No Maida, No Palm Oil, No Refined Sugar: Why These Matter

If you read the back of the package of your favourite Svvad Pro snack, you will notice one thing. Svvad Pro snacks and staples contain no maida, no palm oil, and no refined sugar. This is extremely important. Even though these ingredients are popular, they are generally deemed unhealthy. Let us take a look into these ingredients and what they mean.

Why Do So Many Every Day Foods Rely On Maida and Palm Oil?

Maida and palm oil are two of the most affordable and versatile ingredients. Maida provides perfect texture, whereas palm oil increases its shelf life, stays semi-solid at room temperature, and produces maximum output in comparison with any other oil.

Maida is bleached and refined flour, which is used as the basis for the majority of ready-to-eat snacks, bread, and bakery products.

Versatility and Taste: Maida does not contain any fiber and germ and contains only starch. It gives light and fluffy texture, and uniform shape - something that is greatly valued in processed food.

Cost and Shelf Life: As the nutritionally valuable components of the grain are taken out, maida has the maximum shelf life in comparison with whole grain and is less expensive to manufacture on a large scale.

Glycemic Index: It provides a perfect background for sugar, fat, and salt, which leads to rapid breakdown and causes blood sugar spikes and triggers cravings.

Palm Oil has unmatched yield and price. It yields up to 10 times more oil per hectare than alternatives like soybeans. It is a very cost effective oil.

Texture and Stability: Palm oil gives biscuits, cookies, and chips their desired crispiness and acts as a cheap substitute for butter or hydrogenated trans fats.

Long Shelf Life: Palm oil is highly resistant to oxidation, keeping packaged foods from going bad on grocery shelves.

Neutrality: When it is refined, it has no flavour.

What Does Refined Sugar Do Across a Regular Diet?

Refined sugars offer empty calories and lack fiber or nutrients. In a regular diet, they break down rapidly, triggering sudden insulin spikes, subsequent energy crashes, and increased hunger. Over time, frequent consumption promotes weight gain, liver fat build up, and heightened risks for diabetes and heart disease.

A diet that heavily features refined sugars impacts the body in several specific ways:

Fluctuations of Blood Sugar and Energy: Since refined sugars lack fiber, they take very little time to digest. The process results in an influx of sugar in your bloodstream; consequently, a lot of insulin is produced, which causes a drop in the level of blood sugar below its usual value. The effect leads to a continuous process of obtaining bursts of energy with subsequent fatigue.

Increased Body Fat and Hunger: The food products that have a lot of refined sugars contain calories, but they don’t satisfy you. As a result of quick clearing of such sugar from the body with the help of insulin, people become hungry.

Metabolic Stress: The liver suffers the most from the excess fructose; it converts the fructose into triglycerides and accumulates it as fat. Continuous consumption of high amounts of refined sugar can cause metabolic syndrome. It is characterized by high blood pressure and low “good” cholesterol.

What Can Replace These Ingredients Without Losing Taste?

Replacing palm oil, maida, and refined sugar without losing taste requires substituting them with nutrient dense fats, whole grains, and natural sweeteners. These can provide similar moisture, texture, and sweetness profiles.

You can replace maida with whole wheat flour (atta), barley atta, oat flour, almond flour, and a range of flours. You can replace palm oil with ghee, cold-pressed coconut oil, cocoa butter or nut butters. Finally, you can replace refined sugar with jaggery, dates and figs, and stevia or monk fruit.

How Do You Check Whether A Product Really Avoids Them?

 

To check if a product has clean ingredients and avoids these ingredients, ignore the front packaging and strictly read the back label. Check the Ingredient List, where items are ordered by weight (highest to lowest).

 

At Svvad Pro, we believe in clean nutrition and keep these ingredients out of our products as much as possible. Our products, from our high-protein attas, to our high-protein bakery products and premixes, are fortified with pulse-derived pea protein and made with clean, healthy ingredients. Choose Svvad Pro today.