Today I want to focus on two of the core messages to which I continue to return time and time again: First, there is an enormous difference between real food and manufactured calories. And, second, as we have been discussing at length in recent weeks, manufactured calories have been associated with an epidemic of chronic diseases, including not only diabetes, coronary artery disease, and obesity, but also depression, dementia, and other brain diseases.

So let’s start by examining a grain of wheat. Wheat contains 1) a fiber coat, or bran; 2) a germ, where nourishing oils are stored; and 3) an endosperm, composed primarily of starch. If the bran coat and wheat germ are stripped away, as humans learned to do around the 1700s, all that remains is a pellet of white starch (also known as white flour). 

If you could look at that pellet of white starch under a microscope, you would see a long, simple chain of sugar molecules. The human body is so efficient at breaking the links between those sugar molecules that when you eat white flour, your blood sugar rises at least as fast, if not faster, than when you eat candy, or sugar from a sugar bowl. White flour and sugar both spike your blood sugar.

White flour and sugar are stripped carbohydrates. Except for things like honey or maple syrup, stripped carbohydrates are almost never found in nature. In nature, carbohydrates are virtually always found attached to fiber. Consider dates and beets, both of which are raw materials for manufacturing sugar. In their original states, they are so rich in fiber and phytonutrients that they are classified as superfoods.

After you eat, your gut breaks down food into sugars, which then cross the walls of the gut to enter the bloodstream. If the food is easily broken down and digested (like white flour and sugar), it gets absorbed quickly and your blood sugar rises rapidly. If the food is broken down more slowly (e.g., produce, nuts, whole grains, beans, eggs, meats), it is then absorbed slowly so that your blood sugar levels remain more stable. Once food enters the bloodstream, your pancreas releases insulin to escort the incoming sugar to the cells of your body. 

This next part is critical: The faster you absorb the sugar, the more insulin you need to produce and release to catch the sugar. The more slowly you absorb sugar, the less insulin you need to deal with the incoming sugar.

This works like a valet service. Imagine you were invited to a huge party that begins at 7 p.m. If 1000 cars show up at 7 p.m., there will need to be a lot of valet staff to park all those cars. 

But your friends might have chosen to hold an open house from 3 to 9 p.m. At the end of the day, the party center would still have parked 1000 cars. But they would not have needed nearly as many valet staff.

The cars are the sugar, and the valet staff are the insulin. If all the sugar shows up in your bloodstream at the same time, you’re going to need a lot of insulin. But if all the sugar drips in bit by bit, you won’t. The goal is to begin shifting your food choices in the direction of items you absorb more slowly. You need insulin to live, but it is not your friend.