Are "White" Foods Like Bread Or Pasta Unhealthy?

Are white foods unhealthy?

Or is it just an overhyped opinion you see on clickbait YouTube and Instagram videos?

White foods like:

Pasta.
Bread.
Rice.
Waffles.
Cakes.

And anything made with flour, gluten, or both, is debatable at the very least when it comes to your health.

It goes beyond just health though. There are also other elements that are important to consider.

Let’s talk about it.

Facts about “white” foods or foods with flour:

1. Lack of Vitamins

vitamins supplements

There is no such thing as white food or food made with flour that is swimming with vitamins at the highest levels.

It doesn’t exist.

All it takes is to look at the back of the package to see the results for yourself.

If in the case of items like Pasta, you can’t see the vitamins that are included, then you can simply look it up online and look at the percentages for Pasta and its vitamin content (or other comparable foods).

Lacking in vitamin A or beta-carotene.
Lacking in Vitamin C, D, E, and K.
Pathetic amounts of b vitamins (rice for example).

You can’t eat white or flour foods with the expectation that you’re getting all the vitamins in the world that you need.

Cereal, as an example that fits into this group given it has flour or gluten, is marketed on purpose to make it seem like it’s loaded with good and healthy vitamins.

This is absolute bullshit.

Those vitamins are synthetically made and then inserted into cereal, because flour, grains, etc, don’t have these things naturally in today’s world.

2. Lacking in minerals

Nature knows best. Notice how foods with a lot of vitamins will also have a lot of minerals, even if in varying amounts?

White foods, flour foods, or gluten products (they’re synonymous) lack both vitamins and minerals as a consequence you could say.

Take rice as an example.

According to the USDA 100g of rice has:

1% of calcium.
1% of iron.
3% of magnesium.
1% of potassium.

The potassium content for example is 35mg per 100g of rice, which is less than a glass of milk by a long stretch. It’s so low that it’s comparable to the typical cheese per 100g for potassium levels.

And yet, rice (brown or white) is claimed to be this healthy food by so many “experts” and mainstream health sites, or professional health sites in general.

How is this possible when it’s lacking in mineral content to such an extreme, as well as vitamin content?

This is true across the board for these kinds of foods in general. Pasta has 24mg of potassium for example.

That’s a problem as I’ll explain.

3. Empty calories

Google puts it simply:

calories derived from food containing no nutrients.

Not that I put too much thought into calories. I just eat when I’m hungry and make sure to eat enough. But even still.

White foods, flour foods, and gluten, all are empty calories most of the time. Empty means they LACK necessary content like vitamins and minerals for it to even matter in the first place.

It serves very little purpose unless a person is starving and desperately needs food. But then that’s a whole other issue with its own set of problems.

4. Filler foods

When you have a burger, you eat it with meat, cheese, veg, etc. You never eat the bun by itself, right?

Same with a homemade sandwich. Or when the Japanese have a small bowl of rice on the side, with all their other dishes being full of seafood and healthy meats (majority).

Or when you eat Pasta but it’s filled with meat, fish, maybe cheese melted on the pasta, or loaded with vegetables.

White foods are filler foods, just like gluten or flour. You eat them with something healthy and nutritious, not the other way around.

In other words, you don’t even need them. Take the bun away and the food is healthy and nutritious on its own. Same with Pasta, rice, or any other filler food in this category.

5. Poor nutrition

You could eat 300g of mussels and get all the nutrition in the world compared to “lightweight junk” like white foods and flour foods.

Those 300g of mussels will have more nutrition than let’s say, pasta or bread could give you in an entire week (but in a single day).

Red meat, the so-called “bad” food can do the same as well.

White foods are for those who are desperate to save money, but that’s not a problem saving money can fix and it’s not worth it as far as what it will do to your health.

6. Unnecessary amounts of refined sugar or carbohydrates

This is the major reason why white and flour foods are no good. You have all these refined sugars in the case of pastries, or refined carbohydrates in the case of flour and gluten products.

None of these are good for you in any way, in any capacity, or in any amount. There’s no such thing.

It’s a shortcut to SKIN problems, blood sugar issues, insulin issues, and everything else caused by heavy spikes in blood sugar.

The carb content in flour and white foods is so high that the so-called nutrition, vitamins, and minerals can’t make a difference.

Rice can have 70g of carbs per 100g, and yet the nutrition is so tiny in comparison.

7. Fibre benefits are massively exaggerated

Using the rice example again, we’ll go with something like Tilda rice. One of the best rice brands there is.

With over 70g of carbohydrates and only 5g of fibre content, how does the fibre content make any sense in comparison? And how do health sites claim that rice is healthy because of the fibre when the carbs are so high?

Not just carbs, but refined carbs.

That means if you took 5g away from the 70g of carbs, it would still be 65g. That means your blood sugar will still spike too fast regardless of the irrelevant fibre content that’s exaggerated for its benefits too often.

The same applies to Pasta, gluten of all kinds, and sometimes seeds or nuts (depending on which).

Relevant: 20+ High Fibre Foods That Make You Suffer From Constipation

8. Too easy to overeat

Remember how I said rice can have 70g of carbs per 100g. The issue is nobody has 100g of rice, they have 200g or 300g of rice at a time. Especially if you’re not in a disciplined society like Japan.

300g of rice is a reasonable amount of food and will make you FULL for a good while, no question there. But at what cost?

That would be over 200g of carbohydrates, refined, along with the nonsensical amounts of nutrition which is why you need to pair it with other foods in the first place since it’s lacking.

All white and flour foods are like this.

9. Processed to death, especially in the UK, USA

And lastly, these foods are highly processed.

You can’t eat bread thinking you’re getting health benefits or waffles, pancakes, rice, etc. It can’t happen.

This is what leads people to believe rice or pasta is healthy when they tell you their story about “that one person who lived to 90 years old eating Pasta”, etc.

It wasn’t the pasta, it was their lifestyle alongside the “real” foods they ate consistently.

Eat Pasta by itself or any of its related cousins, and you’ll find out fast how not so good it is. The same story can’t be said for those who eat meat, fish, seafood, eggs, etc, by itself because these foods hold their own individually.

This is why they’re so good when you mix and match them, or what people call a “balanced” diet.

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In the end, white foods, bread, pasta, flour products, etc, aren’t “deadly” or any of that sort of clickbait you’d find on the internet.

But the fact is they’re unnecessary filler foods that don’t enhance your diet or nutrition in any meaningful way.

It’s a step away from junk food, but can’t be considered health food based on its nutritional profiles.

Are “White” Foods Like Bread Or Pasta Unhealthy?