FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
nationthailand

Why grains might not be so good for us after all

Why grains might not be so good for us after all

Re: “Impact Exhibition unit expands into frozen bakery products”, Business, April 18.

In Monday’s Nation, a food-and-beverages director is quoted extolling the “healthy” new French-style bakery products of a Thai company. To the better informed, that’s an oxymoron, since bakery products can’t be healthy. 
Mainstream advice on healthy eating is to eat grains five or six time per day, making up to 15 per cent of one’s daily intake. Yet it’s more like 11 times daily – which is the mainstream advice for consumption of foods high in starches. (The only thing not a grain in the high-starch category is the potato.)
All grains are high in lectin plant phenols – chemicals that desensitise cell membranes to insulin, causing insulin overproduction. Grains are also high in leptin plant hormones that interrupt the signalling between the liver and pancreas, causing insulin disruptions. These two effects cause obesity and diabetes 2. 
Wheat and most other grains raise blood sugar. A slice of organic whole-wheat bread raises blood sugar more than a candy bar. Grains are high in carbohydrates, which fatten tummies, yet we are told it’s the fat that fattens. Digested first carbs top up muscle and liver glycogen – stored sugar. The rest is rapidly converted to body fat in the cells’ mitochondria via the Krebs cycle. Digested fat only slowly converts to useable energy molecules in the liver.
Grains raise artery-calcifying triglycerides and are high in phytates that block calcium and iron absorption. White flour has residual chlorine from bleaching that depletes immune-boosting body-stores of selenium. Grains can cause Celiac disease (leaky gut) in the susceptible – and that’s 60-70 per cent of the population. As Celiac has about 300 symptoms, you likely won’t even know when you have it!
Are we misinformed by the mainstream so as to have a sickly, weak and overweight public that eventually needs medication? Many believe so.
Thomas Turk
nationthailand