White flour - is it worth it?

Nutritionally speaking, one of the best things you can do for your overall health is to eliminate white flour products. Wait! Don’t run away! I know it sounds like a scary idea, but what white flour products can do to your body is even scarier.

First, let’s look at what it is. White flour is basically what is left of a whole grain of wheat after food manufacturers have removed all of the nutrients and fiber. What you’re left with is a nutritionally bankrupt powder that wreaks havoc on your blood sugar and your whole digestive system.

Whole wheat is LOADED with nutrients – B vitamins, calcium, zinc, copper, manganese, vitamin E, potassium and that all-important fiber. All of these are removed in the process of making white flour. So then what do you think the manufacturers do? They add really small amounts of synthetic nutrients back in and call it “enriched” or “fortified”. I call it crap. If the ingredients list of your favorite grain product uses either of these words, then you can be sure they’ve messed with the nutrients.

Once ingested, white flour breaks down into sugar, or glucose, and causes the exact same problems in your body as refined sugars do. If you’re going to have a sandwich made with white bread, you might just as well put a couple of teaspoons of sugar on that sandwich, because the white flour will have the same effect on your blood sugar.

In addition to making you crave more and more refined carbohydrates, eating white flour products causes your pancreas to secrete insulin, a hormone that stores fat, stimulates the appetite and slows down your metabolism. And that further leads to fatigue, depression, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer and heart disease.

Before this gets too much longer, let’s talk about what removing the fiber does for your digestive system. I know you’re thinking, “Oh no, I’ll bet she’s going to talk about constipation again” – and you would be exactly right. But I’ll just give you a short example. The best visual I’ve gotten on this subject suggests that you mix one quarter cup of white flour with about four tablespoons of water. And what do you get? Paste is what you get. And white flour does the same thing inside your body. Paste isn’t really all that efficient of a medium for keeping things moving the way they’re supposed to.

“Bottom” line is, if the waste products from all the meals you’ve eaten in a day don’t get eliminated from your system, they stay there and create a rather lovely environment for parasites. And if the thought of parasites isn’t gross enough, look at what all that excess waste does to the numbers on your bathroom scale. Now THAT’S gross.

So if you’re feeling bloated and sluggish and your weight isn’t quite where you think it should be, look to the white flour products. Cutting them out of your diet can make all the difference in your overall health – not to mention your energy levels.

I guarantee you that if you made a real effort for just one week to replace your white flour products with whole grain alternatives, you would really see and feel the difference.

Can you do it?