or bread, and weakness and lethargy after white flour had been processed by your body.

Also, its excessive consumption will cause rapid weight gain, as more and more sugar is stored in your body. The rapid weight gain is not just caused by the caloric content of white flour products, but the alteration of metabolism. White flour circumvents the digestive process that healthy foods like vegetables and fruits go through, resulting in rapid increase and decrease of your blood sugar level and metabolism.

In the end, as you take in more white flour products, your pancreas will be overworked and the production of insulin will just come to a complete stop—resulting in hypoglycemia and diabetes. That’s precisely why diabetes patients need insulin injections every so often.

Tags: refined sugar, white flour