This Is An Expert?

Choose your weapons, and face off!

Following is a partial transcription of a letter to the editor of a regional (AZ) newspaper:

"-----Today, white flour, a dead product, can be stored indefinitely, like cement. It forms a slime in the stomach, causes diverticulitis and is the darling of the laxative industry.

The nutritionally conscious, on finding white flour, would be wiser to bury the package in the garden, using gloves, or eat the package, boiled with some honey. Not sugar."

Here's some news (apparently) for the author of the letter:

1. If one mixes white flour and water, a gluey substance is the result, which, if swallowed, would for a time be the same in the stomach. Then it would be gone down the pipes in a matter of a few minutes. How many people do you know who eat white flour in this manner?
2. The walls of most stomachs are already coated with "slime" (mucus) which is why they don't auto-digest from all of the acid and pepsin therein.
3. The carbohydrates in white flour are easily digested and absorbed long before they arrive in the colon, the site of diverticular disease.
4. Unless otherwise removed prior to consumption, the protein in white flour (gluten and gliadin) is also digested and absorbed in the small intestine.
5. In order for white flour to "cause diverticulitis" it would have to be eaten to the exclusion of all else, a dificult task. (This is known as the "fellow traveller" blame game.)
6. Constipation is not "caused by" white flour, unless it is the sole constituent of a diet (see above).

The letter writer assumes that those who eat white flour, already on a downhill slide into the grave, are at risk for colon disease. This conclusion is based on the fact that a low fiber, low bulk diet is associated with more constipation and more diverticulosis.

If a person who consumes that poisonous white flour (usually not simply mixed with water, but cooked up to make it attractive) also eats an orange, some broccoli, and an apple, he will have no more trouble than the person who eschews white in favor of whole wheat.

Some things made from white flour are really neat - angel food cake, pancakes, and Christmas cookies - and some are simply kind of boring, like white bread. Self-righteous health-conscious (also boring) letter writers will make a big thing out of eating whole grain products excusively.

They may also, like their Bimbo Bread eating neighbors, get to heaven eventually.