Generally speaking, and with the exception of milk and honey, the carbohydrate in nature virtually always comes with fiber attached. Whether from orchards, meadows, gardens, or forests, and whether as roots, leaves, stems, or fruits, intact—or whole—carbohydrates belong to four major categories (fruits, vegetables, beans, and grains), all of which are rich in fiber as well as phytonutrients, the source of their often vibrant colors.

Stripped carbohydrate is another story entirely. Also belonging to one of four categories, these products—originally as wheat, corn, rice, and sugar cane—are exploited by the “ultraprocessed edibles” industry to create a panoply of products with limited nutritional value and gross profit margins upwards of 40 to 45 percent. 

What makes them stripped? The removal of bran, germ, husks. The advertising industry spins the terminology, calling them “refined,” meaning “to remove the coarse impurities.” One hundred years ago, after several severe nutritional deficiencies were identified in the populations eating white flour, and the U.S. Congress subsequently mandated the replacement of vitamins B1, B2, B3, and iron, the resulting white flour product was renamed “enriched flour.” Much later, in the 1990s, another deficiency, vitamin B9, was identified as the cause of a common birth defect. Once its replacement, too, was mandated, the prevalence of spina bifida in the population fell as predicted. The replacement of vitamin B9, or folate, was termed “fortification.” Whole-grain flours require neither enrichment nor fortification.

Corn, a subsidized commodity, is the source of low-cost high-fructose corn syrup, corn syrup solids, corn starch, and corn chips, among other ultra processed items and ingredients found extensively in the Western diet.†To say we are drowning in them, and that they are making us sick, is not an overstatement. Attempts to avoid them entirely are difficult if not impossible.

White rice is a “polished” (industrial terminology) version of rice from which the husk has been removed. The husk of a grain of rice is rich in thiamine, vitamin B1, and its removal caused the beri-beri epidemic in southeast Asia in the last century. This is the reason why rice, too, requires  “enrichment.” 

Sugar is extracted from sugar cane, and was the first example of widespread industrial stripping. I am not advocating the removal of every last speck of sugar from your diet. I do recommend sticking to baked goods that you or friends make yourselves, and enjoying them on special occasions like Friday nights, Sunday dinners, birthdays, homecomings, weddings. Why is it better to eat homemade? Because homemade goods have many fewer ultraprocessed ingredients overall.

Americans eat so much stripped carbohydrate that it feels like a drastic sentence to recommend people remove it from their diets. I have never been a fan of making big changes all at once, so I usually encourage fruit and nuts in the afternoon instead of the nutritionally lame vending machine options, or sweet potatoes and peanut butter (or leftovers) in place of “breakfast cereal.” 

Let’s end on a hopeful note. Remember that dark chocolate is food. It is not a treat: you can enjoy an ounce every day if you’d like. I especially love dark chocolate with almonds, hazelnuts, and/or even puffed quinoa. 

Keep in mind that we vote with our wallets.