Are Carbohydrates Just Sugar by Another Name?

Self | Today | Self (mostly)

[Brookhaven]

I had a bit an epiphany yesterday, but it seems so contray to what I've been told about eating all my life, I'm having a hard time believing my analysis is corret.

I've been working on changing my diet. One of the things I ran across was the fact that eating carbohydrates spikes your blood sugar. Then I heard someone make the comment (and it was almost a throw-away side comment) "of course, carbohydrates are just complex forms of sugar." Really?

The following lines are pulled from here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/161547.php, my insertions are in brackets [my comment].

Saccharides, or carbohydrates, are sugars or starches.

There are various types of saccharides:

Monosaccharide - this is the smallest possible sugar unit. Examples include glucose, galactose or fructose. When we talk about blood sugar we are referring to glucose in the blood; glucose is a major source of energy for a cell. In human nutrition, galactose can be found most readily in milk and dairy products, while fructose is found mostly in vegetables and fruit.

Disaccharide - two monosaccharide [simple sugar] molecules bonded together. Disaccharides are polysaccharides - "poly…" specifies any number higher than one, while "di…" specifies exactly two. Examples of disaccharides include lactose, maltose, and sucrose. If you bond one glucose molecule with a fructose molecule you get a sucrose molecule.

Sucrose is found in table sugar, and is often formed as a result of photosynthesis (sunlight absorbed by chlorophyll reacting with other compounds in plants). If you bond one glucose molecule with a galactose molecule you get lactose, which is commonly found in milk.

Polysaccharide - a chain of two or more monosaccharides [simple sugar molecule]. The chain may be branched (molecule is like a tree with branches and twigs) or unbranched (molecule is a straight line with no twigs). Polysaccharide molecule chains may be made up of hundreds or thousands of monosaccharides.

So, carbohydrates are made up of sugar or starch. Monosaccharide, disaccharide, and polysaccharide are all forms of sugar. But, what is starch?

Starch - these are glucose polymers made up of Amylose [short chains of glucose] and Amylopectin [long chains of glucose]. Rich sources of starches for humans include potatoes, rice and wheat.

So, startch is a form of glucose. And, what is glucose? Remember the paragraph above about monosaccharides?

Monosaccharide - this is the smallest possible sugar unit. Examples include glucose, galactose or fructose. When we talk about blood sugar we are referring to glucose in the blood;

So, if carbohydrates are made up of one of the three saccharides (mono, di, or poly--all a type of sugar) or starch (which is made up of glucose--a type of sugar), doesn't that mean carbohydrates are--at the end of the day--just a complex type of sugar?

That's a hard fact for me to accept, because it contradicts everything I've been taught about nutrition. The current recommendation is that at least 50% of a person's calorie intake each day come from carbohydrats (as can be seen in the food pyramid).

But, if carbohydrates are just complex forms of sugar, does that mean 50% of my calories should come from sugar (a complex form of sugar, but sugar none-the-less)?

Given sharp rise in not just childhood obesity and diabetes, but obesity and diabetes in general (all commonly called an epidemic by the medical community), I'm starting to wonder if we just didn't make a mistake. By emphasizing grains (carbohydrates) so heavily in our diets, did we unwittingly emphasize sugar in our diets and cause these epidemics?

[SaintDismas]

Try this FC:

1/4 cup milled flaxseed
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 pkg. stevia
1 tsp. cinnamon or other flavor of choice

Mix above in large coffee mug, then add:

1 egg
1tbs. melted butter (not margarine!!!)

Mix well, pop into microwave oven on high for 1 minute, voila!!!

BREAD — 5 carbs, NO GUILT!!!!

[Chasaway]

Also see this little bit:

“Stefansson argued that the native peoples of the arctic got their vitamin C from meat that was raw or minimally cooked — cooking, it seems, destroys the vitamin. (In fact, for a long time “Eskimo” was thought to be a derisive Native American term meaning “eater of raw flesh,” although this is now discounted.) Stefansson claimed the high incidence of scurvy among European explorers could be explained by their refusal to eat like the natives. He proved this to his own satisfaction by subsisting in good health for lengthy periods — one memorable odyssey lasted for five years — strictly on whatever meat and fish he and his companions could catch.”

From: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2374/traditionally-eskimos-ate-only-meat-and-fish-why-didnt-they-get-scurvy

There’s lots of stuff online about vitamins in not-overcooked-meat.

Also consider, most veggies don’t have the nutritive values ascribed to them due to processing, leached soil, etc.

[bgill]

People roll their eyes at me all the time for the way my kids eat

I used to watch a friend's kids and she was all about organic and made sure they had cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower at nearly every meal which are the top veggies on Atkins. I'd bring my lunch with cauliflower fixed like baked potatoes which she thought was a great idea but freaked out when I told her it was Atkins. Strange. Change an ingredient or two and people go nuts screaming how Atkins is bad. If I hadn't said the word "Atkins" she'd have made it for her kids rather than acting like it might jump onto their plate and poison them. Once again, too many sheeple believed the msm when they were out to take him down and laughed when he died from a fall on his icy stoop.

[ottbmare]

The charts are lovely, but they don't explain how I lost 70 pounds on a high-protein diet, and have kept it off for many years, even though my caloric intake went up.

[Chasaway]

That’s funny.

I haven’t had carbs (except for the minuscule amount found in eggs) in years.

I’m healthier and have more energy than I can remember. I am burning fat for fuel now, not sugar. And I have none of the insulin issues that are rampant in our society.

One can make the argument that since we’ve moved to promoting more and more “starches”/carbs, our obesity problem has exploded.

[bgill]

Berries have the lowest carbs of all fruits.

[going hot]

Just to throw a little water on some of these diets:

yeah, stuff to repair various body parts takes fat and protien molecules, actually amino acids and triglycerides, but for energy, actual energy to fuel the activity of the body, it is glucose.

carbs get converted to glucose, fats are three glucose molecules stuck to a fatty acid, and proteins get deaminated and rearranged molecularly into, yes, glucose, then they are thrown into the furnace.

Balanced diets are good because the provide all kinds of materials in various quantities that we need to maintain life and do ongoing repairs.

But energy, is derived in the end from glycolysis, which is fed by carbs directly, fats (the preferred stored arrangement, due to weight/cal ratio) and protien, which are converted to glucose, then fed into the glycolysis furnace.

[hellbender]

For the vast majority of human history - back when fat people were almost unheard of outside a few sedentary aristocrats - humans gained the vast majority of their dietary calories through carbohydrates.

I'm just wondering: where do you think Paleolithic man (and even more primitive ancestors) get all these carbs? They certainly didn't eat grains or other cultivated crops. I imagine they got most carbs from fruit, but away from the tropics fruit is only seasonally available. The rest of the diet was veggies, mammals, birds, insects, fish, crustaceans, & mollusks. I think we are not adapted well to the modern high-carb diet derived from cereal grains.

[Chasaway]

"...There’s more than one dr who admits this is a healthier way of eating. There are children who are prescribed such a diet for seizure control..."

Here's something else interesting: Prior to the development of drugs for diabetes, the oft-recommended diet/cure was one of meat and fat with zero to very, little "sugars" or "starches".

They knew stuff then that is common-sense, but that we have been talked out of by the govt. and some flawed science.

[chris_bdba]

According to my specialist that cares for me with my long time 41 years) type 1 diabetes, yes all carbs no matter where them=y come from do the same thing to the body.Some are absorbed at a slower rate but yes a carb is a carb is a carb...

[allmendream]

Fats are metabolized to glycerol that is fed into the exact same metabolic cycle as sugar to derive energy.

One can make the argument that as Americans have increased caloric intake and decreased caloric expenditure they have grown more and more obese.

On a molecular basis there is no exemption that somehow excess calories, if they are from fat or protein, cannot be converted into lipids and stored as fat by the body.

Excess calories, from whatever source, will be stored as fat by the body.

[Chasaway]

Ask an aborigine to point at food, he points at an animal.

Ask him about plants, and he’ll reply that that is what food eats.

LOL

Paleolithic man might have eaten fruits and berries, but that was generally subsistence level eating. Their preference was for meat.

[allmendream]

If you look at the dietary intake of modern hunter gatherers and horticulturalists, outside the arctic circle where plant matter is rare, almost all of them derive the vast majority of their caloric intake from non-meat sources.

For example, the Gwi people of Southern Africa derive only 25% of their calories from meat sources.

[Rammer]

There is a reason serious athletes “carbo-load” before a strenuous event - so their muscles will have energy to burn down the stretch.

The reason is because many athletes made erroneous assumptions and conclusions about research that showed glycogen supercompensation for a period of 24-48 hours after sever glycogen depletion.

If muscular tissue is not in a state of severe/extreme glycogen depletion prior to loading then supercompensation will not occur.

More recent research has indicated that performance is not improved from carbohydrate loading if there is not any glycogen depletion beforehand.

This is some of the basis surrounding Cyclical Ketogenic Diets.

[Chasaway]

I know that’s what it says on paper.

But it doesn’t play out.

Remember, I’ve been living on meat and fat only for over 5 years. I’ve lost 60 lbs.

I conducted a experiment 3 years ago. For a solid 4 weeks, I literally gorged myself on meat and fat (and this is very hard to do!); with the totals exceeding 4,000 calories per day. I wound up within 1 lb of my starting weight.

The calories in/calories out thing doesn’t work out. Every calorie is not equivalent to every other calorie.

Simplisticly: They don’t work in a vacuum. Meat and fat do not cause the insulin response (fat storage) mechanism like sugars (carbs, included). Without that, fat storage is minimized and excess is excreted.

[chris_bdba]

It’s called an A1C and it looks at the past 6 weeks not 6 months.

[allmendream]

“Supercompensation” perhaps not, but they will not find themselves out of readily available energy ‘down the home stretch’ if they ate a good load of carbs prior to the event.

My point is that there is an obvious difference between a “carbo load” and a “sugar load” and that while athletes often do the former, none seem to do the latter. Thus there is a fundamental and acted upon difference in dietary intake of carbohydrates and sugars.

[Rammer]

So if carbs aren’t your friend, how would you go about restoring depleted glycogen following exercise that approaches high-intensity levels such as weight-lifting or max effort interval training? Lipids? (Fats) Amino Acids? (Proteins) Wishful thinking?

[chris_bdba]

You do realize that man lived and survived centuries before any grain was ever raised,right? We were not made to survive on carbs and our metabolisms were not set up to do that.

[allmendream]

No, that is what the molecules of metabolism “say” to the nutrients you take in - not what it says “on paper”.

Anecdotal evidence is worthless and you did not conduct an experiment, you played with yourself. Fooling around with your diet is not an “experiment”.

Excess calories from meat and fat ARE stored as fat. Once fat or sugar enters the Krebs cycle - each calorie IS functionally equivalent.