In my articles, I often refer to foods as whole or unprocessed and urge them to be preferred. Refined foods can be considered the antipodes of whole foods in the food world, and I decided to write about some of them.
Refined butter, premium flour, white sugar. We are used to eating all this every day and take it for granted. But by doing so, we daily deprive ourselves of important nutrients and useful components that were originally contained in these products, but were “extracted” from them during refining. Why do manufacturers do this? Of course, depriving foods of vitamins is not their goal at all. Their goal is to extend the shelf life of the product, to make it as cheap as possible, suitable for the widest range of needs, “beautiful” and “tasty” (or tasteless, so that, for example, refined oil does not interrupt the taste of culinary products). For this, refining is used – the final purification of products, during which the so-called “ballast substances” are removed from it, including vitamins, trace elements, antioxidants, amino acids, fiber, etc. As a result, we get defective in composition, but – still a calorie-charged product. Let’s take a look at what products are most frequently refined today to be more careful with their choice.
Vegetable oil
A person needs this oil for good nutrition: it contains polyunsaturated fatty acids that protect our cells from destruction, as well as vitamins and nutrients.
Cold-pressed vegetable oil is called by WHO and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization “oils obtained without changing the nature of the oil, only by mechanical procedures, for example, pressing and pressing, without heating. They can only be cleaned by washing with water, sedimentation, filtration and centrifugation. ” This is how unrefined sunflower oil and very healthy Extra Virgin olive oil are obtained.
But in addition to these methods, such methods as, for example, oil extraction using solvents are also used. A solvent is added to the prepared raw material, which allows you to get more oil than cold pressing, and then it is evaporated. True, there are fears that some of the solvent may still remain in the oil, which we will then buy. What other tests can vegetable oil be subjected to? Discoloration. Deodorization (that is, the oil is odorless by distilling it with water vapor at temperatures above 230 degrees). Hydrogenation (hydrogen saturated trans fats are widely used in cooking). As a result, this oil goes through various chemical processes, cooling and heating several times.
Read more about the different types of fat and their health / benefits here.
Cereals, cereals and flour
Oats, millet, rye and other grains are an important source of minerals, vitamins, fiber, which are almost completely lost when the grain is made into premium flour, muesli or instant cereals. Deep industrial processing changes the structure and chemical composition of the original grain, which makes the resulting product smoother and more sticky – and almost useless. More precisely, even harmful. In essence, refined and bleached flour is “empty” starch, which rapidly raises blood sugar levels and slags our body. Therefore, it is best to cook whole grain cereals and buy or bake baked goods from whole grain, wholemeal gray flour, and peeled rye flour. You can read more about whole grains here.
Separately, I will say about rice. Since childhood, many of us are accustomed to white polished rice – starchy, sweetish. And this is a bad habit! For many years, such rice was the main food of the inhabitants of the Far East, which caused an epidemic of beriberi disease (lack of vitamin B1), which could only be cured with rice bran. But it is the shell of rice that is rich in vitamins and nutrients that is removed by grinding. This example can be considered the first recorded fact of harm that refined foods cause us.
Sugar
We all know about the dangers of sugar, but we still cannot live without it. I would generally recommend avoiding foods with any added sugar (be it cane sugar, guava nectar, maple syrup, and other healthier sweeteners). However, refined sugar is really our number one enemy. After refining, it does not contain any useful elements that were originally in sugar beets or cane and were necessary for the assimilation of this product. Only completely “empty” calories remain. This sugar depletes our body, taking away, in particular, the reserves of chromium, which is responsible for glucose metabolism. In addition, it dehydrates, drains energy and leads to the formation of toxins, oxidation, fermentation. All this guarantees a lot of health problems.
If you can’t live without sweets, consider organic honey or stevia.
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