STARCHY FOODS

By starchy foods I mean floury foods containing starch. Most such foods are bad carbohydrates and some need to be completely excluded from your diet. The number one starchy food is the potato. You nay be interested to know that when the potato was brought back from the New World by explorers in 540, the French firmly rejected it, considering this root vegetable fit only for pigs. They thought it so unpleasant they refused to eat it, unlike some "northern" European peoples, such as the Germans, the Scandinavians and the Irish, who took to it readily. It has to be said that some of these people had relatively little choice, often having not much else to eat.

For two centuries the French continued to pour corn on the "pig root". It was not until 1789, when Larmentier published his Treatise on the cultivation and uses of the potato, that people in France finally came round to eating it. The famine that was raging at the time was an additional incentive. It was later discovered that the potato is rich in vitamins and minerals, though it loses most of these when it is cooked and, especially, when it is peeled.

Recent tests have shown that the potato releases a very large quantity of glucose into the system. Traditional nutritionists generally classed the potato as a "slow sugar", but this is mistaken. Compared to the glycaemic index of 100 of pure glucose, the boiled potato has been shown to have a glycaemic index of 70, which makes it a bad carbohydrate. Moreover, it has also been demonstrated that the method of cooking potato changes the structure of its molecule, which can make matters worse: mashed potato has an index of 90, while baking potatoes in the oven causes their index to shoot up to 95! So you can look upon the steaming potato on your neighbour's plate with the utmost contempt! And remember, chips are potatoes too.

Chips are a carbohydrate-lipid food, rather like buttered bread. They simply cannot be eaten without the risk of putting on weight, since the oil used in the frying can be laid down as body fat. So think of steak and chips as an absolute heresy! Do not let the thought of this worst of all possible dietary combinations even cross your mind! The lipid from the meat and the bad carbohydrate from the chips constitute a mixture that goes against nature.

I know the cost of foregoing this favourite meal, but it is the price to be paid for reaching your goal. When you hit your target weight, you will have no regrets about the sacrifice. What is more, chips are frequently fried in fats which are very high in saturated fatty acids, consumption of which constitutes a significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

However, once or twice a year I eat chips: not because I give in when confronted with a plateful, but because I make a conscious decision to eat them (when you are no longer trying to lose weight, you can afford to make this kind of decision). But I do not eat just any chips. If you are going to indulge in a dietary discrepancy, you may as well savour it to the full and choose the best to be had. And for maximum damage limitation, accompany your chips with a green salad. Not only is it delicious, but the fibre in the salad tends to trap the starch, turning the combination into a carbohydrate which releases a more limited quantity of glucose.

When you order meat in a restaurant, get into the habit of asking what is served with it. There is always an alternative to potatoes. You can ask for French beans, tomato, spinach, aubergines, celery, cauliflower, courgettes. And if, unfortunately, there are only bad carbohydrates to choose from, then order a side-salad. At home, when it comes to deciding what to serve with meat, adopt the same principle.