by Dr. Rakhee Thakar

‌Food is the main key to health. The body is both created and nourished by food. Today’s society has lost direction in respect to diet. The diet of the youth today is dominated by dietary fads, social media, peer pressure, slavery to the senses and loss of traditional age-old wisdom. Breads, buns, cakes, pastries, noodles, pasta and pizza have become a part of the staple diet. While most people have heard that maida, refined white flour, is unhealthy, very few know the magnitude of its toxicity.

Maida is made from wheat. The outer layer of wheat is removed after soaking it in water. The inner white soft gooey stuff that remains (endosperm) is dried, bleached and ground to a fine powder to form maida. It is versatile in cooking and baking because it forms a soft, stretchy and elastic dough. Due to its fineness, the maida flour can be rolled into thin crispy crusts of pooris and samosas that don’t crumble or break easily. Definitely in respect to ease of cooking and taste, maida is a winner. A cook preparing roomali roti can spin it in air to make it very thin without breaking it. This very tenacity makes it difficult to break or digest in the intestine.

Its sticky gluten content makes it heavier to digest than wheat. The undigested residue forms toxins that adhere to the inner lining of the digestive tract further impairing the secretion of digestive enzymes. Hence a vicious cycle of indigestion that is difficult to disrupt ensues. These toxins slow down the peristaltic movement of the intestines and create inflammation contributing to the rising incidence of irritable bowel syndrome and colitis in the modern world. The toxins reduce vitality and energy and steadily weaken immunity that is responsible for recurrent infections and allergies.

Since maida is devoid of the nutritive outer coat of the wheat grain that contains fibre, Vitamin B, calcium and selenium, it is not only low in nutrition but is also a concentrated source of gluten.  Gluten, the complex protein that is difficult to digest, can contribute to the metabolic syndrome that includes high blood pressure, high blood sugar, abnormal cholesterol and excess fat around the waist. The incidence of this is rising at an alarming rate from a very young age, increasing the risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Low in dietary fibre, maida is a cause of constipation, that in turn is the root cause of all diseases. Research confirms the influence of the gut microbiome on the emotional and cognitive centres of the brain; this connection is called the gut-brain axis. This means that indigestion can lead to changes in neurotransmitters in the brain manifesting as depression and other psychological disturbances, just as much as emotional disturbances can cause digestive disorders.

Maida is white because it has been bleached with chemicals like benzoyl peroxide and alloxan. The former is a carcinogen and the latter gradually destroys the insulin producing beta cells of the pancreas. This era is witnessing a whopping rise in the number of cases of juvenile diabetes and diabetes of the young. On the other hand, incidence of polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is a cause of menstrual disorders and infertility, is also steadily increasing in young girls and alloxan is considered responsible for this. It’s not so much the fat but the maida in our diet that is contributing to the rising incidence of fatty liver. It also weakens the activity of the thyroid gland creating hypothyroidism. It’s time we awaken to the ghastly truth of this tasty gooey trap.