Today’s post is about how much stripped (refined) carbohydrate is okay to eat.  Stripped carbohydrate means white flour, white rice, corn starch, corn syrup, sugar. Plus fruit juice and beer. Basically, stripped carbs are carbs (mostly grain, though not only) that have had their fiber and color stripped away. It’s not a coincidence that white flour looks exactly like corn starch and powdered sugar. They’ve all had their color and fiber stripped away, and all that’s left is a pile of white powder.

This post is only about stripped carbs. It is not a discussion about whether carbohydrates are okay to eat. There are people who feel that carbohydrate has no place in their diets, and who manage beautifully on a very-low-carbohydrate diet. I get plenty of comments from readers who eat this way. Someday, we may discover that this group of people share a combination of genes that makes it very difficult for them to tolerate even modest amounts of carbohydrate. For now, I am glad that they have figured out how best to protect their health. So this post is not for them. It is for people who tolerate whole grains, fruit, and beans without any problems. People who feel awful if they skip the vegetables, grains, beans, and fruit. Like Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn.

If you look out your window at some growing food, you will notice that there is no such thing–in nature–as carbohydrate without fiber attached. Stripped carbs are relatively recent  inventions. Stripped carbs are derived from raw ingredients — mainly grain and produce (dates and beets) — that are abundant in nature. Human beings figured out how to convert these ingredients to flour and sugar only in the past couple of hundred years or so. We did not evolve to eat these food-like products, and certainly not at the volumes we currently consume them.

How much stripped carbohydrate is it “safe” to eat? Not a lot. But I would not say zero. There’s a certain amount that probably doesn’t matter much, one way or the other. At the end of the day, I think it comes down to a relatively simple equation, one that is probably affected by three things: 1) your genes, which are heavily influenced by your environment, 2) the amount of unmanageable stress you withstand on a daily basis, 3) and the amount of activity in which you engage regularly.  

Stress can be physical, emotional, social, spiritual. It can come from within (fever, anxiety, bereavement, pregnancy) or without (a blizzard, a heat wave, a new baby, winning the lottery). It can be the result of circumstance (a safe falls on your head) or questionable decision-making (skipping breakfast). It can be due to conflict, real or imagined. Agents of stress can be small like a virus, or large like an asteroid. Pain, fatigue, sleep deprivation are serious and common causes of stress.  

And, yes, stress can be caused or exacerbated by eating foods that don’t provide the building blocks your body needs to function optimally. Like stripped carbohydrate. In other words, stress causes stress. That’s one place you do not want to be. So eating more nutritious food, which helps make your brain and body work better, is one way to decrease the amount of stress in your life. 

Are you looking for a number? Okay, here it is. You can have two servings of stripped carbohydrate. But how often, you ask? Well, that depends on you. It could be two servings per day, per week, per month, or even per year. If you are slender, active, comfortable, and quite healthy, you may be able to tolerate as much as two servings a day of stripped carb.

Note that this means not two cans of soda pop, but two ounces. A can of soda with 12 teaspoons of sugar is not one serving. It is 12 servings. Two servings is just one-sixth of a can.

But the average American is eating 10-12 servings or more of stripped carbohydrates every single day. If you’re wondering what’s driving the obesity and diabetes epidemics, wonder no more.