Are carbs the new fats? Tell us what you think

December 20, 2010

Carbs -- are they the devil? More and more nutrition scientists believe we eat far too many of them, especially refined carbohydrates and sugars, and that our love affair with doughnuts, pasta, bread and candy is wreaking havoc with our health. (Read the full article here.)

Do low-carb diets work for you? What are the hardest things to give up? Any tips? Or do you think this is all nonsense? We welcome your comments in the discussion below.

-- The L.A. Times health team

Also
A reversal on carbs

Comments (26)

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Boobaa at 10:09 AM June 25, 2011

Yhis article is good, but incomplete. Carbs are the culprit, but the reason you have "pasta defenders" is because they are correct - although we consumer WAY TOO MUCH refined flour, it is inaccurate to say that the human body metabolizes flour and sugar in the same way. "Similar," yes - but not the same. Refined flour and sugar will both enter your bloodstream quickly, and if your energy expenditure does not match or exceed your energy intake, you are going to wear your dinner around your waist. From there though, it's important to understand that refined grains are metabolized primarily as glucose - a form of sugar that is metabolized by every cell in your body. Refined sugar, however, has huge amounts of fructose -- and your liver is really the only place in your body that fructose gets metabolized. There was a great article in the New York Times a few weeks ago that is much more detailed than I'm going to get (go do a google search on "is sugar toxic" and you'll find it.

Immunitrition at 10:43 AM May 28, 2011 The distinction between STARCHY and NON-STARCHY carbohydrates needs to be pointed out here. Fruits and veggies ARE CARBS, but they belong to the NON-STARCHY carb family (except bananas and plantains) where, in healthy individuals, fruits usually don't spike blood sugar/insulin requirements like STARCHY carbs do - especially sour fruits. Also, HEALTHY fats eaten along with fruits helps to BUFFER how quickly glucose will move into the bloodstream. Organic nut butters, cheeses, soaked nuts and seeds, and fresh real cream are all great examples of healthy fats to eat along with fruits. Fats help the glucose to be "time released" into the bloodstream so the spike and dips of blood sugar are not too erratic. Unlike the current food pyramid recommends, we DO NOT and SHOULD NOT consume STARCHY carbs as a central macro-nutrient in our diets! Our still very primal physiology and DNA was NOT built upon starchy carbs. We didn't start planting crops until about 12,000 years ago, which in evolutionary terms, was just about yesterday and we didn't herd animals early on in our Paleo/Neo era either. We hunted and ate what we could - vegetation, nuts, seeds, berries, roots, tubers and fruits as they became available. The modern, starchy carb based diet is truly the culprit behind the obesity and blood sugar dysregulation epidemics we are seeing in our modern world.

commenter1223 at 6:27 AM May 17, 2011

"Consumption of carbohydrates has increased over the years with the help of a 30-year-old, government-mandated message to cut fat." That's what happens when the government sticks their nose into something.

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