First, refined carbs are processed so that they are light and fluffy and have a wonderful texture, which is why they are so popular. But this processing removes a great deal of the vitamins and minerals and fiber, which means that we are missing a lot of nutrition that we would be getting if we ate only whole grainy things.
Second, without that fiber, the sweet flavorings of the starches and sugars are more noticeable, and we want to eat more. There's no fiber to fill us up and tell us that we've eaten enough. We love the flavor and keep going back for more. This causes us to consume a lot of extra calories without any accompanying vitamins and minerals and such.
Third, there are some theories that humans are not designed to consume so much "empty" carbs as we are consuming nowadays in the western world. In populations that have lived for thousands of years eating local whole relatively unprocessed foods (whether it's primarily meat-based or primarily veggie-based), there is often evidence that these people have learned how to combine foods so that they get maximum nutrition without eating a lot of empty calories. When these same people move to a country where they have access to a "western" diet, they often get the so-called "western" diseases, such as diabetes and heart problems. The so-called "western" diet is heavy in processed carbs and processed fats, and deficient in vegetables, fresh fruits, and whole grains, all of which provide fiber along with the vitamins and minerals -- fiber which fills us up and limits how much starch we eat.
My feeling is that it isn't the processed carbs themselves which are the problem -- it's that they are so easily and cheaply obtained that they replace foods which have more nutrition, and they taste so good that they encourage us to eat more and more and more, leading to obesity, diabetes, nutritional imbalances, and a host of other problems. That is, a piece of candy now and then isn't bad for us. A piece of cake at a birthday party isn't bad for us. But we have made those "special occasions" to be every day and at every meal and between every meal. We don't have white flour and sugar only once in a while to celebrate some special event or holiday. We have sugar and starch in such vast quantities that our bodies can't handle it, and, in the process, we are not eating the other important nutrients that whole foods would provide.
Thank you. That was really informative. I definitely believe very strongly in the fact that in the last 10,000 years, while we've evolves so much in other areas, our bodies haven't been adapting to our eating habits. I've heard of the "caveman diet," but I think I'd die. lol
Do you know anything more about the "food combinations" you were talking about? I'm interested.
Thanks
I can't say specifically what food combinations are appropriate for everyone. Humans have lived for thousands of years without the aid of cars and airplanes to get them around quickly, and the use of ships and trains to get foreign foods to their local markets. These transportation methods are very recent in human history. So populations have had to rely on local foods to come up with a diet that is nutritious and delicious.
Scientists have looked at various diets around the world and have marveled that so many varied diets have been able to provide people with appropriate nutrition. Over time people manage to find out how to combine their local food possibilities to minimize the dangerous foods and maximize the good ones.
I was just reading an interesting story about the discovery of what causes pellagra (niacin deficiency). There are descriptions of people with the same symptoms in the literature over thousands of years, long before vitamins were discovered. Explorers from Spain noticed that the local peoples in Mexico and Central America ate happily on a diet of beans and corn and not much else. The explorers brought this new plant of corn back to Europe and it became a cheap way of feeding people because it grew easily in Europe, and it became a primary source of food for poor people who couldn't afford anything else. Then the next several generations of poor people showed the same symptoms of pellegra, even though they were eating the same food that the peoples in Central America were thriving on. The problem with the corn in Europe was that corn all by itself has a substance that binds the niacin, and keeps it from being utilized by the humans who eat it. If you aren't getting any other source of niacin in your diet, then you're going to have a deficiency, because you aren't getting it from the corn no matter how much niacin is bound up in the plant. What the European explorers didn't realize is that the Central Americans had somehow determined that corn needs to be treated with an alkaline substance (lime) in order to free up the niacin. Even though the Central Americans had a limited diet, they were able to find a way to utilize this food and get maximum nutrition from it. The explorers who thought that the use of lime was merely a fussy unnecessary extra step, brought only the corn plant back to Europe with them, and not any of the methods of utilizing the plant.
Scientists have noticed that people who eat a traditional diet in Japan often live long healthy lives. They looked at the Japanese diet and said, hmmm, these people eat a lot of soy products and the women don't get breast cancer and the men don't have heart attacks, and it looks good in a test tube when we put soy and certain cells together. So they said, we should recommend that westerners add soy to their diets so that they don't get breast cancer and heart attacks and they'll all be healthy like the Japanese. Well, now they're finding out that westerners aren't protected from these diseases like the Japanese, and in fact it looks like adding soy to the diet is increasing the health problems of lots of people. Again, like in the example of corn above, what is becoming apparent is that it isn't sufficient to just add soy to the diet. The traditional Japanese diet uses soy in small amounts, and, more important, it uses fermented soy -- tofu, miso, soy sauce and the like. So here's another example of people trying to simply use a food from another culture without taking into account just how that food was actually used in that culture.
This really is the marvel of the human diet. Long before the days of microscopes and laboratories, humans have managed to spread to all corners of the world and learn how to live with whatever food stuffs they find there. This is why I don't agree with people who declare that such and such a diet (Atkins, vegetarian, whatever) is the proper diet for everyone, or that we all should eat or not eat a particular food. It's a lot more complicated than that.
The main reason that most people would say refined carbs are bad for you are that they will affect your blood sugar more drastically than most forms of "good" carbohydrates. Refined carbs usually bring about a bigger insulin response which causes blood sugar to rise and fall more rapidly than it would with "good" carbs. As you may know the pancreas (which is responsible for releasing insulin into the bloodstream) can be overworked if someone is always consuming refined carbs. This can lead to insulin resistance which places you at a much higher risk for type 2 diabetes.
Another reason that refined carbs are often considered bad for you are that they also lack many of the nutrients such as fiber which again helps to regulate the insulin response of food. Hope that helps
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