Eating Outside the Box...Literally

I got this mini article as part of an e-mail from T-Nation this weekend. Enjoy.

Don't eat anything that comes in a box. Why? Prior to oh, about the 18th century, very few people had diabetes. Then came the invention of industrial-type mills that were able to grind flour to a fine powder. Whammo! Cases of diabetes start to pop up within a decade or so.

It might be mere coincidence, but I tend to think not. Instead, I think that the fine milling greatly increased the glycemic, or insulin, index of the foods it was used in. Prior to high-powered milling, flour had big chunks of fiber in it, kind of like the toilet paper they use in third world countries. As such, it digested slowly, as the bread-equivalent of a two-by-four is wont to do.

That wasn't the case with the new grain products. The fine powdery flour was digested much more quickly than even sugar and consequently caused a big tidal flood of insulin to be released. After years of eating this way, the peasants first became insulin resistant, and then fat. And some would develop diabetes.

It's no different today. Almost any food product you can think of that comes in a box is highly processed, and as such, the insulin index is way off the scale. It's my belief that eating high insulin-index, boxed foods, causes most of the obesity in the country.

And furthermore, these processed foods almost always contain an abundance of trans fatty acids, simply because they don't go rancid as quickly as unsaturated oils.

In short, buy fresh foods whenever possible.