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Flours today are more refined and more likely to be bleached.

Extended with fillers and soaked in sweeteners is stated to be how "grains are typically available to us." Wonderbread is a fair example, and the "standard" muffin that typically has 30 or more grams of sugar is another. Oatmeal today, in its most common presentations, will have a great deal of sugar.



What does "more refined" mean in this context, and what makes that bad? In other words, is flour simply ground to smaller sizes, chemically altered to remove certain elements, ...?


There is no/very little fiber and no/very little complex carbs, so your body reacts to it just like it would table sugar.

Refined flour has a high glycemic index, so do starches like potatoes.

It spikes your blood sugar levels very quickly.


Wheat germ is removed from white flour in order to increase shelf-life and rising ability, which removes useful fatty-acids, oils and nutrients as well as fiber and protein. Whole-wheat flour is flour that has not had the germ removed.


Wheat germ was removed from white flour in 1914 too, as pointed out in the original article.




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