Too much starch?

[golden]

Potatoes and rice is what I'm worried about. I do love them and don't know if I should have them everyday. Is sweet potatoes better than red potatoes or baked potatoes and is brown rice the best rice? Can anyone shead some light on this?

Golden

[Pob]

Brown rice and jacket potatoes are better than white rice and peeled potatoes as they have more nutrients along with the starch, so they aren't empty calories.

Sweet potatoes are lower GI than spuds, so are "better" in that respect.

Carbs are good, so long as you get the balance right, and better if they are low GI, and a source of other nutrients too.

[vicstevens]

According to Dr. MacDougall, veganism IS starch-based. Complex starches, and yes, low on the Glycemic Index. But starch-based is the deal. Good starches bring more protein and satiety into the vegan diet. What helps us out is a phenomenon called after-meal burn. Dr. Neal Barnard says:

>>4. Increase your after-meal burn. Your body has to work to digest the food you’ve just eaten, and, in the process, it burns some calories as body heat. This after-meal burn is sometimes called the thermic effect of food. It turns out that vegetarians seem to have a better after-meal burn than meat eaters do, as we here at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine observed in lab experiments done in 2000 and 2001 at George Washington University.

We measured the after-meal burn in 59 overweight, postmenopausal women consuming the same liquid breakfast drink. Then half of the group went on a low-fat, vegetarian diet, while the others went on a low-fat diet that included modest amounts of animal products.

After 14 weeks, we brought each participant back into the lab and checked her after-meal calorie burn again. It turned out that members of the vegetarian group had significantly increased their after-meal burn while the others had not. We measured the effect for about three hours after the meal, but it likely persists a bit longer than that.

Here’s at least part of what seems to be going on: The vegan diet improves insulin sensitivity, which means it’s easier to turn the nutrients you eat into energy. Because the after-meal burn comes largely from carbohydrates, not fatty foods, vegetarian diets are ideal. They are generally rich in complex carbs and low in fat, so they generate a better after-meal burn naturally, which may be part of why most people lose weight when they go vegetarian.

Now, the after-meal burn is small, totaling about 10 percent of your calorie expenditure (about 200 calories each day). However, small changes can add up, so it may well be that plant-based diets help with weight loss because they are lower in calories to begin with, and they may also increase metabolism after meals.

So, yes, you can rev up your metabolism and burn calories faster. By using aerobic exercise and weight training, maintaining an adequate calorie intake and increasing your after-meal burn, you will give yourself an edge.<<

SNIPPED FROM: http://www.vegetariantimes.com/document_display.cfm?section_id=80&document_id=391

[cedarblue]

Brown rice and jacket potatoes are better than white rice and peeled potatoes as they have more nutrients along with the starch, so they aren't empty calories.

Sweet potatoes are lower GI than spuds, so are "better" in that respect.

Carbs are good, so long as you get the balance right, and better if they are low GI, and a source of other nutrients too.



if you want to eat the potato skins try to buy organic or use that spray/wash stuff to get as much yukkies off non-organic as poss if not peeled.

julian graves shops in the uk sell a rice mix with brown, red and wild rice in - tastes great :)

[vicstevens]

In the USA, now Albertsons/Jewel supermarkets carry organic potatoes. They have the Newman's Own Organics brand white potatoes (I believe they're Russets) which come in a 5 pound bag, and are (at my local Jewel), the same price as the store brand or the other brands. This is a 'breakthrough' for organics, in my estimation. Most supermarket chains offer a small variety of organic produce, and I've only recently seen organic potatoes in my supermarket. Hooray for such progress!

[Manzana]

Potatoes and rice is what I'm worried about. I do love them and don't know if I should have them everyday. Is sweet potatoes better than red potatoes or baked potatoes and is brown rice the best rice? Can anyone shead some light on this?

Golden

why dont you try other similar things to add variety, like quinoa (very similar to rice but a seed!), millet, cous cous, corn pasta...

Vegans ingest many calories from starch and this is not a bad thing as long as you try to keep active and also if you try to have quite a bit of fibre with every meal so you feel full before you have eaten too many calories... I dont know anyone that has got fat on broccoli and carrots (even if they ate as many of these as they could, they would find it hard because they would feel full before they get the chance to eat too much)


How active are you? DO you walk/cycle almost every day?

If you want to be healthy this is a very important part of the game! :)