The Nigerian Staple: Good or Bad?

I love our staple and am lucky enough to eat it daily. However, how healthy are they? In Nigeria, our staple food consists of a variety of yams, cassava, and brown rice. These can be prepared in many ways. However, they all have one thing in common.

Since it makes sense to rank foods based on their highest nutritional content, the only thing they have in common is that cassava, yams, and brown rice are all carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates are the main culprits when it comes to weight gain. This is because; the final breakdown of carbohydrates in the body is simple sugar. I want to point out that when the supply of ingested glucose (glucose is the only usable form of simple sugar) is too high, our blood sugar rises.

This rise in blood sugar triggers the release of insulin (the hormone responsible for regulating blood sugar levels) to transport or make excess glucose available to body tissues. When our energy stores are low (after exercise, for example), muscle tissue is the first point of call for glucose carried by insulin. However, glucose can only be absorbed by muscle tissues at a gradual rate.

If there is too much glucose carried by insulin present at one time, the liver is the next stop. The liver, like muscle tissue, also absorbs glucose at a gradual rate and when liver stores are full and there is still an excess supply of insulin-carried glucose in the bloodstream, the next stop is adipose tissue where it is stored as fat.

Unlike muscle and liver, adipose tissues absorb glucose fairly quickly. The rate at which glucose is released into the blood is an important issue, because if the carbohydrates eaten are already simple sugars or low in fiber, the digestion process will be shorter and they will be absorbed too quickly. This causes the pancreatic tissue to release an excessive amount of insulin into the blood.

Since the liver and muscle tissues only absorb glucose gradually, the excess glucose carried by insulin will bypass the muscle and liver and be deposited in adipose tissue, where it is quickly stored as fat. This is where the quality and quantity of carbohydrates we eat come in.

I think you can now see the danger of eating too many simple sugars or low fiber foods. The other side of the coin is to eat complex carbohydrates, as this will result in an intermittent release of glucose into the bloodstream, which means that the pancreas will not release excess insulin into the bloodstream; which also means that most of the glucose will be stored in the liver and muscle tissues instead of being deposited as fat in adipose tissue.

Our staple foods tend to be complex carbohydrates and that’s great news, but we definitely don’t eat them in isolation. Regardless of how healthy they are, we cannot survive on carbohydrates alone.

There are a number of ways in which we eat our staple food. For example, yam can be boiled and eaten with palm oil and pepper soup or the yam, when cooked, will be beaten into a paste to make pounded yam and eaten with Ogbono soup (my favourite) or Egusi soup, etc Cassava can be used to make Garri and eaten in a similar way. Brown rice can be eaten with stew, or made into jollof rice or fried rice.

I mentioned earlier that the glucose we get from complex carbohydrates is slowly released into our bloodstream. This is because it takes longer for our body to fully digest them (up to an hour). Well, it takes even longer when these complex carbohydrates are mixed with protein and fat. In fact, when you eat carbohydrates with protein, it takes about 3-4 hours for digestion to complete.

The Nigerian staple is clearly healthy to eat as it is complex carbohydrates. However, what we eat them with, and how much we eat at any given time, also plays an important role in our weight management and general well-being.

Stay tuned for my next article on THE RIGHT WAY TO EAT TO BURN FAT! Until then, here are some tips to follow:

o Eat moderately, not like there is no tomorrow. No matter how healthy the food is, if you eat too much, you will gain weight.

o When using palm oil, choose one with little or no cholesterol and use it sparingly. Avoid palm oil or any other oil that is solid at room temperature.

o Eat at regular intervals: 3-4 hours and don’t skip meals.

o Engage in a regular sports routine so you can balance going in vs. going out (depending on what your goal is).

Oghenetejiri Orugbo,

certified personal trainer,

Certified Fitness Nutritionist,

founder of http://www.gymhawk.com.