As for the whole, ‘needing to eat carbs for energy thing’ that I hear so much about -
Without glucose, your brain isn't going to function properly nor will you have the glycogen stores necessary for demanding physical activity. So, yes, you need to eat carbs for energy.
our guys would head out to do chores in the morning with nothing more than a cup of coffee
Yes, some guys can go for a time just on a cup of coffee, but there's a reason breakfast is considered the most important meal of the day.
But we didn’t eat a ton of refined carbs on the farm. Sweet should be a *treat*, not a regular way of eating
I'm not sure why you feel the need to differentiate between "refined" carbs and, I guess, "unrefined" carbs. Of course, I don't know of anyone who gets sucrose from gnawing on a stick of sugar cane so this whole "sucrose is refined" thingy doesn't make much sense to me. For the sake of this discussion, however, a carb is a carb. You seem to be suggesting that when it comes to the issue of obesity and diabetes that refined vs. unrefined is material. It isn't.
>Without glucose, your brain isn’t going to function properly nor will you have the glycogen stores necessary for demanding physical activity. So, yes, you need to eat carbs for energy.<
IF your statement were true, why then do neurologists treat epilepsy in children with a ketogenic diet, which almost totally eliminates carbohydrate in the patient’s diet and produces the metabolic state of dietary ketosis?
http://www.dana.org/grants/imaging/detail.aspx?id=6976
Research is being done on restricting the growth of certain brain tumors by inducing the metabolic state of dietary ketosis.
http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/2/1/30
My brain functions just fine without carbs of any kind. And I have more energy without carbs than I do with them.
*****
I think that where you and I are having a communication gap is that you don’t get how many people eat *now* and how this is so different from how they used to.
Breakfast: Cold cereal or an energy bar - usually sugary
Lunch: Hamburger, large fries, 32oz soda
Snakc: Candy bar
Dinner: Pizza with beer or more soda
Add to that a steady stream of soda or energy drinks throughout the day and the occasional salad to ‘balance things out’ and you’ve got a recipe for an early death.
Again, I’m saying that a very low carb/calorie diet may be necessary to UNDO the effects of American eating. If we ate like our grandparents did, we wouldn’t get as sick, as often, as we are.
BUT, some people are more carb sensitive than others and would’ve become diabetic on our grandparents’ diet. (I did) Our grandparents’ generation did have diabetics, just not as many.
If you have T2 diabetes, you’ve eaten too many carbs. Period. As a matter of fact, you *cannot* become a T2 diabetic if you’ve never eaten a significant amount of carbs.