Carbohydrates seem to get the blame for everything nowadays. "Carbohydrates made me
fat". "Carbohydrates burned-out my
pancreas". "Carbohydrates raised my
blood glucose". "Carbohydrates raised my
blood triglycerides". "Carbohydrates stole mer
jerb!". O.K, I made the last one up!
If carbohydrates are responsible for all of these bad things, then how come a diet of only
potatoes had the opposite effect? See
20 Potatoes a day.
Also,
Blue Zone populations eat a diet with a high percentage of total energy (%E) from carbohydrates. See
Low serum insulin in traditional Pacific Islanders--the Kitava Study and
The Kitava Study. The Kitavans eat ~70%E from carbohydrates, ~20%E from fats and ~10%E from proteins. They don't eat a significant amount of Western
crap-in-a-bag/box/bottle.
Maybe it has something to do with the
type of carbohydrates and
with what they're eaten. In
A very-low-fat diet is not associated with improved lipoprotein profiles in men with a predominance of large, low-density lipoproteins , (emphasis, mine) "The very-low-fat, high-carbohydrate experimental diet was designed to supply less than 10% of energy from fat (2.7% saturated, 3.7% monounsaturated, and 2.6% polyunsaturated), with 75% from carbohydrate (with equal amounts of naturally occurring and added
simple and complex carbohydrate) and 15% from protein."
Simple carbohydrates are
sugars.
The experimental diet which did bad things contained
37.5%E from sugars. I declare shenanigans!
1. There are
simple carbs, there are simple carbs and there are simple carbs. In the previous post, the graph of
plasma triglycerides after an
OGTT showed that 100g of
glucose had no significant effect on plasma triglycerides over a 6 hour period. If it had been 100g of
fructose, there would have been a significant increase in plasma triglycerides.
Galactose is taken-up by the
liver and has minimal effect on blood glucose, but I don't know its effect on plasma triglycerides.
2. There are
complex carbs, there are complex carbs and there are complex carbs.
Overcooked starch is high in
amylopectin which is
highly-branched, which means that it
hydrolyses rapidly into
glucose which gives it a
very high glycaemic index. Raw & refrigerated
potato starches have
very low glycaemic indices, due to the presence of
amylose, or other
resistant starches.
Rice contains a
mixture of starches which varies with rice
type,
cooking time and subsequent
refrigeration.
3. There are
oligosachharides e.g.
FOS.
4. There are
polysaccharides e.g.
inulin.
5. There is
soluble fibre/fiber e.g.
cellulose.
Although overeating
sugars containing fructose &
starches that rapidly hydrolyse into glucose makes the liver fatty, overeating
fats also makes the liver fatty. See
Pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes: tracing the reverse route from cure to cause.
It's the
chronic over-consumption of
crap-in-a-bag/box/bottle (high in
sugars and/or
starches and/or
fats), not just carbohydrates, that causes
over-fatness and other
health problems.
