What are “carbohydrates” or “carbs”? If you’re like many people, carbohydrates is a fancy term for muffins, breads, pasta, cakes, and sugary drinks. If you’re lucky, because they represent the best carbohydrates, starchy vegetables and whole fruits, along with whole grains, come to mind. They contain a sweet factor, but are natural and haven’t been manufactured or carry a nutrition label.
In this post, the terms carbohydrates or carbs represent only starchy vegetables, fruits and whole grains. The term carbs also refers to homemade breads and whole grain dishes—but not those made with refined flours and/or a sugar product used to increase the sweet taste. Sugar, in all its processed forms, is a carbohydrate, true. But due to its manufactured and processed states, it is not part of this post, or many that promote healthy food.
Carbohydrates are one of the three basic food types, along with protein and fat, known as macronutrients. Whole food carbohydrates are a mix of naturally occurring nutritious elements, vitamins, minerals and fiber. Carbohydrates are simple or complex: some carbohydrates also contain proteins, some contain fats, some contain fiber. In short they represent an array of richness from plant sources.
Carbohydrates have energy-sustaining qualities unlike those we believed are available in protein. Carbohydrates provide what some would say is both a strong and a weak link between digestion and assimilation.
Whole food carbohydrates are nutritional powerhouses because they are utilized by the body for energy. At the same time, they might be a weak link in digestion because they can push blood sugar high fairly quickly.
Lately we have much maligned the life-giving properties in carbohydrates, attributing to them the build-up of dense matter that clogs up our bodies and makes us sick. Keeping in mind that even though the term “carbohydrate” covers many aspects of nutrition, know that it’s the refined carbohydrates that are responsible for the kind of havoc most writers of self-help diet books want you to avoid.
Depending on their nutritional density, carbohydrates are seen as pivotal in diets that attempt to control weight. Carbohydrates can be helpful in controlling weight and mitigating health issues arising from a person’s diet.
For an opposing view read neurologist David Permutter’s Grain Brain which gives another side of carbohydrates. Perlmutter is absolutely convinced that gluten when it comes from certain carbohydrates is harmful to your health. This is a view that many doctors and nutritionists share. They would rather you focus on low-glycemic vegetables, and do away with grains, unless they are absolutely gluten-free.
On the other hand, whole foods are good foods—the ones you should choose over refined or processed ones. While you can say that herbs, for example, are both medicinal and nutritional, you might have a hard time convincing readers that squash, for example, or green beans, are medicinal. But that argument, that food is medicine, is possible: you can find this kind of information with author Anthony William in his work, “Life-Changing Foods”—see later post.
Dr. Kshirsagar’s list of low GI vegetables are what he calls “cleansing”: cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, carrots, artichokes, asparagus, onions, mushrooms, celery, bok choy, garlic, green beans, peas, okra, scallions, kale, fennel, radishes, watercress and all the leafy greens such as lettuce, spinach, kale, collard greens, arugula, turnip greens, leeks, parsley. Most of these don’t possess attributes of carbohydrates such as sugars that play with blood sugar stabilization. Fiber in some of these vegetables outweigh sugars. Sweet peas might be the sole vegetable listed which might rival a sweet-engendering whole grain.
Deanna Minich’s list of high-fiber, slow-burning carbs includes legumes, gluten-free grains, nuts and nut butters, seeds and seed-butters, starchy vegetables and low-glycemic fruits.
gluten-free grains: amaranth, gluten-free oats, millet, quinoa, rice
starchy vegetables: parsnips, potatoes, squash, sweet potatoes, turnips, yams
low-glycemic fruits: apples, berries, cherries, grapefruit, kiwi fruit, nectarines, pears
Of these choices, vegetables and fruits are easy to purchase and prepare because they’re delicious either raw or cooked. And it’s obvious what you are getting in a whole food.
Whole Food Carbohydrate Disclaimer! There are a number of exceptions to the whole food rule—where it is not obvious when you look at a food that it is indeed “whole”. In fact, it may not be perfectly “whole”—because it’s in a package!
Foods like dried beans and lentils, frozen peas and green beans, rice and grains are considered products since they come packaged. The package, simply a container or a particular amount of food, comes with directions and the label, “Nutrition Facts”. Nutrition Facts list “9 attributes of a product” such as calories, calories from fat in number of calories, and Fat, Cholesterol, Carbohydrates, and Protein in number of grams present in the product.
Yet it really requires more knowledge than what a label gives you to properly know what you are getting in a packaged product. More following this post…
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