How bad is white bread? Worse than ice cream. If you’re about to sit down to dinner and need to decide whether to have white bread with it or ice cream after, go for the ice cream it’s less fattening.
But of course, not all bread is white bread. A good rule of thumb is that the coarser and heavier bread is, the better it is for you.
These principles apply across the board: Whole and intact is better than chopped or sliced, which is better than diced, which is better than mashed or pureed all of which is better than juiced. An apple, for instance, has got a fair amount of pectin, a soluble fiber, in its skin. So if you eat an apple your stomach has got to contend with fiber before it can get to the fructose. Similarly, an orange has its fiber in the pulp and in the white pithy stuff that clings to the flesh.
But take that apple and peel it, and then juice it, and you’ve got something quite a bit different. The micronutrients and the fiber are in the skin. With the skin intact, it may take you 5 minutes to eat that apple. But it requires just a few seconds to drink the equivalent in juice. And keep in mind that the glycemic index number is in part determined by the speed with which you eat and digest your food or drink. This is why diabetics having a hypoglycemic reaction quickly drink some orange juice rather than eat the fruit. And while fructose is preferable to sucrose, a big glass of juice acts a lot like a soda—a pure sugar rush. This is especially true of processed juice made without fiber or pulp, which for many people is the only kind they buy.
The fiber delays your stomach’s effort to get at the sugars and starches in carbohydrates. The fiber in vegetables like broccoli is cellulose, which is in essence wood. The nutrients are bound up in that fiber, too, so the stomach has to work harder to get at the nutrition.
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