Chapter 16 Chapter 14 Eat more whole grains?

Are all our favorite flour products, pizza and noodles a threat to our health?Are you feeling a little uneasy?Believe me, I was as disturbed as you when I first read these studies (see Chapter 3).It all happened so suddenly, why haven't we heard about it from the media?Don't have what you shouldn't have.Maybe the next time we pray before a meal, we should say: Thank the Lord, don't give us bread today?And what about potatoes?It would be a cultural disaster if the Germans were to give up the potato!This is our most important and favorite home cooking, but it can threaten our health?Haven't nutrition authorities been teaching us consumers for decades that grains and potatoes should be the mainstay of a meal, with meat just a side dish?

The good news is yet to come, and grains have gradually become the most important food source in the world.Nearly 60% of the calories consumed in the world come from grains!Cereals, on the other hand, are lifesavers that keep many from going hungry or malnourished.Because in addition to starch and calories, grains also contain many substances useful to the body: proteins, vitamins, minerals and trace elements.Of course, grains also contain more fat, especially Omega︱6 unsaturated fatty acids, which are healthy substances. In addition to these nutritious components, grains contain non-nutritious components such as crude fiber and other phytochemicals.These substances actually have no nutritional value, but they have an irreplaceable and important function for the normal functioning of the body.We have seen in the previous chapter that they are anti-mutation, anti-cancer, anti-microbial, anti-oxidant, anti-thrombotic, immune function adjustment, anti-inflammatory, lower cholesterol, control blood pressure and blood sugar, and aid in digestion.

However, these substances are only found in unbraned rough grains.Cereal products processed from whole grains are rich in nutrients.On the contrary, it is made from fine flour without bran, which is mostly starch, and other useful ingredients are difficult to find.They obviously have different effects on the body: Whole grains elicit a much milder blood sugar and insulin response than refined flours.Therefore, it is necessary to explore the impact of these differences on health. Compared with whole wheat flour, fine flour and whole wheat flour have the largest difference in composition in terms of crude fiber content.In today's human diet, whole grain products are indeed the most important source of crude fiber.The finer the processing, the less crude fiber remains.In addition, the high degree of fine grinding in the food label does not mean high processing degree, but low, where high refers to the amount of minerals retained in the flour.This is the amount indicated by the number on the flour label: No. 405 flour has only 405 mg of minerals, while No. 1050 flour has 1,050 mg.

Of all the minor components of food, we have studied the health benefits of crude fiber in the most detail, yet there are ups and downs when it comes to evaluating its benefits.Previously, we thought that crude fiber was the most important factor in preventing bowel cancer.Numerous population comparisons and a series of case-surveillance studies have shown this.However, such epidemiological studies are generally not very convincing.More importantly, it is a long-term observational study on healthy people.However, such studies have consistently shown that eating more or less crude fiber has no effect on the incidence of bowel cancer.How to do it?At least there is a glimmer of hope. If we only study the effect of crude fiber in grains, it seems that the preventive effect can still be proved.

When it comes to breast cancer, it's not necessarily any better.Case-surveillance studies have shown some preventive effects, but long-term observational studies have failed to confirm this.The efficacy of crude fiber against other cancers has been little studied.The nutrition authority's recommendation of thirty grams of crude fiber per day to prevent bowel cancer is, again, based on good assumptions, hopes, and speculations rather than fact, but at least it's true.And we also discovered another benefit of thick fiber: prevention of myocardial infarction!In six different long-term observational studies, it was found that a large intake of crude fiber can significantly reduce the mortality rate of myocardial infarction.How to explain it?Perhaps because crude fiber has the effect of lowering cholesterol?We'll come back to that in a bit.

Before that, I would like to briefly introduce to you a few very interesting studies.What these studies want to illustrate is not the efficacy of crude fiber, but the significance of whole grain foods to health.There is a big difference between the two, because grains without bran removal contain many substances useful to organisms in addition to crude fiber, and their types and contents are much higher than those of refined white flour. In two large, well-analyzed, long-term observational studies involving a total of 100,000 women, whole grains have been shown to protect against disease, depending on the amount consumed.Those with the highest intake of whole grains had about 30 percent less heart attack than those with the lowest intake.One such study, the Iowa Women's Health Survey, directly compared the diets of whole grains and refined white flour products.Women who preferred whole grains not only had fewer heart attacks, but the more whole grains they ate, the lower the overall mortality rate.On the contrary, those women who like to eat refined white flour pasta, the higher the intake, the higher the mortality rate!

It is clear that people who eat whole wheat flour and those who eat refined white flour are not just eating differently processed flours.Generally speaking, the former are more health-conscious, otherwise they would not blindly like rough and hard food.Therefore, on the whole, they smoke less, exercise more, and pay more attention to a reasonable diet, that is, eat a healthy diet with more vitamins, minerals, and crude fiber.Researchers in the United States took these factors into account in the two large surveys and included them in the statistics.Even so, the results were surprising. There must be other reasons.It is speculated that the rich phytochemicals in whole grain foods have the functions of anti-oxidation, anti-inflammation, preventing blood coagulation and thrombus, and lowering blood pressure.Scholars are naturally also discussing whether the lower glycemic index of whole grain foods and their efficacy in preventing insulin resistance and unknown syndrome play a key role.

A host of other studies, although not as convincing as the ones mentioned above, have also shown that refined white flour and whole grain products may have quite different effects on our health.For example, some case-surveillance studies have shown that whole grains have a protective effect against certain cancers.Various phytochemicals are believed to play an important role here.For example, carotene, phytoalcohol, saponin, glucose isothiocyanate, phenolic acid, flavonoids, (post)ene, sulfide and phytoestrogens, etc., these compounds are considered to have anti-cancer effects. Quantitatively, the most important phytoestrogens that can affect the body's own estrogen effects are lidocaine (Lignane) and flavonoids.It has been speculated that sufficient intake of these two substances is necessary to achieve the purpose of cancer prevention, and there must be a healthy and active intestinal flora.Because these phytoestrogens, in the human body, they must first be converted by the intestinal flora into compounds that have an effect on hormones.

Let us return to the question of refined white flour.To describe it as disturbing is to put it mildly, because too many epidemiological studies have shown that a large intake of starch-rich foods, such as flour products, especially white bread, noodles and rice, may increase the risk of gastric cancer, colorectal cancer and the likelihood of developing breast cancer.Currently, I am aware of eighteen case-surveillance studies with this result. However, it must be admitted that there are some studies that cannot confirm this relationship.And as we all know, the results of case surveillance studies must be viewed with great caution, and they cannot be used as evidence in principle.Even so, a large number of credible facts make people have to think deeply, and the few long-term studies have unfortunately confirmed this speculation.The suggestions of nutrition authorities to persuade people to eat less meat are based on this kind of case monitoring research.Yet we have never heard of respectable experts advising people to eat less bread, pastries, pasta, rice and potatoes.it's really weird

So, as long as you eat coarse grains, everything will be fine?Unfortunately not quite so.Many very potent botanical substances have unintended side effects.The prime suspect is the supposedly beneficial Omega 6 unsaturated fatty acid, which is found in high amounts in wheat germ, corn sprout and soybean oil.In Chapter Sixteen, we shall return to this question.In addition, excessive intake of certain phytoestrogens in soybeans or grains may actually cause cancer.Over the past forty years, we have finally realized that grains may cause certain diseases, such as celiac disease in young children, because some people have a genetic inability to tolerate gluten, the protein in grains. gluten.Grains trigger their autoimmune response, causing damage to the intestinal mucosa.It is also thought that some of the non-nutritional components in grains, such as alkylresorcinols, may cause depression and be toxic.They can also cause mutations and abnormalities in red blood cells, changing the composition of cells and the chain structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).These will accelerate the aging of liver and kidney cells.Other substances, such as amylase inhibitors, cause changes in the pancreatic tissue that may lead to tissue death or cancer.In addition, they are potential allergens.There are many indications that excess grain intake may be associated with the development of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes.Certain ingredients in grains, such as phytic acid, alkylresorcinols, protease inhibitors, and lectins, have so far been considered non-nutritional ingredients that impair normal body functions.Therefore, we believe that humans today have not been genetically adapted to such high grain intakes today.After all, a large number of grains entered the human food chain only in the most recent evolutionary stage.

According to these latest understandings, the only way to deal with unknown syndrome is to eat whole grains if you eat grains, and don't eat too much!Because in addition to the various risk of disease just mentioned, there is also the most basic point: the more grains you eat, the more carbohydrates, the more components in the blood, and the greater the pressure on the pancreas to produce insulin.In this case, for many, less grains should be preferred. If you read the above two chapters, your impression is that you are going to join the camp of vegetarians.Then I can only tell you, please continue reading, what surprises you is yet to come!