Lies about Carbohydrates. Things to know

If you believe much of what's circulating in the news today, carbohydrates are killers—responsible for everything from obesity to diabetes. Nonsense! Not all carbohydrates are bad. In fact, our bodies need carbohydrates. Most of our organs and tissues, including the muscles and our brain, run on carbohydrates.

As Joel Fuhrman states in his book, Eat to Live, 'It is impossible to glean all the nutrients needed for optimal health if your diet does not contain lots of carbohydrate-rich food. Fresh fruits, beans and legumes, whole grains, and root vegetables are all examples of foods whose calories come mainly from carbohydrate. It is the nutrient-per-calorie ratio of these foods that determines their food value.'

The concept of nutrient density that Dr. Fuhrman mentions is key to truly making sense of dietary issues. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) maintains a National Nutritional Database. Compare sirloin steak to romaine lettuce, for example, and you will be greatly surprised: romaine lettuce not only has far more nutrients than sirloin, but it also more than holds its own when it comes to protein per calorie as compared to sirloin. Surprise! On a per-calorie basis, romaine lettuce contains 100 times the calcium, over 20 times the magnesium, and infinitely more antioxidants, phytochemicals, and fiber than sirloin. Which food do you think is more beneficial to your body? And it's not just leafy greens that are nutrient dense—fruits of all kinds are packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phytochemicals, and fiber.

And even whole grains have more nutrient density than meat and dairy. Now, to be sure, many grains are high-glycemic and trigger an insulin response and contribute significantly to allergies and autoimmune disorders, but not all grains do so. (The glycemic index was developed by diabetes researchers as a measure of the insulin impact of particular foods. Foods with a higher rating on the glycemic index cause a higher insulin response.)

Understand that your body can only use glucose (or its stored form, glycogen) as energy; everything must get broken down to these forms first. These are your body's primary and preferred energy sources and are sometimes referred to as blood sugar. If there is too much glucose in your blood (hyperglycemic), your pancreas produces insulin to shuttle the sugar out of your blood and into your cells; if there is too little sugar (hypoglycemic), your body produces glucose from the stored glycogen, which gets rid of the insulin so you can build up more sugar in your blood. Hyper- and hypoglycemia are the extreme conditions of high and low blood sugar, respectively.

The bottom line is that you need carbohydrates for energy. They power every part of your body and energize it to work, run, jump, think, breathe, and more. As long as you're using your body, you need glucose. When you are hungry, you find it hard to think and work because you're running out of glucose, and your brain needs more fuel."

JonBarron.org