Normally, Bev and I tell people to stay away from starchy foods and starchy ingredients because most starch is turned into sugar in the body.
This is why foods and ingredients like chips, bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, flour etc. are basically the same as eating a candy bar as far as the body is concerned, once the stomach and small intestines convert it into sugar, and that process usually only takes 15-60 minutes.
Once it’s converted, your blood sugar spikes and then your insulin spikes, which puts you in a fat storing mode and shuts down fat burning, which is what most of us want to avoid.
But this doesn’t mean lean body seekers have to give up all starches because there are some that aren’t turned into sugar by the body. They are called “resistant starches” (RS) because they are resistant to digestion by the small intestine. They pass through and are processed in the large intestine, which won’t cause that fattening blood sugar spike. In fact, studies find RS can actually have the opposite effect.
So the good news is RS isn’t fattening, but there’s more good news: It also provides health benefits. RS feeds the gut flora in the large intestine, so that makes it a “prebiotic.” When the large intestine flora are fed and happy, they say thanks by creating anti-inflammatory compounds that help the rest of the body. They also say thanks with a little gas, but that only lasts the first week or so, for people new to resistant starches, so you might need to start slowly and build gradually if this is your experience.
RS also helps you feel full faster, improves insulin sensitivity (helping cells to “hear” insulin more effectively, therefore reducing the amount of insulin needed) and may even be a key player in healing leaky gut, which is an all-too-common problem nowadays. Some studies indicate that RS can even help liberate more fat cells to be burned off and may even help relieve constipation.
One of the things I have noticed is the RS gives me more vivid dreams. This is probably due to the fact that serotonin is mostly produced in the gut and RS feeds those gut microbes. Then serotonin is converted to melatonin, which can cause more vivid dreams (or at least increases the ability to remember dreams when you wake up).
Besides the health benefits of RS, it also serves as a great ingredient in recipes to make things like chips, cracker, tortillas, etc. that would normally be no-go for keto people or other low carb fans.
The best sources are raw potato starch and cassava/tapioca starch, but you don’t have to use it as an ingredient and make the foods yourself. We have found some in foods like “Real Coconut” tortilla chips (that’s what we are eating in the picture above), Trader Joe’s parsnip chips and Jilz Gluten free crackers to name just a few, but there are a lot more out there in the low carb crowd.
Don’t jump in thinking resistant starch is a “free food” just yet though. Some reports indicate it still does have an effect on blood sugar, so I’ll have to research it more before recommending it as a binge-friendly food. 😉
High levels of RS can also be found in green bananas and in raw mung beans, but I’ve tried both and ewww…
Most recent update: Even though I found tons of credible sources claiming resistant starch doesn’t affect blood sugar (BS), I still didn’t believe it so I tested my own blood sugar after eating a bag of Cassava chips, my BS went from 80 to 120 in about 30 min.
This bummed me out because I really wanted to be able to eat chips without spiking my BS (and then insulin, which creates a fat burning state). But I needed to feed it to my cousin to make sure because he’s a type 1 diabetic.
His BS response was the same story, but worse, because he doesn’t have help from his pancreas like I do. His BS responded as follows (starting with a 125 baseline), taking readings every 10 minutes after eating a bag of cassava chips (Jan’s brand – see pic below): 131, 155, 200, 211.
Bummer! It’s official: At least for this brand of chips anyway, RS doesn’t seem to be much different than regular chips. I’ll try other brands of chips and cassava flour, tapioca starch, and other cassava products, but it doesn’t look good so far, so proceed with caution when eating RS because it might not be as good as sources say, no matter how “credible” they might seem to be.
It still does appear to be a good prebiotic though, providing the large intestinal microbes with good food to eat, but from a BS perspective, keto perspective, and a fat burning perspective don’t trust it.
