White Flour, Sugar and Salt
Yeshua said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” (John 6:35)
Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. (Proverbs 16:24)
"You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.” (Matthew 5:13)
Adonai created many wonderful foods for our bodies to thrive on. We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” but are we really allowing Him to provide our bread? When you go to the supermarket and grab a loaf of bread off the shelves, is it the same bread that our ancestors have made and consumed for thousands of years? If Abraham were given a loaf of Wonder Bread, would he recognize it as bread? Here are the ingredients of Wonder’s 100% Whole Wheat Bread:
Whole wheat flour, water, wheat gluten, high fructose corn syrup, contains 2% or less of: soybean oil, salt, molasses, yeast, mono and diglycerides, exthoxylated mono and diglycerides, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium iodate, calcium dioxide), datem, calcium sulfate, vinegar, yeast nutrient (ammonium sulfate), extracts of malted barley and corn, dicalcium phosphate, diammonium phosphate, calcium propionate (to retain freshness).
Here are the ingredients of Matzah: flour, water, salt (optional). Why do we need extra gluten and all that sugar? Just what are “dough conditioners” and why do we need them? For those who have never had a piece of good, homemade bread, well… you just don’t know what you are missing! I can tell you this: if you are eating homemade bread you are missing out on consuming ingredients that you can’t even pronounce.
Besides all of this, the flour itself is not what it used to be. In fact, flour was one of the first foods processed to the extent of the removal of most of the nutrients. The grain mills don’t worry about bugs in their flour; any bugs that get into the flour simply eat it and die. Really. If you have flour in your pantry and have mice you will soon notice what they eat and what they don’t, and they don’t eat all-purpose white flour.
Just how do you think they turn brown seeds into white, fluffy flour? Well, first they remove the bran and the germ. Unfortunately these are the best parts of the wheat kernel. The brand and germ contain the nutrients we need to stay healthy and thrive. Then they use something called Alloxan to make the flour “clean”. Unfortunately this is known to cause diabetes. Tell me, have you ever seen a warning label on a sack of flour? “Warning: this product contains alloxan, which has been shown to cause diabetes in lab rats; ingest at your own risk.” I have not either.
Because most of the nutrients have been stripped away, the flour company feels the need to “enrich” the flour, but they only replace 4 of the 15 vitamins and minerals lost in the manufacturing process. Even if they did replace all 15, it wouldn’t do us a whole lot of good, and I’ll tell you why. The first reason involves the additives themselves; the second is actually worse.
When the company adds vitamins and minerals to the flour, they do not use all-natural sources for them. Well, that’s not exactly true… coal is natural, but we really are not supposed to eat it. You read that correctly: coal. Synthetic vitamins are manufactured from coal tar derivatives. Why? Because they are cheaper to produce, it’s that simple. What’s so bad about using synthetic vitamins? They lack the necessary components needed to properly digest the vitamins, namely enzymes.
Worse than that, because the flour is missing these necessary enzymes our body can’t properly digest the flour either, meaning that the nutrients that are there are not absorbed by the body as they should be. This malabsorption is causing even well fed people to be suffering from malnutrition, and more and more people are being diagnosed with related illnesses such as Celiac disease. According to the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness (NFCA):
Celiac disease is an autoimmune digestive disease that damages the villi of the small intestine and interferes with absorption of nutrients from food. What does this mean? Put simply, that the body is attacking itself!
Celiac disease is triggered by consumption of the protein called gluten, which is found in wheat, barley and rye.
When people with celiac disease eat foods containing gluten, their immune system responds by damaging the fingerlike villi of the small intestine. When the villi become damaged, the body is unable to absorb nutrients into the bloodstream, which can lead to malnourishment.
Roughly one out of every 133 Americans has celiac disease, but 97% remain undiagnosed. This means that almost three million Americans have celiac disease and only about 100,000 know they have it.
Left untreated, people with celiac disease can develop further complications such as other autoimmune diseases, osteoporosis, thyroid disease, and cancer.
There are a number of medical problems that are associated with undiagnosed celiac disease including cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes Type 1, thyroid problems and reproductive health issues.
The proliferation of factory-style bakeries and the pre-sliced bread has had the same effect on wheat crops as McDonalds has had on the potato crop. Just as farmers tend to grow more russet potatoes, wheat farmers tend to grow only the wheat these big bakeries are buying. This limits the consumer’s choice, and removes even more nutrients from our table. Thankfully there are choices available for those who suffer from this disease, like potato, rice, soy, or bean flour, but these products are not as readily available as the wheat based breads.
Because of the lack of nutrients and the enzymes needed to process them, coupled with the synthetic vitamins and the alloxan used to “whiten and brighten” our flour, we might as well just eat paste. In fact, that might not be such a bad idea, because at least glue doesn’t turn into sugar in our bodies like white flour does.
As if we were not already consuming enough sugar! One 12 oz. can of soda pop contains 1/3 of a cup of sugar (9 teaspoons). According to the Historical Statistics of the United States, Bicentennial Edition, the average American in 1960 consumed a total of 97.6 pounds of sugar. By 1999 that total had shot up to 158.4 pounds (quoting the Statistical Abstract of the United States.) That is a lot of sugar! What we need to find out is just what that amount of sugar is doing to our bodies.
When sugar is processed the vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber are all stripped away. What is left has very little nutritional value, if any at all. Besides being highly addictive (more addictive than heroin), refined sugar causes our bodies to produce too much insulin, which causes it to overwork to the point where we can no longer process the sugar properly and develop type 2 diabetes. Scientists have also discovered a link between high sugar intake and learning disabilities and violent behavior, especially in young boys. Of course this is nothing new to the parent of a hyperactive child.
Sugar is also known to suppress the immune system. This is one of the reasons why children who consume large quantities of soda (and other sugar-rich foods and beverages) always seem to be sick. Our bodies are just not equipped to process such large amounts of sugar. Years ago sugar was only added to baked goods such as cakes, cookies and pies (although many pies only used the sugar contained naturally in the fruit). In the later part of the 19th century the average person only consumed about 5 pounds of sugar a year, but today sugar is added to so many products that we now consume 135 – 160 pounds a year.
Fructose is the name given to simple sugars found naturally in honey and many types of fresh fruit. Sucrose is a complex carbohydrate found in many plants and what is commonly referred to as “table sugar.” Dextrose is the sugar found in corn syrup. Looking back at the list of ingredients in the Burger King shake, we find sugar, sweet whey, high fructose corn syrup, as well as regular corn syrup. If that shake is chocolate, we also add more high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, and sweet whey powder, as well as dextrose. That is a lot of sugar!
Simple sugars are known to aggravate asthma, drive mood swings, provoking personality changes, mental illness, and nervous disorders, causing diabetes, heart disease, gallstones, and hypertension, and adding to the pain of arthritis. Children whose breakfast consists of only high-sugar foods, such as donuts, Pop Tarts and Froot Loops, tend to do poorly in school due to lack of energy come mid-morning. These same children will have a high-sugar snack after school, like cookies, Twinkies, or even a box of macaroni and cheese, and then sit around the house playing video games or chatting with friends online. If one compares the child of today to the child of only 100 years ago, who ate very little sugar and spent most of their afternoon outdoors, running around with their friends, one can easily see why child obesity rates are skyrocketing.
These rates go hand-in-hand with the epidemic of diabetes that has developed in not only this country, but also every other industrialized nation in the world. Why is that? Who would have thought that the “end time plagues” we have all heard about would be something as “normal” as diabetes and obesity. We always imagined a Bubonic Plague outbreak, or some new disease (like AIDS) that moves quickly and devastates the population in a short period of time. These modern plagues (diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc.) might take longer to kill, but they are no less deadly.
The sad part is that most of these diseases are easily preventable, yet this information is not readily available to the average American. We hear reports of the numbers skyrocketing and that something must be done about it, but the food industry continues to add more and more sugar to our foods and tell us that it is okay. The sugar content in an English muffin, for example, varies so dramatically from company to company that one brand may trigger high sugar in a diabetic, while another brand has no affect at all. Why add all that extra sugar?
As a result, more and more people are seeking sugar alternatives such as Equal and Nutra-sweet. Both of these products contain aspartame, which we have already seen to be deadly (think brain cancer) so using them is dangerous. Saccharin is what was used previous to aspartame in all of the diet sodas, but was removed due to the threat of cancer, but there are many people who state that aspartame is much worse for us than saccharin ever was. According to www.caloriecontrol.org:
The scientific data supporting saccharin's safety include the following: Extensive research on human populations has established no association between saccharin and cancer. More than 30 human studies have been completed and indicate saccharin's safety at human levels of consumption.
In 14 single-generation animal studies involving several species of animals, saccharin was not shown to induce cancer in any organ, even at exceptionally high dose levels.
Saccharin is not metabolized (it passes through the body unchanged) and does not react with DNA (nucleic acid present in all living cells), meaning that saccharin lacks two of the major characteristics of a classical carcinogen.
Saccharin is approved in more than 100 countries around the world and has been reviewed and determined safe by the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) of the World Health Organization and the Scientific Committee for Food of the European Union. Based on current research, JECFA doubled its earlier ADI (acceptable daily intake) for saccharin. JECFA noted that the animal data, which earlier raised questions about saccharin, are not considered relevant to humans.
How many Americans are putting themselves at risk simply because they have not been given this information? If you are diabetic, and your choices are limited, you need all the facts to make an educated decision. To round out this education, we should look at another artificial sweetener: sucralose, which is found in Splenda. Many do not believe this to be an artificial sweetener, because its source is natural sugar, but looks can be deceiving. According to www.mercola.com:
There is no question that sucralose starts off as a sugar molecule, it is what goes on in the factory that is concerning. Sucralose is a synthetic chemical that was originally cooked up in a laboratory. In the five step patented process of making sucralose, three chlorine molecules are added to a sucrose or sugar molecule. A sucrose molecule is a disaccharide that contains two single sugars bound together; glucose and fructose.
The chemical process to make sucralose alters the chemical composition of the sugar so much that it is somehow converted to a fructo-galactose molecule. This type of sugar molecule does not occur in nature and therefore your body does not possess the ability to properly metabolize it. As a result of this "unique" biochemical make-up, McNeil Nutritionals makes it's claim that Splenda is not digested or metabolized by the body, making it have zero calories.
It is not that Splenda is naturally zero calories. If your body had the capacity to metabolize it then it would no longer have zero calories.
There are many who have had adverse side effects of using sucrose that mirror the effects of aspartame, including the inability to think properly. Each of these artificial sweeteners can create a host of other problems if used more than occasionally. Most nutritionists would simply state, “Stay away from them all together.” There are other, more natural alternatives, which we will discuss in full at a later time.
Diabetics not only show an inability to process these large amounts of sugars properly, but their mineral levels are far too low as well. The over-processing of our foods also causes this condition. Most of the vitamins and minerals found naturally in our foods are removed and then synthetic vitamins are added, which our bodies cannot properly absorb. We are then fed misinformation regarding the foods that are naturally good for us, causing the belief that they are actually bad for us. Case in point: salt.
Throughout history man has utilized salt for various reasons. From preserving meat to soothing aching feet, salt has always been highly valued by man, until now. Recently we have heard health experts warn that high intake of salt has been linked to heart disease and that we need to reduce the amount of salt we consume. Low fat, low salt diets are all the rage, but these diets are actually doing us more harm than good.
Salt is so highly valued in the eyes of Adonai that He established a covenant of salt with the Levites.
"All the offerings of the holy gifts, which the sons of Israel offer to the LORD, I have given to you and your sons and your daughters with you, as a perpetual allotment. It is an everlasting covenant of salt before the LORD to you and your descendants with you." (Numbers 18:19)
When a baby was born our fathers, or should I say, our mothers would wash the child and then rub him or her with salt. Each and every sacrifice offered to HaShem would include some salt as well. Salt was used to season and preserve food as well has to bring healing to the body. With this kind of history, how can the medical community claim that salt is bad for us?
That’s because it is. At least it is in the form that they put in our foods. Table salt, or Sodium Chloride, is not the same salt that once paid the Roman army. Once the salt has been mined, it is processed to produce the small, white grains we see on our kitchen table. All natural, unprocessed salt, like the Romans used, contains over 80 trace minerals. Once they have finished the processing, these minerals are all gone. The companies who produced the salt had to add Potassium Iodide (Iodine) in order to combat hyperthyroidism, which is caused by an iodine deficiency.
For those who are suffering from high blood pressure, among other ills, this iodine-enriched salt is not good for you, and this is the salt they put into most of our foods. Real salt, especially the Celtic sea salt harvested the old fashioned way along the coast of France, is actually a light gray color. Table salt is bleached to obtain the nice, white color. The Celtic sea salt crystals are large, have a very good taste, and are full of vitamins and minerals that our body needs to maintain good health. For the diabetic, who seems to always be running low on minerals, non-processed salt can actually be a very good source for these missing minerals.
Each and every one of the studies of salt cited by the medical community was conducted using only refined salt. Not one study used all-natural, unrefined salt. So many people are only getting sicker on the low-salt diet and they can’t understand why. They are doing exactly what the doctor told them to do, yet they feel worse because they are now suffering from a lack of sodium in their bodies, which impairs the function of their thyroid, leading to the development of goiters, which are caused by iodine deficiency. This is also another one of those diseases we are seeing more and more of these days.
Mental retardation is also linked to iodine deficiencies. If society seems be becoming less intelligent, as a whole, maybe this could be part of the reason. With all of the salt we consume, we still are not receiving the proper amount to keep our bodies functioning as God intended. Couple the lack of iodine with the excitotoxins found in many of the most popular foods, not to mention the sugar the average American consumes, and it is no wonder why the American child scores so poorly on tests when compared to peers in other countries.
The processing, bleaching, whitening and enriching of our flour, sugar and salt have all contributed to the overall decline in the health of the citizens of this country and every other country in the industrialized world. The manufacturers of these products are well aware of all the information that I have presented here, yet they continue to over-process these foods, destroying the nutrients our bodies so desperately need. The Good Lord created each of these foods perfectly; there is nothing wrong with them in their natural form. Truth be told, they contain almost every thing our bodies need to maintain optimum health. The problems with white flour, sugar and salt arise only when they are processed unnaturally and consumed in massive amounts, as they are in the Standard American Diet.