TAPIOCA FLOUR AND KETO DIET?!
Have most of you heard of Soluble Tapioca starch? It's actually an ingredient that you can often find into “Low Carbs” protein bars or Keto-friendly snacking. Yet, starch is full of carbs and it may seem very odd that companies still use this ingredient for Keto friendly food. But the thing is, Soluble Tapioca Starch is pretty different from regular Tapioca Starch. In fact, Soluble Tapioca starch, aka soluble tapioca fiber, differs largely from normal Tapioca starch regarding its nutritional qualities.
How so, you may ask? Let’s figure this out together.
But first off, what is a Keto Diet?
Keto diet is a trendy diet in the US. It is based on a very low carbs nutrition but rich in unsaturated healthy fatty acids and proteins. Within this nutrition, your body has such low carbs that it’s going to change its metabolic way of working : you are going to enter in Ketosis. Your body will use its fat being consumed or reserves as a primary source of energy, while in normal circumstances it would use its carbohydrates (sugar) first. In that process, your body fat will be way more available for your body metabolism than it was before, your body is going to draw from this fat reserves. The result of this? A LOT of weight loss in a shorter amount of time.
The Keto diet is also healthier because you consume less processed foods, very sugary foods or drinks; it lowers your chances to develop diabetes and generally makes you eat more veggies to equilibrate your diet.
However, sometimes the keto diet can get quite frustrating for those who have a sweet tooth or who appreciates occasionally snacking. That is where Tapioca starch comes in.
Tapioca Starch in food processing
Tapioca starch is often used in agri-business as a main ingredient for snacking, like crackers for instance, because it helps with the crunchiness of the products and their consistency. It serves as a flour-like ingredient. Most flours used for bakery or cooking are non keto friendly. Keto friendly flours are quite hard to find. Normal Tapioca can’t be used for keto friendly cookies or can only be used very scarcely. But Soluble Tapioca offers an alternative to that issue because it is actually Keto-Friendly. How else can we enjoy those Keto cookies every so often?
How is Soluble Tapioca Starch Keto Friendly and what are its health benefits?
Soluble tapioca has ZERO carbs because it has “resistant” starch. This basically means that its starch can undergo all the digestion steps without being digested due to the molecular structure of resistant starch. They are thereby considered as alimentary fibers and bring no sugar to your diet.
Also, as they transit through your belly, those fibers can also serve as prebiotic for the good bacteria that inhabit your intestines. Eating soluble tapioca starch encourages a good bacterial flora.
All in all, soluble tapioca starch can serve as a low net carb flour for baking, useful for keto-diets for instance; and has also health benefits such as to be a satiety cutter and serve as prebiotic income. YES TO SOLUBLE TAPIOCA STARCH!