A few decades ago, starch was widely popular among housewives as a food product and as a substance useful in the household. After some time, the world learned the “terrible” truth: from its use they grow fat and lose health! It should be clarified what actually gives a person starch. Benefit and harm are opposite concepts, like day and night. Where is the truth, but what is fiction?
To dot all the "and", you need to "decompose" the starch into its constituent parts and understand how each of them acts on the human body, for what it is needed and what causes damage.
Potato starch: benefits and harms
One of the main sources of energy for the human body is carbohydrates. Mono- and disaccharides are simple carbohydrates that have nothing to do with potato starch. Polysaccharides are also carbohydrates, only complex ones, which include starch.
The benefits and harms of this substance are still disputed by various scientific minds. From here came the media myths about body fat, which arise due to the irrepressible addiction to jelly and fried potatoes.
There is a certain amount of common sense in this. You will not be able to find a person with obesity, who would not love and would not eat the mentioned dishes. But this is not the whole truth. The truth is that polysaccharides are an integral component of the body’s health. Moreover, the benefits of starch are to promote weight loss!
Recipe for success
Those who adhere to a healthy lifestyle who have safely switched from eating potatoes and potato pancakes to eating rice porridge and pasta, did not become slim, like the Chinese or Italians. In fact, they changed "sewed to soap." Nothing fundamentally changed in their diet. And all because these new “healthy” foods also contain polysaccharides.
The whole secret is in the way everyone cooks their favorite potatoes, once brought to Russia by Peter the Great. Compare for yourself:
- Three-quarters of the raw potato tubers are water; the remaining quarter is all solids. The starch in it is even less.
- In starch puree, already 11%.
- 14% of this substance in boiled potatoes.
- 35% of polysaccharides contains french fries.
- Chips - 53%!
Moderation is good in everything. Both in the amount of eaten, and in its quality. The consumption of starchy foods is no exception.
What is plant starch for?
- It is important for muscle fibers and the brain.
- In addition, starch is needed for immunity.
- The benefit and harm of this substance for each organism is individual - this must be remembered. But common to all is the positive effect of consuming this polysaccharide - energy production. The body can not do without complex carbohydrates.
- It also helps the body withstand inflammatory processes.
- Reduces blood sugar, which is why it is popular in people with a disease like diabetes.
- Starch is involved in the formation of organic acids.
Corn Starch: Benefit or Harm?
This type of starch is similar to potato with a slight difference - it is slightly more caloric. 300 kcal is found in 100 grams of “crispy” substance from potatoes, 330 kcal contains corn starch. Their benefits are identical.
Norm is how much?
This begs the question: how much starch per day can be considered the norm for an average person? If you can not imagine your life without potatoes, then you can safely eat it up to four kilograms per day, provided that you do not eat other foods. It is not surprising that doctors prescribe a potato diet to some of their patients.
Caution: starch!
It turns out that all the “horror stories” about this substance are the “duck” generated by the competition of industrialists? So what really scared people of starch?
The benefits and harms mentioned above apply only to herbal products containing this polysaccharide. Refined and modified starch poses a real danger . It will not give the body anything from which it could benefit. Mechanical and chemical methods of processing potato or corn raw materials when producing starch make their contribution to the negative content. It is in such a substance that there is a lack of dietary fiber, so necessary for the body, and too few useful substances.
And if an ordinary housewife avoids the addition of starch produced industrially in food, then she may not notice that this product nevertheless gets on the dining table of her family in significant quantities. After all, everyone loves bakery products baked from high quality, which means high starch flour. "Enemy" encroaches on human health, hiding in mayonnaise, ketchup and many other products, where starch is added in the production process.
It is this white powder that is capable of provoking hormonal disruptions, atherosclerosis, and other equally annoying problems in the human body.
What to do?
The answer to this question is obvious, but it will require some effort from a modern person.
First of all, it is worthwhile to abandon products with starch content in industrial production if possible. You can carefully re-read the list of ingredients written on the product packaging, but it would be more correct to switch to food with simple products of your own preparation.
It is better to permanently exclude from the diet sausages, sausages, sauces, chips, and other similar products and fast food bought in the store. Well-nourished and beneficial dishes prepared at home from products grown on your own personal plot.
Secondly, you need to remember that you should not expect much benefit from starch, which enters the human body along with protein food. It simply will not be absorbed, since the alkaline acid involved in this process will be busy digesting the protein. What will starch do? It just settles in the fat cells of the human body.
But such "fellow travelers" of potato, squash, corn, celery, radish, pumpkin, horseradish and the like vegetables, like vegetable oil, sour cream, cream - are only good! Help yourself to your health!