The #1 Vitamin Depleting Food in the World

Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast

Dr. Eric Berg

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Find out why refined starches are the #1 vitamin-depleting food in the world. In this podcast, I’ll explain the critical role of vitamin B1 in the metabolism of refined starches. Learn to spot the signs of a vitamin B1 deficiency before they wreak havoc on your life!

Refined starches include rice flour, tapioca flour, corn flour, modified corn starch, maltodextrin, and modified food starch. Certain nutrients are required to metabolize refined starch and turn it into energy. Vitamin B1 (thiamine) is vital to this process.

Refined starches are much higher on the glycemic index (GI) than sugar—this scale tells you how fast a food can raise blood sugar. Sugar is a 74 on the GI, while refined starches like maltodextrin are 180!

Vitamin B1 is not stored in the body in large amounts, so consuming refined starches can quickly cause you to become deficient.

Symptoms of vitamin B1 deficiency include:

•Fatigue

•GI problems (slow digestion, bloating, constipation, nausea)

•Low stomach acid

•Low bile

•Stress

•Nervous tension

•Insomnia

•Frequent mood swings

•Muscle twitches

•Breathing problems

Much of the refined starch broken down into glucose in the body can not be used as energy, so it’s converted into lactic acid. This decreases oxygen in the body and makes it more acidic, which can cause hyperventilation and restless legs syndrome.

Along with diet, the following factors can also contribute to vitamin B1 deficiency:

•Alcohol

•Tea

•Coffee

•Raw fish

•Gut issues

•Metformin

•Excessive exercise

Meat, especially pork, is the best food source of vitamin B1. Liver, eggs, and sunflower seeds are also good sources. Refined grains are often fortified with synthetic B vitamins, which you should avoid.

If you want to supplement vitamin B1, look for the natural form called allithiamine. Benfotiamine is also a good supplement form of vitamin B1.

Magnesium is an important cofactor involved in turning starches into energy. If you don’t have enough magnesium, vitamin B1 won’t work.

Magnesium helps control calcium in the body. Symptoms of low magnesium include:

•Muscle spasms

•Calcium buildup

•Kidney stones

•High blood pressure

•Palpitations

•High cortisol

•Trouble sleeping

•Tremors

•Muscle weakness

•Migraines

Magnesium glycinate is the most absorbable form of magnesium!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today we're going to discuss the number one vitamin depleting food in the world.
0:04.7	Can you guess what it is?
0:05.9	If you answered refined starches, you'll be correct because the answer is actually not sugar.
0:12.6	If we look at how much a sugar depletes you of certain nutrients, a starch will deplete you
0:17.5	way more than a sugar.
0:19.3	We're talking about refined rice flour, tapioca flour,
0:23.7	corn flour, modified cornstarch, maltodextrin, and modified food starch. In order to process
0:30.0	or metabolize or break down a refined starch and turn it into energy, it requires certain nutrients. One of the big nutrients that
0:41.8	is needed to metabolize starches is vitamin B1, thiamide. Another question that you might have is why is
0:49.7	the starch worse than a sugar as far as depleting nutrients. A person consumes much less sugar than
0:55.8	starch in their given diet. An average person consumes about 150 pounds of sugar per year. An average
1:03.4	person consumes almost 300 pounds of starch per year. On the glycemic index, refined starches are much, much higher than sugar.
1:14.6	What is the glycemic index? It's a measurement or a scale of how fast a food or a carbohydrate
1:20.4	can turn into glucose or raise your blood sugar. If we compare sugar to starches,
1:26.6	sugar is about 74. Maltodextrin is like 180. And those
1:32.6	refined starches jack up your blood sugar way faster. One of the really important nutrients that's
1:37.3	needed is vitamin B1, thineine. A couple things you need to know about thymine. We don't store a lot of
1:42.6	it. I mean, like in an entire body, we might store 30 milligrams. The RDAs for B1, which were established like 80 or 100 years ago, I've never been changed. It's like between 1 and 1.2 milligrams. Do you realize how tiny that is? For my viewpoint, that is like way, way, way too low. Doctors never
2:02.4	check for a vitamin B1 deficiency. What are the symptoms of the B1 deficiency? Beyond fatigue is problems
2:09.0	with your GI system, your digestion. You might get slow digestion, bloating, maybe a little
2:15.9	constipation, feeling nauseous, because so many parts of the
2:19.6	digestion need B1. You're also not going to make enough stomach acid, can't release the bile
	...

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