The Starch Solution (28 page)

American cheese: 404

Bacon: 415

Blue cheese: 396

Cottage cheese: 560

Ham: 830

Parmesan cheese: 409

Pepperoni: 406

Salami: 510

Sour cream dip: 350

Turkey pastrami: 745

If you were to eat 2,000 calories of these foods, you would take in 10,000 milligrams of sodium, or 435 percent of the USDA recommendation of less than 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day. If you ate 3,000 calories of them, it would total 15,000 milligrams of sodium. Note that corn, peas, potatoes, and rice have about 10 milligrams each of sodium per 100 calories.

When we blame salt, we are colluding with the food companies that have fooled us into focusing our attention on an innocent bystander when the real culprit is the foods that have been overly salted. Salt also tricks us into eating animal-derived foods, which, without excessive amounts of it, would be altogether unappealing. It’s not the salt, but the bacon that makes us fat and sick.

You need only as little as 50 milligrams of sodium per day to meet your baseline metabolic requirements.
¹²
A diet based on starches, vegetables, and fruits, with no added sodium, contributes about 200 to 500 milligrams, so there is no reason for concern that you won’t get enough, even without adding salt.

Adding a half teaspoon of salt at the table to your starch-based meals over the course of a day adds about 1,100 milligrams of sodium, for a daily total of about 1,600 milligrams, 700 milligrams below the 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines of less than 2,300 milligrams daily, and 400 milligrams below the 2,000-milligram low-sodium diet fed to hospital patients following a massive heart attack.

With these naturally low levels, I have no concerns about inviting people following my starch-based diet to sprinkle a little salt on their food. Assuming the food was not prepared with sodium, you could add up to three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt per day and still stay within the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines. I suggest adding salt at the table rather than in cooking because salt added during cooking largely dissipates into the mix of other ingredients, losing the pleasurable flavor. Your big payoff is when you add salt to the surface of your food; it contacts your tongue directly.

Some people are, however, sensitive to salt and must follow a very restricted diet. These people can develop swollen feet from just a couple of glasses of salty tomato juice on a long airplane ride, or swollen fingers after eating Chinese food. For people with severely damaged
hearts and kidneys, avoiding salt can be lifesaving. Obviously, these are good reasons to restrict salt for certain people, but not for the general population.

Along with salt, a little sweetness goes a long way toward making foods taste great. At least at first, you may find corn, beans, potatoes, and rice a little bland compared to what you’re used to eating. So what if you enhance these healthy starches with familiar sauces you have enjoyed your whole life? If adding barbecue, blueberry, curry, ketchup, marinade, pasta, raspberry, salsa, steak, or a sweet and sour sauce keeps you eating plenty of healthy starches, I’m all for it.

Sugar is an energy source and taste pleaser with no fat, cholesterol, or sodium and very few chemical contaminants. It is inexpensive, costing about 40 cents per pound, or about a penny for every 45 calories of energy. The environmental footprint associated with sugar production is small, and no animals need be harmed in its production. Used appropriately, it is a helpful addition to your kitchen arsenal. Like salt, sugars add to the deliciousness of your food, ensuring enjoyment as you eat the best foods nature has to offer.

Sugar is clearly a better choice for enhancing flavor than fats and oils, which contribute two and a quarter times more calories per gram than pure white sugar and cause a host of health problems. Feel free to sprinkle a little brown sugar over your oatmeal, drizzle maple syrup over your pancakes, add a bit of refined sugar to a fruit dessert, or dress up your starches and vegetables with sweetened sauces. The shift from animal foods, processed foods, and fats to plant foods is already a giant leap forward for your health. A little sugar won’t diminish the powerful effects of this dietary change for most people.

As with salt, you’ll get the most flavor by putting the sweet stuff on your food at the table rather than cooking with it. A teaspoon of brown sugar on your bowl of oatmeal adds just 16 calories. These few extra
calories will not cause you to put on weight, but they will make the difference in whether or not you look forward to your breakfast.

The misconception that carbohydrates are bad is at the root of your avoidance of some of nature’s most perfect foods. Remember that there are three sources of calories—proteins, fats, and carbohydrates—that can be obtained from foods. Sugar, a carbohydrate, is the primary source of energy for cells throughout your body. If you avoid carbohydrates, you are left to fill your calorie void with fat and protein, most likely in the form of meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy products, and vegetable oils.

Studies show that people who eat more simple sugar tend to take in fewer calories altogether, which means less chance of becoming overweight.
¹³
One reason for this is that people who eat more simple and complex sugars generally eat less fat, the real culprit in weight gain and illness. This is because sugar and fat act as a sort of seesaw: When one goes up in a person’s diet, the other goes down, naturally.

Type 2 diabetes is a direct result of obesity. Worldwide, the populations with the lowest rates of diabetes are those that eat the most carbohydrate; type 2 diabetes is all but unknown in rural Asia, Africa, Mexico, and Peru, where a high-carbohydrate diet is the cultural norm.
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–
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Some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes are, however, found among people of Hispanic, Native American, Polynesian, and African descent living in prosperous countries, but not because of their genetic makeup or the starch-based diets of their distant ancestors. These ethnic groups became fat and sick when they adopted a high-fat, high-protein Western diet.
¹⁷

Scientists understand that sugar does not cause type 2 diabetes; the American Diabetic Association recommends that diabetics consume 55 to 65 percent of their calories from carbohydrate, which may include sugary foods.
¹⁸
High-carbohydrate diets based on starches have been
shown to help diabetics cure their underlying disease, get off their medications, and improve their overall health.
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–
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That the role of sugar in common diseases has been overrated does not mean that sugar and white flour hold the keys to good health. As carbohydrates become increasingly refined, they become less efficient in inhibiting weight gain and increasing weight loss.
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,
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Refined sugars and flours are referred to as “empty calories” because most essential nutrients have been removed in their manufacturing. Complex carbohydrates in the form of whole starches, like brown rice, whole oats, corn, white potatoes, and sweet potatoes, are the best route to weight loss and good health.

You’ve probably heard a lot recently about the glycemic index (GI), which measures the rise in blood sugar over 2 to 3 hours after we eat. Your blood sugar is
supposed
to rise after you eat. It’s a
good
thing, not the sign of a problem. Why do we eat in the first place? Aside from the pure pleasure of it, we eat to get the energy needed to carry out our daily activities. GI measures the effectiveness of a particular food as a source of life-sustaining fuel.

This perfectly normal increase has become associated by the public with diabetes, the disease characterized by abnormally high blood sugar. As a result, consumers and medical professionals alike assume that foods with a higher GI, such as potatoes and rice, that cause some of the higher increases in blood sugar seen after a meal, are harmful and should be avoided.

This is far from true, and the mistake is leaving enormous health problems in its wake, including higher rates of diabetes itself. In the United States, Australia, and Western Europe, obesity and type 2 diabetes have reached epidemic proportions as people shun healthy carbohydrates, in part, because of their GI ratings and replace them with
unhealthy but very low-GI foods like vegetable oils, meats, and cheeses.

Glycemic index (GI) measures the rise in blood sugar following the consumption of a food.

Starches high on the GI actually
prevent
weight gain in people who tend to be obese.
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,
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Rising blood sugar triggers satiety, telling you it’s time to stop eating.
²⁶
Rather than causing you to eat too much and gain weight, high-GI foods help you to feel satisfied, and thus to stop eating. Potatoes have a high GI, and for this reason they have been shown, based on the same number of calories, to satisfy the appetite twice as well as meat or cheese.
²⁷

Carbo-loading is practiced by all winning endurance athletes. Carbohydrates, stored as glycogen in the muscles and liver and later released into the bloodstream, provide immediate energy for the whole body during a race. Athletes have learned that the most efficient way to replenish their spent glycogen reserves is to choose foods high on the
GI.
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Selecting foods with a high GI is sound advice not only for athletes, but for anyone yearning to be strong and energetic throughout the day.

Taking the GI out of context leads to some unfounded and dangerous conclusions. Think about a slice of pizza dripping with oily cheese and a nice, big slice of chocolate cake piled high with rich frosting versus a bag of raw carrots and some plain boiled potatoes. Which of these foods are healthier? You won’t have any trouble picking the carrots and potatoes. Which have the lower GI? The pizza and cake. Will choosing what to eat based on its GI help you to avoid obesity and diabetes and a multitude of other illnesses? No.

As a practicing physician, I mostly see elevated triglycerides and dental cavities as the primary problems resulting from people eating too much simple sugar. Carbohydrates are commonly implicated in increased triglycerides, the elevated blood fat levels associated with risk for heart disease and strokes. But in order to demonstrate a rise in triglycerides from eating carbohydrates in experimental studies, subjects must eat a great deal of simple sugars and refined flours and/or must continue to eat after they feel full to the point of discomfort.
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Under these special conditions, the liver will turn some of the excess dietary sugars to triglycerides.
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On the other hand, when subjects are fed starches such as whole grains, beans, and potatoes, along with green and yellow vegetables, and when they are asked to eat only as much as they wish (not to overeat), their triglyceride levels do not increase.
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