We've been eating bread for millenia but we also moved a lot more until recently. Also, lifespans and health were worse than they are now. Also, how much does the bread we get at a supermarket today resemble the bread people ate 500 years ago?
Its easy to explain ANY side you like because there are millions of factors. That's exactly why diet research is conducted by doing statistics to isolate the impact of particular variables even as 100s of things vary across any group of people.
I think people like to argue against dietary research because it tells them things they don't want to hear. Admittedly, i didn't believe in any of this or like hearing it until recently because its made to sound so difficult - cut out sugar/refined carbs/carbs completely!
Personally i was able to move to a healthier diet after just going through a simple book on sports nutrition. It drills in a few key points that tend to get lost in clickbait. For example, what you eat over a period of time (i.e a DIET) can be unhealthy or healthy, but pointing to any ONE meal/food as healthy/unheathy doesn't make a lot of sense
I grind my own grain at home and make my own bread. 100% difference from what's available in stores vs. at home.
You'll never find any of the artisan-style almost-burn loaves that you see on pinterst using 100% whole grain. Will never poof up like that, you'll get something closer to German-style brown breads.
They pull the wheat germ -- essentially the plant embryo, but also a source of nutrients that can go bad -- out of the flour to extend shelf life. Ditto for taking out all of the bran -- fiber! -- though "whole wheat" flours will add some of that back in later. But for the most part modern breads are nothing but refined carbs with a touch of fiber.
The germ is sold separately, as a health food or feedstock for animals.
The difference in taste and shape is noticeable. It's also much, much more filling and satisfying. Not as great for avocado toast, but does pretty well with a little cream cheese and tomato (plus a pinch of salt).
That is, pardon the pun, huge. It would be nice to get some more recent data and to adjust for height.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_ener...
12.1% of Japanese have diabetes (https://www.nippon.com/en/features/h00249/)
For comparison, about 13% of people in the US have diabetes (https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pdfs/data/statistics/national-d...)
According to wikipedia [0]: approximately from 10,000 to 30,000 years ago. Let's take an average reproduction age of 25y and you've got roughly 1000 human generations eating bread.
But, also according to wikipedia [1], the oldest Homo Sapiens that we can date range from 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. That's 70-90% of our direct ancestors' natural selection process not having been exposed to bread (widespread grains, in fact).
And, if we dare to argue that human metabolism have mainly not changed since Homo Erectus, then we are in another world in terms of comparison, because Wikipedia trace the oldest signs of Erectus as far as 2,000,000 years ago [2], which represent 80,000 generations, and that's ~1% of our ancestors having evolved exposed to grains.
So, all in all, "we've been eating bread for millenia" is clearly not all that there is to say on that matter.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bread [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_human [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo
Removing the husk of wheat and rice removes the source of fiber which then speeds up the metabolic process of your body turning the carbs into sugar.
It overwhelms the glucose regulator in your body similar to eating raw sugar.
This is why consuming whole fruit instead of juice is so much healthier. It's about speed of glucose delivery.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1271/bbb.90231
Maybe Japanese cuisine compensates some of the negative effects by using vinegar more often than we do. My wife used to make sushi according to Japanese recipes; the rice was soaked in vinegar. But Westerners do not soak their bread or rice in vinegar.
We generally think about an element of nutrition being a cause of some disease (cholesterol, fat, sugar etc.). We spend less time thinking about the question whether an element of nutrition may have protective effect against deleterious effects of another element.
Now I would be surprised if the average person burns more than 2k calories/day. Moreover, once you get to high fat levels your body produces more estrogen like hormones. These indirectly lower your metabolism even further. This is because those hormones impede the synthesis of testosterone, which is highly correlated with muscle-synthesis and muscle fibers are much more metabolic active tissues than fat. A feedback loop that is really hard to escape from.
Sure, it is bread, but it might as well be called bread substitute.
It is not easy to find bread that isn't made up of primarily cheap ingredients. Even so-called supermarket "artisanal" barely resembles actual quality bread.
You can see this in action with this procedure (or thought experiment):
1. Lose most of your belly fat so that you look thin.
2. Eat a tub of ice cream. Do this for two nights. You’ll see a lump on your belly. It is 4 pounds of new fat. That won’t happen if you replace ice cream with the same weight of fruit.
I would suggest a link between abundance of food and obesity. Also sedentary lifestyle
You can eat a lot of carbs over time when being physically active. But once you stop being as physically active, you have to adjust your carbs accordingly. So what OP says is correct for how most people live nowadays.
In practical terms, anybody who eats 100g of sugar, and 100g of pasta, will notice a huge difference.
Paleo is very fashionable, but I wonder how many people will actually follow through in the long term (years), since eating very large amounts of meat is not realistically sustainable, in different ways (I have firsthand experience on this).
I agree with you, but pasta is only 37% carbs. So 270g pasta (that's enough for 2 people!) and 100g sugar would need to be compared.
However I still think this will be unfavorable to the sugar, since you won't be satiated for long, and the insulin crash will make you eat again soon.
We can't ignore psychology on this, too. In the long run your hormones will beat your rational thinking, so you can of course theoretically lose weight on a high sugar diet, but you won't.
Curiously, we're mixing cooked vs. uncooked. I've always been using dry pasta weight as reference (as the pasta is weighted before), but in context, your observations are more precise :)
Personally, I find it hard to cut down on carbs because it's expensive to do so. Refined carbs are the cheapest source of energy.
Have you tried fresh food eg salads? They are delicious and filling in a way that keeps you sated longer than carbs without the highs and lows of energy and mood.
It takes a bit of organisation to make a big salad every day, but once you get the hang of it, you feel better, big time.
I love fresh veggies. I just can't afford to replace carbs with them. Veggies are expensive.
That said, the average American diet is imbalanced in favor of carbs, with pretty much everything sweetened. My European diet is a lot more balanced out, we eat brown bread, regular pasta and rice, etc, all part of a balanced diet (can't beat a brown bread, ham and cheese sandwich. Real butter, because margarine is shit)
The other problem the US diet has is portion sizes. American portions are big. As an occasional tourist I can appreciate it, but at the same time it's one reason behind the obesity crisis.
The UK has a similar problem. Compared to where I'm from (NL), eating 'out' is affordable, and you can load up on a full English or a carvery for around 6 pounds. Drinking a ton of beer also seems to be normalized with a big percentage of the population.
I agree with your post, I just want to add something to this.
Aside from just choosing between butter and margarine, there are also "spreadable butter" products, which mix butter with vegetable fats, for a spreadable consistency and a better saturated:unsaturated fats ratio. The one I have in my fridge right now tastes exactly like butter, but has ~500kcal per 100g instead of the ~700kcal in pure butter. The only downside is that it melts faster on warm toast.
The ingredients are butter, rapeseed oil, water and salt, so it's not some weird industrial concoction. Do avoid the types with palm oil and such, though. They're less sustainable and I find them to have a slightly garlicky off taste.
What worked wonders for me is buying a steamer. Now I add to every meal some steamed broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, ... . The fibers in them keep me satiated for longer and I stopped snacking thanks to that.
Additionally, those veggies help counter the estrogen-like hormones and after 2y of doing this my physique improved considerably without any major change in my exercise schedule / routine.
The idea that sugar is bad in great amount seems to have gone mainstream, but many people I know who seem to be aware that sugar is bad and have lowered their intake are still just fine with pasta, rice, flour etc. This is the message we need to get out now. Not saying you need to completely drop your favorite refined carbs (pasta etc) but at least try to lower your intake like you do with sugar and prioritize unrefined carbs and green veggies instead.