The 'No White Foods' Diet Rule Seems Extreme But Has Major Benefits

At first glance, it can be easy to write off the "no white foods" rule as yet another dietary restriction with no real benefits. However, the rule is more nuanced than that. As the name suggests, the dietary restriction encourages people to eliminate processed white-colored foods from their plates. A few examples of foods you're not supposed to eat while following the dietary restriction include white rice, pasta, white bread, white sugar, and salt. 

Generally, people following this rule will swap out white foods with permitted counterparts like brown rice, wholegrain bread, and lentil pasta. Instead of relying on salt, you can enhance your meals with other herbs and spices like garlic, rosemary, and cumin, while sugar can be replaced with fruit. In many ways, these replacements can benefit one's health. For starters, many processed foods lose fiber in the production process. By replacing them with their whole-grain counterparts, you add more fiber to your diet, which can promote satiety and gut health and also help keep cholesterol and blood sugar levels in check. 

Another reason for making some of these food swaps comes from a 2021 study published in Current Developments in Nutrition, which revealed that, between 2013 and 2018, a mere 7.4% of Americans met the recommended daily fiber intake of 14 grams per 1,000 calories. Insufficient fiber intake has been associated with heart disease, which is one of the top 10 leading causes of death in America. However, you don't just stand to get extra fiber in your diet from making these swaps. The counterparts to processed white-colored foods generally also contain more nutrients. To give an example, brown rice contains more magnesium, potassium, iron, and B vitamins than its white counterpart.

The "no white foods" rule calls for the elimination of two things that most people eat daily: sugar and salt. Needless to say, plenty of good things happen to your body when you stop eating sugar. To name a few, reducing or eliminating added sugar from your diet can help lower the risk of diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease, high blood pressure, and liver disease. The American Heart Association recommends that added sugar should make up 6% or less of a person's daily caloric intake. In reality, though, most Americans aged 2 and older tend to get 12% to 13% of their daily calories from added sugar. 

Cutting salt from your diet can have plenty of benefits, too. Salt is considered one of the biggest sources of sodium in our daily diet, and the excessive consumption of sodium can increase your risk of high blood pressure, strokes, and heart disease. It's not just salt, though, as processed foods in general tend to pack more sodium and trans fats. However, most of us probably could use a little less sodium in our diets. According to the World Health Organization, in 2021, the global mean intake of sodium among adults was 4,278 milligrams daily, which is over twice the recommended guideline of less than 2,000 milligrams a day. 

Now, it's important to remember that while the "no white foods" rule may have plenty of purported benefits, extreme restriction isn't healthy. There are plenty of realistic ways in which you can limit processed foods in your diet without cutting them out entirely. For one, you can swap some white-colored foods for whole-grain alternatives and leave others behind.