01 Jun GLuten Free Flour options to bake with.

Not all gluten free flour is healthy and gut friendly. I know a few people that have celiac and had no choice to go completely gluten free for their health and there are plenty of pre packaged gluten free options these days. That’s great… BUT a lot of prepackaged gluten free products are made with unhealthy flours and ingredients so while going gluten free is a much more healthful option you need to be careful with what gluten free products and flours you consume. 

A lot of packaged gluten free bread and pasta items are made with soy flour, corn (maize) flour, rice flour, potato flour etc… which can be very problematic, just as problematic as wheat/gluten containing flour.

Where do I start… 

Soy and corn flour are both made extensively from GMO crops (Genetic modified organism) which is sprayed heavily with a very harmful herbicide called glyphosate. This chemical is very detrimental for many reasons I’ll go into briefly… it’s harmful for the farmers, for the environment, the consumer and YOUR gut bacteria. Your gut houses 90% of your immune system and you need loads of beneficial bacteria in there to help assimilate your food, protect your gut lining, control your weight, mood, hormones etc so when you eat foods that reduce the amount of helpful bacteria you have a problem. So it’s a good idea to avoid consuming any soy and corn products that are NOT organic. Organic means they will not be sprayed with this harmful chemical. Plus these foods are very nutritionally void so not really offering much apart from empty calories. 

Rice Flour is not all bad, but it’s not all that good either. It offers some resistant starch to the beneficial bacteria in the gut… which means in small qty it does offer some food that is only broken down by your bacteria because they feed off it. The problem is usually the qty, rice and rice flour should be an occasional food not a common daily item. White rice is very nutritionally void however it is a very calorific food. It’s empty calories and it spikes your blood sugar. This means if you don’t burn these carbs off it turns to sugar and is stored as fat. We don’t want to over eat on foods that spike your blood sugar because having steady blood sugar control is associated with good health. When you have a lot of foods that spike your blood sugar is when you train your body to crave sugary foods creating bad eating habits. 

Potato Flour is again similarly digested to rice flour… it does offer some resistant starch but it is a carb with a very high glycemic index. It will spike your blood sugar and be digested as a sugar. Definitely not something you want to over consume. So again empty calories with little nutritional value.

Not to mention a lot of GF prepackaged items will have fillers, binding agents and additives that can also be problematic. 

Opting for more healthful flours like coconut flour, chickpea flour, buckwheat flour or almond flour is a must for healthy eating and eating for good gut health. 

Not all gluten free flour is harmful and nutritionally void. In this video we dive into what flours i like to use and how to use them. Plus there are plenty of recipes on the blog using these exact flours.