White Flour Is in Everything: How to Avoid It

Ladies, I wanted to give you more info on avoiding white flour and refined flour since this is one of the goals of this month’s weight loss challenge.  White, bleached, processed flour – there are many reasons to avoid it and hardly a single reason to keep it in your diet. It’s unhealthy; it causes dramatic changes in blood sugar levels; and it fills you up, taking place of nutritious foods. You see, white flour is essentially stripped of everything nutritious and beneficial, leaving only a white powder that’s easily digested by your body and used as blood sugar. Not only does white flour prevent the consumption of nutritious foods, the blood-sugar spikes associated with it can lead to hunger, cravings, and poor eating habits.

What Types of Foods Contain White Flour?

Avoiding white flour altogether can be tricky since a huge quantity of prepared foods contain flour. Cakes, cookies, breads, pasta, and gravies all contain flour. Breading and coatings used in meat preparation also contain flour as do cereals and pastries. Bottom line: white flour is everywhere, and it can be difficult, if not impossible, to remove it from your diet if you purchase prepared foods or dine out.

How to Avoid White Flour

Since white flour is contained in almost every prepared food you can think of, it is difficult to avoid it if you continue to purchase and consume these types of foods. If you want to truly avoid white flour, you must take back the preparation of your meals by cooking your meals the old-fashioned way – from scratch. Here are just a few tips for removing flour from your diet and replacing it with healthy and nutritious choices:

1. Fruits and vegetables do not contain flour, so incorporate them into your meals wherever possible. For example, you can cut zucchini in small strips, boil it, and use it in place of pasta. You can also cut back on other types of foods when you consume more raw fruits and veggies.
2. Read food labels and get familiar with the names of grains and how flour is listed.
3. Buy gluten-free foods.
4. Replace bread and other flour products with whole grains. You can easily do this just by paying attention to the items you purchase at the grocery store. Select whole-grain breads, pastas, and cereals to eliminate white flour from your diet.
5. Instead of breading or coating your meats, broil them. Broiled meat is much healthier for you anyway, and you can broil virtually any type of meat you can think of. Simply coat meat with herbs and spices and broil to perfection.
6. Make your own gravies, sauces, and desserts since most of these items contain white flour when you purchase them already prepared. Find flour substitutes such as creamed corn to thicken gravy.

While it can be a challenge to eliminate white flour from your diet, it’s not impossible. By paying a bit more attention to nutrition labels and spending a little extra time in the kitchen, you can remove this unhealthy ingredient from your meals.