Healthy Eating Tip:
Don’t be Hatin’ on all Carbs!
This week three people asked me about carbohydrates in the food we served in Hometown Cafe, and one person asked about sugar. When someone asks about carbohydrates, I always ask, “why are you concerned about carbs?” The more important thing to be concerned about is sugar, and more specifically refined simple sugar.
In America, we love to find a villain that is responsible for everything. We like to boil down to that one thing we need to be concerned about. In an effort to find that one thing, the media has made both fat and carbohydrates dietary villains since the 60s and 70s. As a population, we have proved that if you concentrate on either fat or carbohydrates to the exclusion of the other, it is an utter failure and leads to the unprecedented health crises we find ourselves in 2020. First of all, they got it wrong. Fat isn’t the issue; it is processed oil. Carbs aren’t the issue; it is processed sugar. Processing removes everything good about food and leaves what is bad. It’s that simple! If you want to find a dietary villain, make it processed food, not fat or carbohydrates. We need both fat or carbohydrates in our diet to be healthy. What we don’t need are processed oils and refined sugars!
Short-term low-carb diets can be highly effective for a very specific segment of the population that is significantly overweight with a body mass index (BMI) approaching or over 40 and for whom other options have been exhausted. But long-term low-carb diets for anyone can be dangerous. New research suggests that low-carb diets may not be the best way to achieve long-term health. A meta-analysis of pooled data from nine prospective cohort studies with 462,934 participants found an increased risk of death from all causes, cardiovascular disease and cancer mortality associated with long-term low-carb diets. The researchers suggest that the reduced intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fiber and the associated reduction in vitamins and phytochemicals along with the increased intake of protein from animal sources, cholesterol, and saturated fat, all of which are risk factors for cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular event, and cancer may be mechanisms for the study results. “Further, it has been proposed that vegetables, fruits, cereals and legumes, which have been found in several studies to be core components of healthy dietary patterns,” but missing from the low-carb diet must be a contributing factor.
In very practical terms for losing weight, it makes sense to limit foods that have more calories per gram. The break down of calories per gram for macronutrients is below.
- Carbohydrate: 1 gram = 4 calories
- Protein: 1 gram = 4 calories
- Fat: 1 gram = 9 calories
- Alcohol: 1 gram = 7 calories
Fat has over twice the calories than carbs do per gram, and alcohol has nearly twice. If you are looking for things to limit in your diet to reduce weight, common sense says those things should be fat and alcohol, not carbohydrates. That’s pretty much a no-brainer, isn’t it?
Simple or refined and processed sugars are a rapid source of energy for our bodies. Examples include white rice, white flour, white sugar, and candies. Although we get quick energy from simple sugars, it doesn’t last long, and we feel hungry soon afterward. People with diabetes will recognize that the measure of glucose in the blood rises almost immediately after they eat simple sugar but comes down pretty fast too.
Complex sugars consist of long chains of sugar molecules. Fiber and starch are the common terms for complex sugars, and examples include whole wheat, brown rice, beans, pulses, oats, fruits, nuts, and vegetables. Complex sugars tend to fill you up for longer, and they are considered healthier because they contain more vitamins and minerals.
Healthy complex sugars become simpler sugars when fiber is taken out during food processing. Whole wheat flour becomes white flour, brown rice becomes white rice, and whole oranges with tons of fiber become orange juice with zero fiber and 100 percent simple sugar that raises blood sugar very quickly.
If you really need to find a carbohydrate villain, then make refined, processed sugar that villain. Eliminating things from your diet like brown rice, whole grains, beans, and legumes and all the fiber and micronutrients along in them is insane and leads to poor health. That’s just throwing the baby out with the bathwater!
The Healthy Eating Tip post entitled Understanding Carbohydrates is a short but comprehensive explanation of carbohydrates and Healthy Eating Tip posts Choose A Diet That Is Right For YOU! and What Do I DO With New Low-Carb Diet Information? offer some practical carbohydrate diet advice. All three posts would be useful to read if you are interested in carbohydrates.
Here is the reference for today’s Healthy Eating Tip:
Mazidi M, Katsiki N, Mikhailidis DP, Sattar N, Banach M. Lower carbohydrate diets and all-cause and cause-specific mortality: a population-based cohort study and pooling of prospective studies. European Heart Journal. 2019;40(34):2870-2879.