One in two men and one in three women do not eat enough starchy foods. However, according to the national nutrition and health program, they should be present at each meal. Too often shunned, starchy foods are victims of misconceptions and we often ignore the full extent of their diversity. To talk about it, Laurent Mariotte invites Philippe Artigala, sports doctor and author of La satiété deumption to the editions Lazare and Capucine, to his Table des bons vivants , which recalls all the qualities of these foods relegated to the background on our plates.
What is a starchy food?
"A starchy food is a food that contains mainly starch, that is to say complex sugars which have the advantage of giving energy in the long term rather than in the short term", summarizes simply the nutritionist. "It's what we call slow sugars," says Laurent Mariotte.
And many of them fall into this category of food which can be divided into three sub-parts. On the one hand, there are cereals such as wheat, barley, rye, oats, corn, rice. On the other hand: legumes or pulses including lentils, everything that belongs to the pea family, beans, and everything that has beans: dry beans, mung beans, soy beans. Finally, the tubers or the roots, along with the potato, sweet potato, yam, plantain, tapioca and Jerusalem artichoke.
As for the columnists, Anne-Laure Pham prefers among the cereals the small spelled, if possible from Haute-Provence. "You just put it to soak a little before to cook it faster, in the space of 30-40 minutes and it gives its dose of chestnut in taste that I love", she rejoices. For his part, Olivier Poels, he admits having a preference for the potato "as a Belgian, whom I know how to prepare in at least 500 different ways without ever getting tired", he laughs.
Too many misconceptions
But if our two gourmets are convinced of the benefits of starchy foods, they are victims of many misconceptions. To start with the heaviness with which they are accused but which Philippe Artigala sweeps with the back of his hand: "One has the impression that eating starchy foods is heavy. However, what the body expects is not heaviness, but energy and this energy comes simply from these starchy foods without any particular health problem, "he said.
They are also not difficult to digest as we too often tend to think. "Made up of long chains of small sugars which are very quickly assimilated by the organism from the moment when we have no associated fatty elements, they will perfectly give all their energy. They contain proteins which satiate us a little like meat proteins so they have a double energy and satietogenic effect ", he summarizes. Even in the evening, it is not advisable to consume it since they contain vitamin B, a good vitamin, in particular, to go to sleep.
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Another misconception: that being more sedentary than before, we would need less starchy foods and their energy. "When we look at the sedentary lifestyle curve, we lost seven hours of physical activity daily between 1850 and today. We have gone from eight hours a day to less than an hour," recalls the sports doctor who concludes: "So we still need it but in smaller quantities. Even if we are sedentary, it must represent 50 to 55% of our daily calories".
Finally, it is just as wrong to think that starchy foods make you fat. Unless you accompany them with a carbonara sauce, laughs Philippe Artigala. It is not the pasta that makes you fat, but what you put with it.
A wide variety of recipes
And to get back to starchy foods, why not go gradually as explained by the nutritionist who recommends, for example, to consume legumes once a week. Anne-Laure Pham has her little tip regarding the latter: "bring a small pre-soaking table, because the time varies depending on the legumes". Laurent Mariotte likes them, in "a beautiful lentil salad with a gribiche sauce, like a mayonnaise with boiled eggs, capers and pickles".
Marrying two types of starchy foods is also a good solution, explains Philippe Artigala in his book, which points out that many cultures have adopted the cereal-legume association. Thus, Laurent Mariotte offers an Italian recipe for pasta with chickpeas: "Brown the chickpeas in olive oil, in rosemary and garlic and keep a little cooking water from the pasta to mix all that, "he advises. Olivier Poels is waiting for the very first fresh peas to taste them with a burrata when Anne-Laure Pham advises to vary the wheat flour with flour of chickpeas or whole rice which "will really bring very different tastes to your pancakes and your cakes. "