Starch what? Starch based

Starch what? Starch based
This page is used to describe the type of dietary patterns we follow. When I use the word diet, it is not in the normal fashion. Such as "I am on a calorie restricted diet". But rather "The usual food and drink of a person or animal".

So what do we eat? It's simple.

Starches. They make up the majority of our daily calories. Calories come from 3 sources. Protein, which have 4 calories per gram. Carbohydrate, which have 4 calories per gram. And fat, which have 9 calories per gram. Fats are the most concentrated form of calories in the world, having about 4000 calories per pound. Vegetables have about 100 calories per pound. I'll talk about this a little more in a later post.

So, we eat starches.
Potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, winter squashes. Brown rice of all kinds, our favorite being jasmine brown rice, oatmeal, pasta, whole wheat breads. Of all the grains except for the pastas and breads, they are all whole grain, unrefined and intact. Obviously, the pasta and breads are no longer intact although they are unrefined and whole grain. We also eat corn, peas, and a variety of beans.

Then we add in some vegetable.
Leafy greens such as spinach, kale, collard greens. We also eat broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, green beans, and zucchini. We eat them fresh and we eat them frozen. I don't harp on organic. If I can get organic at a similar price, I will get it.

Then of course we eat fruit.
Apples, oranges, peaches, nectarines, grapes, watermelon, cantaloupe and so on.

Honestly, I could sit here and list every starch, veggie and fruit and probably never finish this post by next week. HA!!

What don't we eat? Well, let's see...
We don't eat dairy. That means no milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese, ice cream. We also do not consume food items that contain dairy ingredients.

We also do not consume eggs, beef, chicken, pork, including bacon or sausages, fish.

We also do not consume refined oils/fats.
That means no olive oil, vegetable oils of all kinds, peanut oils. Although I do use a super small amount of sesame oil in certain dishes very rarely as you cannot replace the taste of this oil in recipes. The fats that the body needs are contained inside of the whole package. So, for instance olives:

Olive oil contains about 120 calories per tablespoon.
24 large or 33 small olives contain about 120 calories.

So what's the difference?

The oil is pure fat!!

The 24/33 olives contain 11.5 grams of fat where as the pure oil contains about 14 grams of fat. But with those 11 grams of fat come fiber, 3.4 grams of fiber. The refined extracted oil has none! The olives have about a gram of protein, the oil has none! The olives also have vitamins and minerals and some antioxidants, they oil has none. And in fact, once the oil is extracted from the olive it begins to create free radicals by going rancid. The oil also has more saturated fat by way of eating it in it's concentrated form.

And by cooking with the refined extracted oils, you can easily consume 500-700 additional calories, thus needing to portion control. If you removed that single component from your daily menus and replaced them with unrefined starches you would not need to practice portion control and would not need to be hungry. Remember, vegetables have about 100 calories per pound, potatoes have about 350 calories per pound. Imagine the amount of food you could eat if you removed just the oils/fats.

So, I say if you want some olive oil....grab 5 large olives and put them on your fingers and have a snack. :O)