Sugar ~ Roots ~ Resistant Starch

Carrot, Parsnips, Turnips, sweet potatoes etc… sounds boring right? If you’re a new comer to the whole food/health food thing then these things might sound boring. They might sound painfully healthy. In the best way that each of these items might not offer a full complex flavor profile they know how to behave and can offer up their own unique sweetnesses as components of a bigger tapestry. As a return to more whole foods less reliant on quick cheap additives like sucrose, salt, and fat we can start to recognize how each item prepared correctly can add these qualities in a richer more satiating way. When roasted, the starches in root vegetables break down into simpler sugars. These sugars ,when done at the correct low and slow temperatures as mentioned with the onions, go through the same caramelization and Maillard reactions to develop rich complex flavors and sweetness. The cooking process changes the structure of the starch as well. When these cooked starches are then again cooled the structure of the starches begins to reform but it does so in such a way that it becomes resistant to breaking down again when reheated. The new structure of this starch is of a form that is not readily available to the digestive system as calories and actually acts as dietary fiber. In this way we can take advantage of the natural unique sweetnesses of these vegetables and incorporate them into different dishes as well as gain benefit of all the vitamins each offers while changing much of what would be digested as sugar into dietary fiber. There are lots of great foods that can be cooked and cooled and reheated to maximize their beneficial resistant starch (Cissn, 2023).