So If I Can't Eat Flour, What the Heck Can I Eat??

So if you are like me after reading all my flour posts, you may come to the conclusion that flour and products made from flour are foods to limit. I am not totally anti flour, but through the course of my research, I have started to see that white flour is a pointless food for us to base our diet around (or even eat at all as it provides almost no nutrition beyond calories), and even whole wheat flour is not as good of a source of the nutrients that we need for optimal health as other foods. Of course whole wheat can be part of a balanced diet for sure, but we don't need to eat products made from wheat flour 3-4 times a day. Probably once day is enough, and if you could cut it out altogether you would not suffer. Remember I am NOT talking about CARBS here, just wheat flour.

But if I give up flour and bread, what the heck will I eat?? First of all, many of my insistent cravings die down when I eat less flour. So you might feel more satiated replacing flour with other whole foods. I do have some suggestions of some yummy food groups to eat for all meals....I believe that there is something here for everyone. **Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or a dietitian or a nutritionist, nor am I suggesting that anyone limit their diet to the below only. What I have written are just some things that I like to eat regularly that do not contain flour. And as always, if you have any health issues, discuss dietary changes with a doctor.

Breakfast:
Oatmeal (or other whole grain porridge, but oats are my favorite)-you can top it with dried fruit, milk, nuts, the sky is the limit. Steel cut oats or oat groats are a personal favorite
Yogurt-any kind of yogurt. It is good for your digestive track and like oatmeal, you can top it with anything
Fresh fruit
Granola
Eggs-anyway you like them! Do some reading on eggs and cholesterol. Most dietitians have recently given eggs a clean slate.
Cheese-omelet anyone?
Breakfast meats-lean ham or even turkey sausage can be a great way to start the day!

Lunch or dinner
I usually have a big salad. This ensures I can get all my fresh raw veggies in a given day. I make sure I have some full fat things in there like avocado or leftover salmon to keep me full. Beans and chicken or other meats and cheese are a great topping too. Think of it as a full meal rather than a bowl of veggies. The protein and healthy fats will keep you filled up all afternoon. A great easy homemade dressing will keep any pesky processed ingredients out of your nummies.
Tuna salad, or any fish
Any meat or eggs
Fresh fruit or veggies
Carbs-remember rice and potatoes, millet and quinoa and other grains? Don't forget all of these very satisfying carbs all are flourless and don't metabolize the way a piece of bread do. My stomach does not react to these types of carbs.
Beans and legumes! What a treasure-truly the unsung heroes of the food world.

Snacks
Nuts
Fruit, fresh or dried
Raw veggies
Yogurt or milk (a glass of milk is a great snack) Potato or corn chips are not that healthy, but they are flour free and could be eaten in moderation too. Just don't eat the whole bag-they won't fill you up.

My feeling for myself is that no one food should dominate your diet. I eat a lot of veggies, but I would not want to eat only carrots all day. That couldn't be good! I like a varied diet, many different fruits and veggies, different source of meat and fish and vegetable proteins, and I believe that is why I can eat some floury baked goods once a day and maintain my weight. It is hard to go without flour entirely and it takes time to cut things out. But the above can be a reminder of all the rich and varied things that can remain on your menu if you do decide to go flourless.

In the present day and age we have access to all the tools for optimal health, we just have to listen to our bodies and feed them accordingly. Different people are genetically predisposed to managing types of food differently. Some of us really can eat flour all day with no weight gain, while other people are totally gluten intolerant. I have no doubt that there will be people who read this and think I am crazy to criticize bread and flour when they have been around for so many centuries. But I did the research and I have even provided some links to information that is out there. After you do a little reading of your own, you may be on my side. Are you willing to read for yourself?

Guest Blogger: Celiac Disease

I have mentioned Celiac Disease several times this week. What is it?

Celiac Disease is the inability to digest gluten. Gluten is the compound found in the wheat's endosperm (and many other grains including spelt, barley and to a lesser extent oats) that makes bread springy. The disease manifests in gastrointestinal distress, weight loss and other signs of malnutrition, sometimes skin trouble like eczema, and can lead to lactose intolerance, certain forms of cancer and infertility as the disease progresses. The disease causes a breakdown of the villi in your intestines. As the villi break down the body's ability to absorb nutrients is compromised leading to the before mentioned signs of malnutrition. However Celiac Disease is not a wheat allergy, it is a gluten allergy.

A dear friend of mine TQ was recently diagnosed with Celiac Disease. Since I have spent so much time speaking about wheat and flour this week I asked her to write something about her personal experience with the disease.

Flour was the first seriously processed food, or close to it...according to some things I've read.

Contrary to popular belief, our bodies are not actually meant to consume refined flour. Those of us with Celiac Disease and other wheat or gluten intolerances are throw-backs to 10'000 (think that's right but you can look it up) years ago when land cultivation was getting underway in a major way. That's why we can't actually digest the protein gluten, cause we aren't supposed to. It's a foreign protein. I've read this same thought in several of the CD readings. It really struck me since the USDA and FDA recommend ridiculous amounts of flour based foods. If you were a hunter/gatherer, flour would not have been part of your diet at all.

I am very lucky in that my CD seems relatively minor in comparison to some folks I've met. I can tolerate very small amount of gluten, like breading on chicken or if it's hidden in a soup I'm ok if it's a small quantity. If I surpass the magic number though, which I do regularly because it's hard to know how much gluten an item contains if there's no label (like at restaurants or if I simply don't read the label) then I will know within two hours. Some people can't even share a toaster with gluten eaters. They have separate utensils, cutting boards, pots and pans. If they get even a whif of gluten, they will have painful symptoms. Celiac is progressive, so presumably I will be like that some day...this is also why some folks don't get diagnosed till later in life.

Life is livable with CD. In a way it's motivation to eat the kind of diet COB is touting, which is much more in line with what our bodies are designed to consume. The things that are healthiest usually don't contain gluten. The things that are made especially gluten free, like GF bread, GF pasta, GF cookies, are harder to get a hold of and expensive. And more over, even though they're ok, they really don't taste as good as their gluten-y counterparts. So in some ways it's easier to go without since eating the real thing brings on severe pain and the replica only tastes so-so and makes you yearn for the real thing even more.

You would be surprised where gluten can be found. It's everywhere! Even modern American soy sauce is made with a gluten derivative, even though it never was before and shouldn't be. It is. Wheat, barley and rye derivatives add texture, flavor and act as preservatives at times. So they sneak into just about everything with a label on it, even your vitamins and pain killers like Tylenol. Unless that label says GF on it, there's probably gluten or a gluten derivative. And there's a reason for it. It rocks. As bad as it is for us, it tastes sooo good. So much of taste is about texture too. My rice flour bread tastes ok, but it's so brittle and crumbly. I opened a new bag the other day and the whole loaf just crumbled out of the bag. No sandwich for me. :( At least once a week I give in and have a real sandwich or pizza or Chinese food and then spend the rest of the evening in the bathroom. It's like the equivalent of drinking too much cause it's fun while it lasts, knowing you'll pay for it later!

Refined Flour, a Brief History

Refined, White or All Purpose Flour, regardless of the title, it is ground wheat endosperm.

But, you ask, if all the nutrition is in the bran and germ, why would we remove it? That seems foolish. Well, it does in retrospect. But we didn't know it at the time.

Ground whole wheat flour has a shelf life of around 6-9 months, due primarily to the fatty acids and oils found within the bran and the germ. This is pretty long by today's standards, but not so several hundred years ago. I am unsure of where white flour was first produced. But I am fairly certain that it was a relatively recent time like within the last 300 years or so. Perhaps a reader will know for sure! Whole wheat flour, on the other hand, has been made using stones to grind it since prehistoric times. But as the world became civilized and towns and cities sprung up in which people were not necessarily living on the farm where their food was grown, it was difficult to harvest it, grind the flour, transport it, sell it and use it within the 6-9 month period before it went rancid. So producers came up with the idea that the problematic parts of the grain should simply be removed. White Flour will last on your shelf indefinitely, because there is nothing in it that will go bad. I have for the last ten years lived by the mantra that your food is supposed to go bad (even if I don't ALWAYS follow it), so already this sounds like something to eat in moderation.

When researching the history of flour and flour making one name kept popping up, Oliver Evans. Evans is credited with creating an automated grist mill to grind flour and that was in the late 1700's (like the last decade of the 1700's) so I imagine that white flour had been around much longer than that. I wish I had more free time to research more of the progression of flour 'technology', but *sigh* there is a job I get paid to do and I do that one first.

In terms of nutrition (and we all like to compare nutrition) Whole Wheat Flour has a pretty different nutritional composition than Unenriched White Flour. Below is the comparison of some more important nutritional aspects in 1 cup of flour....

Whole Wheat Flour-1 Cup
Calories 407 cal
Carbohydrates 87.1 g
Total Fat 2.2 g
Thiamin .5 mg
Calcium 40.8 mg
Iron 4.7 mg
Magnesium 166 mg
Manganese 4.6 mg
Selenium 84.8 mg
Total Omega 3's 45.6 mg
Total Omega 6's 886 mg

Unenriched White Flour-1 Cup
Calories 455
Carbohydrates 95.4 g
Total Fat 1.2 g
Thiamin .1 mg
Calcium 18.7 mg
Iron 1.5 mg
Magnesium 27.5 mg
Manganese .9 mg
Selenium 42.4 mg
Total Omega 3's 27.5 mg
Total Omega 6's 489 mg

What is in there is just numbers to me. I really only know about a couple things on that list, and it is far less than the total list that I found online. I have provided links to both sets of data, whole wheat flour as well as unenriched white flour, just click the links to see more. What is the most important to the average person is that there are fewer amounts of nutrients in the white flour than the whole wheat flour. When flour is enriched a few items are added back in, but those items are only thiamin, iron, riboflavin, niacin and folic acid. That is really only some of the B Vitamins and the iron. Whole wheat flour is far more nutritious.

People for years have said in passing that white flour is just like eating pur sugar. I never believed them because it just didn't sound right. Well, I have done the research and it is mostly true. Only mostly true because there is a shred of nutrition in white flour as you can see above. But otherwise, sugar is just a loosely bonded molecule of fructose and glucose that break apart when you digest them. The starch in bread is just a long chain of glucose molecules that all break apart in digestion. Fortunately your body does need glucose, so it is not a total waste. The problem is we get very little else from white flour but glucose and most of us on the Western Diet eat FAR more than we need.

So Enriched Flour only adds in some nutrients. Why those nutrients? There are many nutritional deficiency diseases that came up as I researched this topic. Iron Deficiency, Pellagra and Beriberi are all diseases known to result from a lack of certain vitamins in the diet (iron, niacin and thiamin respectively). It was specifically to help stamp out those diseases in the US that manufacturers first started enriching their wheat flour. Any population that turns to one food source tends to get sick. Not having a varied enough diet has caused a multitude of diseases during the course of history. Seasonality builds in variety in the diet when you live close to the food source. Cherries are only in season for a little while, and the same with carrots and sweet potatoes, even meat can't be consumed all year round because all the calves are born in the spring time. On a side note, even human fertility often dips in the springtime because babies conceived in the spring will be born during the coldest and most inhospitable months of the year. I always found it funny that there were more babies born in August than any other month. I thought it was funny because I thought the holiday season must have gotten alot of people in the mood. But no, it has more to do with babies being born around the harvest time when it would be nice and warm for a while and mom would have had enough to eat to nurse them into fat happy bouncing babies. We evolved this way over time because it worked.

It is the same with our food. When people moved off the farm in the Industrial age (and other ages too) we had large populations living off of one or two foods. We see that to a lesser extent today, however we are still getting more of our calories from corn and wheat than virtually anything else. Enrichment has seen to it that deficiency diseases are a rare thing in this country. And they are, No one reading this should be afraid. So many people these days take a supplement on top of what they eat anyhow, it is almost unheard of in the US. But we can do more to eat a varied diet. Today there are certain populations that still don't have great access to fresh foods, but a vast majority of Americans do and still CHOOSE to eat processed refined grains. I think there is alot of misinformation about where our nutrition is coming from.

Modern science may have added back thiamin, niacin, folic acid, riboflavin and iron. But what else is white flour lacking? What else that we haven't discovered yet is not in this enriched flour? There may still be dozens of nutrients that we do not know are lost in the production of white flour. Where do we draw the line? It is no longer 1700, we are able to consume whole wheat flour well within it's shelf life. Will you choose whole wheat next time?

Notes About Different Kinds of Flour

Ever wondered what was with all the diffrerent kinds of flour? And I don't mean just different grains or beans. There are a seemingly endless amount of wheat flours. What are they? What makes them different? Are some better than others? I have put together the most common wheat flours I could find. Let me know if I missed any.

Whole Wheat Flour-In Whole Wheat Flour, all three parts of the seed are finely ground: endosperm, bran and germ are all included. Whole wheat flour is the most nutritious of all the wheat flours.

Brown Flour-Some sites said 85% of the germ and bran are left in the final product. But the miller I buy from tells me their variety is about 50%. I imagine there is a wide variety.

White (or Refined) Flour-In Whie Flour, all the bran and germ have been removed and only the endosperm remains. The endosprem is then finely ground. Much white flour on the market has been bleached to make it whiter than it is in nature, but not all. Do not be fooled by anyone trying to sell you a 'health food' item: when it comes to flour, the terms white, refined and all purpose all refer to the EXACT same kind of flour.

Enriched Flour-As I mentioned yesterday, much of the nutrients of wheat seeds are lost in white flour when the bran and the germ are removed. Enriched Flour is White Flour to which synthetic vitamin supplements have been added. The US Government does not require white flour to be enriched, but much of it is. However in order to be called 'enriched flour' the FDA says that every pound of enriched flour should contain 2.9 milligrams of thiamin, 1.8 milligrams of riboflavin, 24 milligrams of niacin, 0.7 milligrams of folic acid and 20 milligrams of iron. Enrichment is a process which adds synthetic nutrients back to the flour that have been lost when the germ and bran are removed. This is not to be confused with 'fortification' where nutrients are added that were never there in the first place.

Durum Flour-Durum is a kind of wheat, and very hard or high-protein kind of wheat. It is best used in applications like bread and pasta.

Semolina Flour-Semolina Flour is a coarsely ground hard wheat flour. I used to work at a bakery that made a wicked good semolina bread covered in sesame seeds.

Cake or Pastry Flour: Whether Whole Wheat or White Pastry Flour, all cake or pastry flours are simply made from a variety of wheat that has a lower protein content. The result flour yeilds baked goods that are more tender which is good for sweeter softer items.

Sprouted Flour-This is flour where the whole grains have been soaked in water and allowed to sprout before they are ground. I have found some websites that state that allowing the seeds (grains) to sprout changed most of the starch in them into vegetable sugars thus making them much easier to digest. I have started to see sprouted flours and products made from them popping up everywhere.

Vital Gluten Flour-This is a flour that is very very high in gluten, the compound found in the endosperm that makes bread springy. My biggest complaint about completely whole wheat anything is that it crumbles apart. White flour has a higher gluten ratio so it naturally sticks together and doesn't crumble. Vital Gluten Flour can be added to a whole wheat recipe to help it hold together better. It is not for those with Celiac Disease. I bought some this weekend and I am anxious to try it the next time I make whole wheat beet muffins.

Processed foods most often make use of white/ refined flours or enriched flours. Whether or not they are labeled as organic is of no importance to nutrition, there is little if any additional nutrition in an organic white or refined flour. (BTW-I am well aware of recent studies that have found organic produce and plants to be more nutritious than their conventially grown counterparts. However in the case of wheat, there isn't much nutrition found in the endosperm regardless. Now if you want to talk about an organic germ or bran layer versus conventional, now there would be a conversation!) While it is always good to treat the land well, and organic wheat has that going for it, the term 'organic' does not give white flour any additional health benefits. Look for 'whole' flours. I definitely am limiting them for myself to once a day or not at all if I am able, but sometimes it seems that flour and baked goods of some kind are omnipresent.

Flour, Day 1

After a week of recipe posting, I get back to things I have actually researched. This one overtook my thinking for more than a week. I searched several sources before I even decided a path for the week. It took me some time to organize my thoughts.

As you have seen over the course of the last few weeks I have had flour on my mind alot. I have thought alot about someone's comment that I could have a gluten sensitivity that fell somewhere on the celiac spectrum. I am still not convinced. But I have continued my attempt to limit my flour intake, and I have noticed that when I do eat a whole croissant or other such floury food (particularly a food made from white or refined flour) my tummy starts acting up about 30 minutes afterward. Fuel for the fire...

But the thought of being sick on an otherwise innocuous food definitely set me off on an Internet treasure hunt.

For simple purposes, Wikipedia defines flour as, "In the culinary sense, flour is a powder made of cereal grains, other seeds or roots." What concerns me about flour (any flour) is the ease with which it is digested. During my research, countless sources have stated that flour has so much surface area as a result of being finely ground that it's carbohydrates are easily and quickly absorbed into the bloodstream causing a rise in blood sugar followed by a precipitous drop in blood sugar when all the fuel has been consumed. During this processed the message is given out to the pancreas to release insulin and the body goes into fat storage mode. Or so I have read. I believe this up and down blood sugar issue is what I am feeling after I overeat flour rather that celiac disease, but I don't know for sure. With the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes in the modern era, not to mention all the bad press carbs get these days, I wanted to know more. Is this a food I can safely eat? Eat in moderation? Or never again?

First off, what is with all all these different kinds of flour? Well you can make flour out of any grain or root. But what I am chiefly concerned with this week is WHEAT flour. This is the king grain that we eat in such great quantities in the US and other countries who have adopted a western diet. In a stalk of wheat, the only part that we eat is the seed. A wheat plant is like any other grass, it has leaves and a chaff on which the seeds grow. Wheat seeds are removed from the chaff of the plant and then ground to make flour. The seed itself has three parts, the bran layer which is like an encasement, the germ which is at the base of the seed (and is like that knobby-stemmy part on one half of a peanut-only different because this is wheat and not peanuts) and the endosperm which is the greatest portion of the seed. Check out this cute diagram I found on the Internet.

The greatest amount of fiber and nutrients are found in the bran layer and the germ. The endosperm is food for a growing baby wheat plant, so that is where the energy is stored. Incidentally, this is exactly why it is such good fuel for us.

I consider white flour to be 'the original processed food' because it is a food that is taken out of it's natural context. It is hard to separate parts of a tomato or a head of lettuce from their bit of fiber, or their goodness or vitamins and nutrients. And I think this mindset is where alot of the confusion about white flour comes in. Wheat is different than other plant foods. In a wheat seed, the three easily separable parts each have their own chemical composition. The bran and the germ contain nutrients and B Vitamins and essential fatty acids and alot of fiber. The endosperm contains most of the total calories of the wheat seed-the energy. Energy is important, but when you eat only the endosperm, such as in white flour, you are missing the nutrients that your body really needs for proper function, but you are still getting all the calories. However when you eat all three parts together, your body metabolizes them more properly. White Flour is a food that has been taken out of it's natural context.

I believe that there are alot of people out there that do not understand how calories and nutrients (read vitamins and minerals) interact with one another. A food can have calories without nutrients. But regardless of whether you are getting enough calories, your body still needs nutrients for things like proper cell division and brain function (to mention just two of the billion things it needs nutrients for). And if your body is not getting enough nutrients then it will tell you with hunger, the call to eat more. @ years ago when I cleaned up my diet and started eating 5 fruits and veggies a day and cut out most of the simple carbs, I immediately noticed my cravings going away. I still don't have cravings and I attribute it to my body having all the nutrients it needs. Food for thought.

Tomorrow: What are the real differences between kinds of flours?

My Low(er)-Flour Diet

Last week I mentioned that I was sick from all the flour after our trip to Block Island. I cut back on flour all week and here are all the floury items I consumed last week:

Tuesday-croutons on my salad for lunch
Wednesday-croutons on my salad for lunch, half a cookie for a snack (it was a pretty big half), bread with dinner (I ate at a real restaurant, where someone takes your order and they take reservations-and there were no children present, Thank You DH!!!!!!!)
Thursday-croutons on my salad for lunch, a couple of dumplings with dinner (Not the asian kind of dumplings, the southern comfort kind. I made chicken and dumplings for the family for the night I went out, but DH didn't leave me that many dumplings.)
Friday-sandwich for lunch with crusty bread, pasta with the kids for dinner
Saturday-small sandwich for lunch, crumble topping on dessert (gooseberry and sour cherry crumble, numnumnum, more on that later this week)
Sunday-Are you ready? Pancakes for breakfast, pizzeria pizza for lunch, homemade whole wheat muffins for a snack and whole wheat pasta for dinner. Oy. And I have to say I really felt the difference. I was literally sick from all the flour.

There were several times that I reached for the kids pasta or the scraps of their sandwiches. But because I was really trying to limit my flour intake I resisted for the sake of science (or whatever this qualifies as).

I do believe though that I feel better when I limit the flour foods I eat. I did not however restrict my carb intake. I ate rice one night, all manner of vegetables, granola and oatmeal for breakfast. I do feel like I feel better when I eat some carbs, whole grains, and of course I am passionate about veggies. But what is it about the flour that makes me so sick? I do not have celiac disease, that much I know. But I can't stand how sluggish I feel after so much flour.

But this 'experiment' has left me with all kinds of questions. I have begun my research into the history of flour and what makes it tick. I should have something for you next week. I'll keep you posted.

Too Much Flour

I must admit. I kind of cut loose on vacation in the food department. While we did bring in all kinds of healthy food to Block Island and we didn't drop the ball with dinners and veggies, it wasn't quite the same as eating at home.

I have a well stocked pantry at home where I keep nuts and Larabars and healthy snacks. I have yogurt on hand and oatmeal at all times. But with limited space in our city car, I couldn't bring the entire refrigerator with us to the Island. So we definitely went out and bought our fair share of Goldfish crackers, bagels, muffins and hot dogs. Even if most of it was locally baked and 'high-quality', what really got me was all the flour.

I didn't realize it, but I don't usually eat alot of flour. And I mean all flour, I am not just bashing white flour here. I will eat pasta once or twice a week, and of course my homemade pizza. I do get a hankering for a bagel once a month or so, and my City Bakery croissants are really a substance that should be controlled by the DEA. So I do eat flour. I love my flour products and I have no intention of going flour free (for now). But to go from eating flour foods maybe 6-8 times per week to 3-4 times per day? That is where I got into trouble.

On vacation we would have bagels for breakfast, Goldfish crackers (more on that later, yipes!) for a snack, sandwiches for lunch and pretzels for a snack in the afternoon. A few days of that and I was in a bad way. My tummy is still a little upset, I was very full, but constantly hungry and my energy is pretty low. I cannot wait to detox and get back to whole grains and raw veggies. I was never anti-carbs. I have always loved potatoes and embraced pasta. But after a week of changes from the norm and I could see it clearly. All this flour was really a problem. Eating potatoes never makes me feel like this.

There are people still that do not think that obesity is related to our exorbitent sugar and flour intake as a country (or perhaps they just haven't publicly admitted it), but I am completely convinced that it is as a result of just a week of change from my normal diet. I am so used to my body running at top efficiency, slow downs as a result of something I can control like diet is not acceptable. I recently read an article that I think summed it up pretty well. Dr Michael Roizin wrote for ivillage that "White bread...is made from wheat grain that has been stripped of the outer shell and germ. Why is this a bad thing? When you eat breads and pastas from this type of wheat-also called enriched, bleached, unbleached, semolina or durum-or rice flour, your body quickly converts this carbohydrate to sugar in your bloodstream. Your brain likes the feel-good rush of the sugar and sends out the message, more, more more!" That is EXACTLY what I felt like after eating too much floury stuff.

I am going to limit my flour intake more than normal this week to get back to feeling like myself. I am even thinking that I should upgrade from the 'half-white' or brown flour I have been buying and go to full on whole wheat. I have been a little nervous because so many people have told me that you can't use exclusively whole wheat in most applications. But to heck with that. I suppose I should just try it and see what I think!

I will report on my findings later. Uggh. I can't wait to get back to normal. Next year I am packing more yogurt and no more Goldfish!!!!