Carbohydrates are pure energy. Unlike fat and protein, which serve as part of your structure, the job of carbohydrates is almost exclusively to fuel your metabolism. After a meal, nearly all your energy comes from carbohydrates. When you don't eat for a while, the body turns to its fat stores to run the machinery, but during the course of a day it's the carbohydrates that keep you going.
Fuel your furnace
The body has a relatively small storage tank of carbohydrates--only a few thousand calories at most--so you need to keep restocking it from the foods you eat. The newly formulated food pyramid, advanced by the National Research Council, advocates that you eat five servings of fruit and vegetables, and six to eleven servings of cereal and grain products per day. This leads to a diet in which approximately 55 percent of calories will come from carbohydrates.
The three faces of carbs
Dietary carbohydrates come in three sizes: simple, compound, and complex. Simple carbohydrates include table sugar. Compound carbohydrates are the fruit sugars. Complex carbohydrates are starches of vegetables and grains.
It is important to recognize that for your body to burn a potato for energy, the complex carbohydrates must be totally broken down to the simple sugars of which it is basically made. In a sense, therefore, a potato or piece of bread ultimately becomes sugar before it is used. But before this bread or potato is burned, it takes a while for the body to break down the complex structure of its molecules; conversely, simple sugars can enter your cells in a rush and flood the cells' machinery with a sugar push.
Diabetes
The most common defect in the body's ability to use carbohydrates is diabetes, which has two forms. The first, which is less common and is termed juvenile diabetes, results from the destruction of the pancreas' ability to make insulin, which facilitates sugar usage. The more common form, adult onset diabetes, develops, in my view, as a result of lack of exercise and consequent fat gain, leading to the relative inability to use blood sugar for energy. The answer to the first form is insulin, whereas the answer to the second is exercise and weight loss.
The high carb diet
A high carbohydrate diet has the advantage of great diversity and low cost. Fruits, vegetables, and grains (compound and complex carbs) carry high levels of important micro nutrients, vitamins, and minerals with their energy provision. The simple sugars, however, are known to be "empty calories." That is, they provide only pure energy without the other good stuff. Your diet derives 20 percent ofits calories from simple sugar. Your sweet tooth is an evolutionary residue from your aboriginal days, when the only natural sweet was honey, again a concentrated energy source and therefore prized. Now sugar is all too readily available as a part of your food offering.
Bottom line:
The 3 million vegetarians in this country tend to live a long time--this has to mean something. Also, the fact that champion athletes carb load before an important athletic event must mean that an increased carbohydrate presence should be in your kitchen and dining room.
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