What about eating bread?

So last night life happened again. We went to the shops, stayed out a little late and decided to go out to dinner. We ended up in a little Indian restaurant and I was very excited to have some nice veggie options to chose from.

Only thing is, we forgot to tell the waiter that we are not Indian and to go easy on us with the spice factor. Big mistake.

We did not order any rice this time. (If you followed me for a while you know what white rice late at night can do to blood sugar)

However, given my non-Indianess, it was just impossible for me to ingest any of that lovely (and hot!) aubergine purée thingy (I am not even going to attempt to spell the Indian name) without any naan bread. I knew it was not going to be pretty but by then it was too late.

The graph below is what happened afterwards, despite me throwing bucket loads of insulin at it. 4 hours of hanging around the 150mg/dl mark - not where you want to be at in the middle of the night. I woke up this morning after 8hrs of sleep feeling exactly the opposite of "bright eyed and bushy tailed". No wonder.

White flour, whether you call it naan, baguette, pitta, bread, pasta or any other name we came up with - is just relentless. It competes with white rice for the top price of most difficult thing to manage if you have to guess how much insulin to give it - and I think it wins. This is why it is not generally part of my life - last night was a big exception.

If you consume it, your body will be working on breaking those long chains of glucose for hours and hours on end and that glucose will be flooding your blood stream like there is no tomorrow. Now, if you are working all day in the fields, or running a marathon, be my guest. But if you are a regular person, coming home from a day of sitting at the office, just don't.

The other thing about white flour, is that not only is it stripped of fibre which would have slowed down how fast the glucose from it would hit the blood stream, but it is also stripped of minerals and vitamins.

I would not go as far as to say it has zero micronutrients, but it definitely does not have much. Which is why some countries, like the US and the UK, fortify flour with minerals and vitamins (that in itself causes other issues but more on that another time).

The thing is, those glucose molecules from the white flour do not just magically turn into energy you can use. It is a complex, multistep process and in order to happen the cells need minerals, like magnesium, iron and zinc and certain B vitamins.

Where is your body going to get those from if a certain food you eat does not contain enough of them for it to be turned into energy?

It will pull the minerals from your bones and your muscles.

For the B vitamins its more tricky as our body has limited capacity to store most of those. Hopefully, you eat other foods that day that have some and then those will have to be split among a larger pool of glucose molecules.

All in all, not ideal. In the long term, a diet heavy in nutrient poor foods made of white flour is a recipe for chronic fatigue and osteoporosis. (Refined sugar has the exact same issue, by the way).

But back to the blood sugar issue. If you consume white flour late at night, i.e. after 8pm and then go to bed shortly after, know that you are giving your pancreas a lot of work to do. (If you read my last post on dinner you know that this is not what it wants to be doing at that time of night).

If you are in the business of staying insulin sensitive and avoiding metabolic disease, try to stay away from refined white flour in whatever form it may be, but especially late at night.

If you must consume it do so in the first half of the day, together with lots and lots of veggies and protein and good fats and make sure you more afterwards.

But if you have a choice, and most of the time you will, go for brown bread, ideally with seeds, and always put something else on it - like a little butter or olive oil, a piece of cheese or meat, and some veggies. This will slow down the absorption of the glucose and be kinder on your pancreas.

As with any carb heavy foods, the devil is in the dose here as well. One slice is not the same as two, or three, or four. If you have diabetes or pre-diabetes, test - don't guess. Your blood sugar meter or continuous glucose monitor will tell you how much bread your body can tolerate and at what time of day. Take that information and use it to adapt how much/when you consume bread.

Finally, if you can get your hands on some sourdough bread, so much the better. (If you can make it yourself, you are a rock star!).

Sourdough bread will give you a lower spike as the bacteria during the fermentation process already ate some of the glucose for you. You will also be able to absorb more minerals and vitamins from it - again, the bacteria did you a favour by eliminating some of the antinutrients, like phytic acid, making nutrient absorption and digestion of the bread easier for you. (Just be aware of fake sourdough bread where some kind of acid is added to mimic the taste of sourdough. Unfortunately it exists and no, it does not count - so read the labels.)

And, hey, if you do happen to be out and about and life happens, its ok, enjoy the moment - just aim to return back to baseline the next day.

I hope this peak behind the curtain gave you some new knowledge and that you will use the power of that knowledge to motivate you to optimise your food choices in your everyday life.😉