Introduction
Today eating brown is becoming more common, especially in restaurants and markets.
But what are actually the whole foods? Why eating brown can help our health? They are obtained by reaggregation of separate parts during the refining process, as the bran. In flour’s refinement is exported the outer part of the grain, which then will be used to produce foods such as wholemeal pasta.
Nutritional properties
Concerning nutritional properties whole foods can che considered better than the refined ones. Particularly it contains a big amount of:
- Dietary fiber
- Minerals
- B vitamins
Though daily conception, the caloric intake isn’t very small compared to refined foods, because it’s connected to starch’s amount. In fact the contents of this polysaccharide is similar in both of them.
Nevertheless the dietary fiber that make the brown foods have a lot of benefic functions to our health:
- It increases satiety
- It improves intestinal health
- It prevents pathologies of the colon/rectum
- It reduces the risk of cardiovascular diseases due to the accumulation of fats in the cells
Other important nutritional advantages concern the amount of E vitamin and some B vitamins, but also their low glycemia index helps the body not to accumulate too much sugars in the blood.
Disadvantages
Despite all the benefits that they bring whole foods have also some disadvantages:
- They are less storable
- They are less attractive than refined foods
- An excessive dietary fiber amount can cause an excess of phytates, molecules which can obstacle the absorption of some minerals.
Furthermore you have to know that the outher part of the grain, from where we get the whole foods, is the most exposed to che chimical substances used in agricolture. So we need to get more information about whole foods’ production to avoid introducing dangerous substances for our health.
Tips
To end up the main tips that I would give you are not to excess with whole foods, as pasta or bread, but giving more attention to the dietary fibers contained in fruits and vegetables. These elements are fundamental in our feeding, so eating brown must not be a pretext to replace fruits and vegetables.
Also it’s very important not to confuse organic foods with whole foods. Organic farming is a type of agriculture that considers the whole agricultural ecosystem, exploits the natural fertility of the soil favoring limited interventions, to promote the biodiversity of the environment in which it operates and excludes the use of synthetic products and bodies genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
For other food tips check the links below:
https://foodnhealth.org/healthy-breakfast-to-structure-it/
