‘A second on the lips, a lifetime on the hips’.
When we think about carbs, we immediately envision bread, potatoes, pasta and all sorts of other ‘naughty’ food that we know we will pay for later! Carbs are broken down in the small intestine and then absorbed as a sugar which is what leads to us putting on weight.
‘Cherished foods’
Resistant carbs however, such as sweet potato, turnips, parsnips, suede etc (list to follow) are NOT absorbed as sugars in the small intestine but are rather passed into the large intenstine where they are used as food for gut bacteria that resides there. This gut bacteria converts the resistant starches into ‘short-chain saturated fats that power you and your intestinal cells’.
Short chain saturated fats (fatty acids) are extremely easy to absorb and use as energy; acetate, propionate and butyrate.
Resistant Starches to be eaten as part of a balanced diet include:
- Green Plantain
- Green Bananas
- Baobab Fruit
- Kassava
- Sweet Potatoes
- Yams
- Suede (Rutabaga)
- Parsnips
- Yucca
- Celery Root (Celeriac)
- Glucomannan (Conjac Root)
- Persimmon
- Jicama
- Taro Root
- Turnips
- Tiger Nuts
- Green Mango
- Millet
- Sorghum
- Green Papaya
