Healthy Lifestyle

Welcome back to this healthy lifestyle blog with a post that will shock plenty of people who don’t know that white bread is bad for you! Well sure it is, when you think about it and what it is made from.

White bread, especially the innocent looking sliced loaf that you buy at the store, is packed full of zero nutrition and empty calories that will make you gain weight and store it on your belly. It’ll also set you up for a whole host of health problems if you eat too much of it. The worrying fact is that most people in the West eat too much white bread and they are damaging their health without even realizing it.

I’m sure you want to know why white bread is bad for you so here’s the scoop! White bread is made from refined white flour, just like our friend white pasta that we visited in the last post. Refined white flour as you will have gleaned from that post contains no useful nutrient, having had them all removed in the refining process, which includes bleaching the flour with chlorine based bleaching agents. Gluten is added to help the loaf rise and achieve a more uniform shape, which fits in with our increasing need to have perfect looking food from supermarkets. You know, like tomatoes that are all big and red and uniform in shape. Just like they grow naturally… NOT!

Well, that gluten is the cause for allergies in a huge number of people. Many know about it but far more don’t, then wonder why this or that allergy shows up all the time.

But the worst part of eating too much white bread is that it destabilizes your blood sugar levels, which can lead to type II diabetes and loads it up with bad LDL cholesterol which narrows arteries, increases blood pressure and can lead to strokes and heart disease. It slows down your metabolism too, meaning you set yourself up for weight gain. Just look at all the slim healthy people around you and chance are they don’t eat much (or any) white bread. Then look at all the seriously overweight people munching on sandwiches made from white bread…

As an extra health minus point, white bread is extremely unkind to your digestive system and especially your colon because it contains absolutely zero dietary fiber and clogs up your intestines, leading to all sorts of knock-on health problems such as IBS, Crohne’s disease, constipation etc.

Naturally, the industry that makes $billions from the sale of white bread is not going to come out and admit how unhealthy their product is. Why would they? It would cost them money to do that. Far better to keep it swept under the carpet and just let a few annoying bloggers write about it because few people will actually take a blind bit of notice.

Don’t expect government health officials to shout about it from the rooftops either. They don’t want this particular boat being rocked any more than the tobacco industry wants anyone to believe that smokingis bad for you. Which of course it patently cannot be, if you look around at all the smokers there are still…

But that’s a topic for whole bunch of posts later on down the line!

If you want to eat bread and still be healthy, switch to wholemeal and toast your good health. Wholemeal bread contains all the goodness of the whole wheat including the bran, which is high in dietary fiber and good for your digestive system and kind to your colon. It tastes good too!

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The title of this post is pretty self explanatory in the sense that it is a completely self contained statement of fact that has been born out by countless scientific studies into the health effects of various food items that have found their way into our modern diets in the West.

So why should you exclude white pasta from your diet to stay healthy?

The main reason to avoid white pasta in your diet is because it is made from refined white flour, which in itself contains absolutely no goodness whatsoever. It’s like eating cardboard, but tastes marginally better. But white its lack of nutrients wouldn’t normally make it a bad thing to eat, white pasta when used as the main staple bulking ingredient of a meal, which is generally is, then the reasons for cutting it out become evident.

First, like white bread, it contains a lot of high GI (glycemic index) carbohydrates. These are the type of carbs that release sugars quickly into the bloodstream, causing a rush of sugar and a reactive rush of insulin release to counter it. Bad for diabetics and bad for weight gain in the rest of us. What this does is make us feel full quickly, but then makes us feel hungry again soon after, which is a leading cause of weight gain.

It also raises levels of bad LDL cholesterol and because it is not digested efficiently, it slows the metabolism and results in more fat storage, with the emphasis on belly fat. Nice.

So there are plenty of reasons to exclude white pasta from your diet. You can replace it with brown pasta, which is made from wholegrain flour which is much better for you and a subject for a post all of its own later.

Healthy Lifestyle