White lies about white flour: there are some ugly truths lurking in the most refined foods - includes related articles on health aspects of sugar and strategies for making healthy meals

Vegetarian Times, August, 1996 by Amy O'Connor

MY FOOD MEMORIES evolved in suburban Chicago, where Grandma's deft hands served up the dishes that would dominate my fantasies for decades. Did I savor vegetables straight from the garden? Freshly baked bread or cookies? Pot pies steaming from the oven? No way. What I grew up eating was so processed it resembled building materials more than food. Breakfast was toasted Wonder Bread with Fleischmann's margarine, Tang (the orange-flavored powdered breakfast the astronauts supposedly drank), and Maxwell House instant coffee with one teaspoonful of Cremora non-dairy creamer and a pink package of Sweet 'N Low artificial sweetener. Lunch was Campbell's Chunky Soup, and supper, if we played our cards right, was a Swanson's TV dinner, with pink marshmallow pinwheel cookies for dessert.

I guess lots of people grew up eating as poorly as I did, because refined foods evoke nostalgia, even among vegetarians. As adults, we know that whole foods, in their freshest, most natural state should make up the bulk of our diet. Yet inconsistencies creep in. I know vegetarians who preach the benefits of whole foods and eat junk food every day. My health-conscious aunt feeds her infant son a generic-brand powdered formula replete with saturated fat solids and chemicals, figuring she will feed him differently when he sprouts teeth. An otherwise intelligent friend actually believes that his high-preservative diet will increase his life span. I rail against white sugar and flour, artificial flavors and colors, fat and sugar substitutes and preservatives--but may never outgrow my taste for canned soup and pinwheel cookies.

I wanted to blow excuses for a refined-food diet to kingdom come or at least challenge them intelligently. But wading through a minefield of medical data on nutrition and additives proved very confusing. In the last year, health studies have reported that a low-fat diet can prevent breast cancer; others have shown that fat has no effect on cancer rates. The government and the National Cancer Institute urge consumers to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables because beta carotene prevents cancer. Then another government study says beta carotene supplements may increase the risk of contracting some cancers. One page of the newspaper blames American obesity on too much dietary fat; another on too many carbohydrates. The contradictions are maddening.

Finally, through the mist, a medical consensus took shape: "All the evidence, epidemiological, experimental and clinical, supports a whole foods, plant-based diet for longevity, optimal health and fitness, and the prevention and treatment of cancer and cardiac disease," says Keith Block, M.D., a Chicago-based clinician and researcher who has been treating chronic disease with nutrition for 20 years. Even the stalwart, ultra-orthodox American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) agrees that a diet based on whole foods is the best way to eat. "The standard recommendation of the scientific community is to include more unrefined foods in your diet," says Stephen Barrett, M.D., an ACSH board member based in Allentown, Pa. In fact, experts are beginning to think that our love affair with refined foods may be why Americans rank highest in diabetes, osteoporosis, cancer, heart disease and obesity--despite the most advanced health care system in the world. It feel so drained; our diets, they theorize, have left us paradoxically overfed and undernourished.

For decades, nutrinonists believed that sufficient vitamins, minerals and calories were all people needed for good health. However, an abundance of new evidence has proven that optimal nutrition is much more complex, and that a diet based on refined foods-while it may keep you upright and ambulatory-won't offer much defense against chronic diseases. For that you need "micronutrients"--a catchall term that refers to a host of protective agents destroyed during food processing. "We are just beginning to discover so many factors in whole foods that are so valuable, yet a few years ago we didn't recognize," says Gene Spiller, Ph.D., director of the Health Research and Studies Center in Los Altos, Calif., and a world authority on nutrition. "Micronutrients are not essential, you can live without them--they keep people alive in hospitals without them--but you wouldn't live well."

Every day, scientists are discovering new elements in foods they believe are essential for health. The list includes plant sterols, which lower cholesterol and protect against colon cancer; flavonoids and phenolics that prevent heart disease; tocopherols and carotenoids for boosting immunity and preventing cancer; phytoestrogens that block hormone-related cancers and may prevent osteoporosis; and tocotriels, which also lower cholesterol. Unfortunately, you can't get any of these agents in a capsule or added to your soft drink along with caramel color and caffeine. They have only one source: unrefined fruits and vegetables and whole grains, which are cheap and available just about everywhere. As a bonus, a whole foods diet will automatically give you all the "macronutrients" you need (vitamins A, B, C, D, E; zinc, calcium, magnesium) and provide plenty of cancer-, obesity-and diabetes-preventing fiber and complex carbohydrates. So why isn't this lifesaving information making headlines? "There aren't too many people advertising whole food," notes Nikki Goldbeck, co-author of The Goldbecks, Guide to Good Food (NAL Penguin Inc., 1987).