Not Your Momma's Starch
All month, we’ve talked about how to eat a balanced diet in the easiest way possible. For a few weeks, we discussed sugar. And, this past week, our Daily Wellness Text chat was all about starch.
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What Are Starches?
Starch is like sugar’s big cousin. It’s the mushy substance in your food. It’s the stuff that makes firm food suddenly feel gooey when it’s inside your mouth.
You can find starch in tons of everyday foods:
Grains (pasta, rice, bread)
Starchy veggies (potatoes, corn, winter squash)
Legumes/Beans (black beans, lentils, black-eyed peas)
Desserts (cake, cookies, pastry)
Snacks (chips)
Starches are long chains of sugars. That’s why they’re called COMPLEX carbs. The chemical bonds between the sugars are an extra barrier to digestion. It’s a little bit harder for your digestive juices to break down starches than lone sugars. So, starches generally don’t spike your blood sugar the way that free and added sugars can.
Are Starchy Foods Bad for You?
Not necessarily! Our approach to starches is similar to our approach to sugars: Aim for high-quality starches.
Pros: Starches give you calories, which is the energy you need to think and move. High-quality starch (resistant starch) helps regulate blood sugar, maintain weight, reduce your hunger drive, ultimately lowering your risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Cons: Too much energy turns into unnecessary fat. Also, too many low-quality starches causes big spikes in your blood sugar and can lead to increased inflammation, diabetes, heart disease and more.
What Are Some High Quality Starchy Foods?
We’ll get into the distinction between high-quality and low-quality starches in the coming week.
For now, look out for this clue about whether your starchy food is high-quality or low-quality.
High-quality starches are whole foods or minimally-processed foods: Think lentils, sweet potatoes, acorn squash, old-fashioned oatmeal (whole grain), unripe bananas
These high-quality starches are the foods that deliver not only starch, but also: fiber, protective vitamins and minerals, and even protein in some cases (see lentils). The fiber and protein accompanying unprocessed starchy foods blunt the impact of the starch on your blood sugar.
Preventing blood sugar spikes is a really important advantage of these high-quality starches, because (as we mentioned earlier), starches are really just a long-chain of sugars.