Feel Healthier By Eating This: Starches
Best foods to fight against Diabetes(type 2)
Intro
(Feel free to skip this part)
So you are here because you are seeking a healthier diet. Maybe diabetes runs in the family or community. Maybe you have high blood pressure. Maybe you just wish to feel healthier and younger.
Let’s talk about starches and how they can improve your quality of life.
My deep dive into learning about the complex and wonderful world of tubers starts in the Dominican Republic.
Living in the countryside in a tiny village surrounded by rice paddies. Often my diet, breakfast, lunch, and dinner was starch heavy. Often I would consume tubers in the morning and evening. Cassava, green bananas, green plantains, taro, potato, with one or two fried eggs.
Life was simple. More natural. And I never felt healthier and more youthful.
I grew up in an Indigenous community in South Texas where the food was heavily impacted by colonialism and forced ostracized from the land.
Our food was delicious and rooted in the land, but due to those problems, it became influenced by the over-processed ingredients forced upon us by the US gov’t. Yellow cheeses, sugar, wheat flour, and meat scraps that white consumers didn’t eat(tough cuts, organs, and the head).
We had lost our right to produce and consume food the way we have naturally done for thousands of years. Knowledge was lost.
The Dominican Republic is where European colonialism started. Where Native genocide started. But upon the aftermath of he who should not be named, much of the cultural knowledge on food was still preserved and can be observed today.
One of the fundamental aspects of Taíno culture in contemporary Dominican cuisine is in the viveres. The tubers.
With that introduction, let’s break down the starches and their relationship to our diet.
Starches/Viveres/Tubers
Resistant Starches
These are the naturally produced starches grown in the garden. The Tubers(Viveres) such as potato, cassava, green plantain, green banana, or taro to name a few.
These foods take time to break down giving our bodies a full and energetic feeling. In fact, consuming these starches supports a healthy gut biome because we alone can not digest these complex starches. We seek out help from good bacteria inside our bodies. This delicate relationship results in a slower digestive process.
It is important to note that healthy food can become unhealthy if we cook it poorly. Deep-fried food will always be delicious, but the added grease results in a disastrous decrease in the quality of the meal.
My go-to cooking methods are stewing, baking, or grilling.
Nuts, Beans, Lentils, Whole Grains
Slowly Digested Starches
These are the nuts, beans, and grains. In their unprocessed forms, you can use these ingredients to develop delicious and healthy meals.
Nuts are generally excellent sources of omega-3 fats and other amazing nutrients that help support healthy body function. Check out this article about the Pecan and its importance to Native populations.
Processed grains, flours, pasta, breads, sweets, sugar
Rapidly Digested Starches
Avoid these as much as possible. Sheeesh, I know. We will still eat these foods. They too good to leave. But here is the dirt.
Back in 2005 when everyone began to demonize starches as unhealthy. These were the culprits. These are your heavily processed starches that no longer carry the nutrients or molecular structure as their natural counterparts.
So once you consume cookies, cakes, or anything with flour, or sugar you are taking a digestive shortcut. Because the carbs were broken down into such fine and simple ingredients, your body can digest them in no time. This creates chemical imbalances in you resulting in blood sugar and insulin spikes which later take the form of inflammation.
The same goes for trendy and heavily processed vegan substitute foods. Don’t let the flashy marketing or trending hype fool you. If it wasn’t alive at one point, it is probably not good for you.
In conclusion, I recommend leaving the country in order to force yourself to eat healthier.
Goco
