Starch: good and bad. Useful properties of corn and potato starch

A few decades ago, starch had a wide popularity among housewives as a food product and as a useful substance in the household. After some time the world learned the "terrible" truth: from its use grow fat and lose health! It is necessary to clarify what actually gives the person starch. Benefit and harm are opposite concepts, like day and night. Where is the truth, and what is fiction?

In order to place all the dots over the "and", it is necessary to "decompose" starch into constituent parts and understand how each of them acts on the human body, what is needed and what causes damage.

Potato Starch: Benefit and Harm

One of the main sources of energy for the human body are carbohydrates. Mono- and disaccharides are simple carbohydrates, which have nothing in common with potato starch. Polysaccharides are also carbohydrates, only complex ones, to which starch belongs.

The use and harm of this substance is still challenged by various learned minds. Hence, the myths about fatty deposits appeared in the media, which are due to an irrepressible addiction to jelly and fried potatoes.

There is a certain amount of common sense in this. You will not be able to find a person with obesity who would not like and would not use the mentioned dishes. But this is an incomplete truth. The truth is that polysaccharides are an integral part of the body's health. Moreover, the use of starch - in promoting weight loss!

Recipe for success

Those of the adherents of a healthy lifestyle, who safely moved from eating potatoes and pancakes to eating rice porridge and pasta, slender, like the Chinese or Italians, did not. In fact, they changed the "awl to soap". Fundamentally in their nutrition, nothing has changed. And all because these new "healthy" products also contain polysaccharides.

The whole secret is in the way of cooking all the favorite potatoes, once imported into Russia by Peter the Great. Compare yourself:

• The raw tuber of potatoes is three quarters of water, the remaining quarter is for all solids. Starch in it and even less.
• In puree starch, already 11%.
• 14% of this substance in boiled potatoes.
• 35% of polysaccharides contains French fries.
• Chips - 53%!

Moderation is useful in everything. Both in the quantity eaten, and in its quality. Consumption of starchy foods is no exception.

Why do we need vegetable starch?

• It is important for muscle fibers and brain.
• In addition, for the strength of immunity, starch is needed.
• The benefits and harms of this substance for each organism are individual - this must be remembered. But common to all is the positive effect of using this polysaccharide - energy production. Without complex carbohydrates, the body can not do.
• It also helps the body to withstand inflammatory processes.
• Reduces the sugar content in the blood, due to which it is successful in people with a disease such as diabetes mellitus.
• Starch is involved in the formation of organic acids.

Corn starch: benefit or harm?

This kind of starch is similar to potato with only a small difference - it is slightly more caloric. 300 kcal is in 100 grams of a "crispy" substance from potatoes, 330 kcal contains corn starch. Their use is identical.

The norm is how much?

Hence the question arises: how much starch per day can be considered the norm for the average person? If you do not imagine your life without potatoes, then you can safely eat it up to four kilograms per day, provided that you do not eat other foods. It is not surprising that doctors prescribe certain potato diets for some of their patients .

Caution: starch!

It turns out that all the "horror stories" about this substance - the "duck", generated by the competitive struggle of industrialists? So what really scared the people of starch?

The benefits and harms referred to above apply only to plant products containing this polysaccharide. A real danger is a refined and modified starch. He will not give the body anything from which he could benefit. Its contribution to the negative content is made by mechanical and chemical methods of processing potato or corn raw materials in obtaining starch. It is in this substance that there is a lack of dietary fiber, so necessary for the body, and too few useful substances.

And if an ordinary housewife avoids the addition of starch manufactured in an industrial way, then she may not notice that this product still falls on the dining table of her family in significant quantities. After all, everyone likes bakery products baked from high-quality, and therefore, high-starch flour. "Enemy" encroaches on human health, hiding in mayonnaise, ketchup and many other products, where starch is added in the production process.

It is this white powder that is capable of provoking hormonal failures, atherosclerosis and other no less annoying problems in the human body.

What to do?

The answer to this question is obvious, but it will require some effort from the modern person.

First, if possible, it is worth noting products with starch content of industrial production. You can carefully re-read the list of ingredients written on the packaging of the product, but it is more appropriate to switch to food with simple products of your own preparation.

Better to permanently exclude from the diet bought in the store sausages, sausages, sauces, chips and other similar products and fast food. Well satiate and benefit dishes cooked at home from products grown on their own backyard.

Secondly, it must be remembered that from starch, which enters the human body along with protein food, there is much benefit to expect. It simply will not digest, since the alkali acid involved in this process will be occupied with the digestion of the protein. What will starch do? Just settle in the fat cells of the human body.

But such "fellow travelers" of potatoes, patisson, corn, celery, radish, pumpkin, horseradish and the like vegetables, like vegetable oil, sour cream, cream - only good! Enjoy your health!