Take control of your energy: know your daily bread!

Isn’t it surprising how little interest we show in the food we eat? Except we care how it tastes. Having our daily bread is a privilege most of us take for granted. But how much do we know about carbohydrates or ‘starches’ and how they affect our bodies? For those of us who have heard the Biblical story, food was the devil’s first weapon to tempt us to self-destruction. And if we don’t learn to understand carbohydrates, this staple food can be deadly for your figure. Handle with Care!

I love the bread I always have. Especially the fragrant homemade whole wheat bread with a golden crust that my mom baked. When I lived in Germany, first as an Au Pair and then as a trainee journalist, the bakers on every main street tempted me with a wide variety of rolls, each with a different name: Lausbub, Milchbrötle, Vollkorn, Dreikorn, Roggenbrötchen. , Salzpretzel. Absolutely delicious. But I soon paid the price: my normally slim body began to gain weight at the speed of a bite!

When I returned home, no one recognized me. And I had nothing to wear! That’s when my search for knowledge about food began. I am now a fervent advocate of teaching nutrition in kindergarten. Because it seems that modern moms don’t really have the knowledge they need to teach their babies and toddlers good eating habits, especially not the latest scientific information. It’s too bad: every human child should know which foods are good for his body and which are not, regardless of taste.

Just how much our culture influences our food choices is something I’ve learned especially since becoming involved with a charity that operates two boarding schools for teenagers, mainly from the deep rural areas of South Africa. The children who attend these schools, one for boys and one for girls, come from homes where they have been taught that a meal without meat is not food, just a “snack.” And that you have to stuff yourself with corn porridge (known here as ‘phutu’) to say you’re ‘full’, before you stop eating!

If I look at the rest of the world that I have been traveling to, the cultural paradigms are different, but the end result is the same: too many carbs and fats! In the US, children grow up on cereal with milk and MacDonald’s hamburgers. In Europe too many now also resort to similar eating habits. Just a few weeks ago, in July, when I visited my godson in Germany, his father lamented the fact that the mothers from his daughter’s swimming class came to him and sternly warned him that his daughter was too skinny He remembers from his childhood that all children were strong and athletic. Now most elementary school children already show signs of obesity!

Yes, we certainly need carbohydrates in our diet. This is the fuel for our muscles. So, especially if we are very physically active, we do need this type of food a lot, in all its different forms: bread, cereals, pasta, etc.

Children have much more energy than we do, because their bodies are not yet burdened with the bad eating habits we have adopted as adults, usually from our own parents. Looking at the history of food, and just understanding the eating habits of my own ancestors, overeating just wasn’t the order of the day. Something happened after World War II, as far as our diets are concerned. Suddenly, all kinds of new artificial foods entered the mainstream: colors, flavors, preservatives. And television brought all this new ‘wonderful’ food and these new flavors into our homes. So of course our diets changed!

Having white bread from the village bakery became a special treat for us country children, who were used to whole wheat bread baked by mom at home. If it had remained a special treat, it would have been fine. But with urbanization and further and further from the source of our food, white bread, wheat, has become the staple food for far too many human beings around the world.

There is nothing wrong with wheat, if you eat it in moderation. As with most other things: if you don’t overeat, you’re generally fine, health and weight-wise.

But when it comes to wheat, especially white wheat flour, there’s a BIG ‘However’.

White wheat flour, like any other type of ‘refined’ grain where the healthy fiber, vitamins and minerals have been virtually ‘surgically removed’, is really nothing more than a slightly different form of sugar. Now imagine eating solid pieces of sugar, like we eat slices of white bread or rolls…

I didn’t know this until I started researching the impact of different types of food on our bodies, minds, and emotions. And yes, even in our spirit. Drugs affect our spirit. But that’s a story for another day…

Today I just want you to be very aware of the fact that ‘refined’ wheat has the same effect as ‘refined’ sugar, if not treated in moderation. It causes blood sugar levels to spike, causing our pancreas to release more and more insulin (remember this organ from biology class?) and thus over time affecting our body’s ability to to regulate their sugar levels, which often results in adult-onset diabetes!

If you are a worker who needs to do heavy manual labor, or if you are an athlete or go to the gym every day, you can eat a large amount of carbohydrates every day, because your body burns this ‘sugar’ for fuel to keep your muscles go.

However, if you sit a lot or just do moderate physical activity, you need to be careful about how much fuel you give your body. Because every gram of carbs you don’t use that day is converted by your body into sugar and from there into fat. The fat in our body is nothing more than a ‘storage area’, a ‘pantry’, for those days when we need to draw on this reserve. However, with our current blessed lifestyle, the chances of us not having food tomorrow have really been reduced to a minimum, so we don’t need to store large stores of fat in our bodies either. The problem with fat is that it causes excessive weight on our bone structure, pulling us down even lower than gravity normally would, and also putting a huge strain on the heart, which now suddenly has to feed a whole new layer of fat. of body mass (pure fat) with blood. Fat sits directly under our skin, so if the heart can no longer function properly, blood struggles to get to our skin, and this has all sorts of effects on the well-being of our bodies. Just do your own research on this on the internet and you will be surprised how important it is to keep the fat layer under the skin in a lower range.

The other thing to be aware of is that wheat contains a material called ‘gluten’. Gluten is a form of protein, which is easily digestible for most people, but in recent years, probably due to excessive wheat eating by humans, an increasing number of people are becoming intolerant of this food. , with a variety of symptoms ranging from chronic diarrhea and constant tiredness. The biggest problem is that, in these cases, gluten prevents the digestive system from properly absorbing nutrients, such as vitamins and minerals, which causes malnutrition.

I’m not suggesting you rush to get tested for a gluten allergy. However, I encourage you to learn more about carbohydrates and how you can ensure that you and the people you cook for can enjoy the benefits of carbohydrates, without suffering the disaster of overeating.

Also, I recommend that we all move away from a wheat-dominated carbohydrate diet to include more different types of carbohydrates, because in this way we can benefit from different types of minerals and vitamins.

Let carbohydrates form the ‘backbone’ of your weekly menu for your family, then choose suitable vegetables and protein to serve alongside carbohydrates at lunch and dinner.

Here is my suggested ‘Plan Menu’. Except for sticking to the ‘Fruit First’ rule, you can change the order as you wish. I’m just adding a few ‘variations’ for each type of carb, so you can start thinking about this. The basic menu plan is always the same:

Breakfast – Only fruit until 12:00 pm

Lunch – Tuesday 12:00 pm Ideally, eat only daily carbohydrates with vegetables or vegetable protein. Soups in winter with bread and salad in summer, using bread or cereals in the soup. If you’re not working from home, make something the night before, pack it up for everyone in your family, and take it to work. Lunch packs for children can always include sandwiches and slices of cut vegetables, such as tomatoes, celery, carrots, etc.

Afternoon – Around 3:00 pm Any form of carbohydrate (eg, cookie or biscuit) with any type of water or non-caffeinated hot beverage.

Dinner – Around 6:00 pm Protein with vegetables or a vegetable protein with a carbohydrate. Eat protein in moderation and a large helping of salad with your dinner to fill up. Over time, you will notice that you need less and less food.

Evening Snack: Around 8:00 pm, no later than 9:00 pm Any type of snack, eg nuts or cookies, but only a small portion to satisfy your taste buds. Even better is to simply drink your favorite herbal tea at this time, before going to sleep.

Now you can make your life much easier and healthier by choosing your daily carbohydrate for lunch from the following:

Monday – Wheat

This includes any type of wheat bread, cakes, pastas, and couscous.

Tuesday – Sorghum/Spelled or any other ‘exotic’ grain

Visit your local health food store section of the supermarket to see what’s available and try new recipes.

Thursday – Potatoes

This is such a versatile food – mashed, boiled then fried, boiled, baked, French fries, potato soup, croquettes

Wednesday – Oats

Porridge, muffins, crunchy granola cookies, oat flakes stir-fried in a salad or as a soup topping

Friday – Rye

Rye is best known as bread, but look up recipes for other cool things to make with rye. There are also different types of rye bread!

Saturday – Maize/Corn

This is ideal for family gatherings. Corn on the cob, nachos, cornbread and other traditional ways to use corn. Combine with beans, as the Mexicans do, avoid meat.

sunday-rice

There are many different types of rice, so there is already some variety. But then, of course, you can use rice as is, rice cakes, rice dishes, rice and soy milk soup with cinnamon and steamed dried fruits. Let your imagination fly!

The main secret that all of us living in the 21st century should know is that it is very easy to overeat carbohydrates, because they are a form of sugar and sugar is addictive. So learn more about how you can kick this addiction and start from scratch. Your body will thank you!