Popularised by Dr. Atkins the Low carb movement has created anti-carb crusaders are everywhere. Its now so popular food manufacturers have even created new low carb foods and drinks to help you follow your carb restricted diet plan.
The reason why carbs such a bad reputation is because pure refined carb foods, such as white bread, pasta, breakfast cereals etc can dramatically increase your blood sugar levels. When your blood sugar is overly elevated, it strongly stimulates insulin secretion, which in turn “turns on” a fat-storage enzyme in fat cells called lipoprotein lipase. This enzyme then does a very good job at sucking excess sugar out of the blood, converting it and storing it as fat. In addition your body will often overreact and create too much insulin, which will then pull too much sugar out of your blood, causing your blood sugar to plummet, increased hunger, reduced energy levels and your eyes to close as you slump over your desk for a quick catnap. There are also many serious health implications of an unstable blood sugar. These include a high risk of developing diabetes and heart disease, both of which are increasing rapidly.
But don’t let the Low carb movement blind you, not all carbohydrates are the enemy. A sufficient amount of the right type of carbohydrates is a must for health. The key is choosing the correct carbohydrate foods such as fresh organic fruits and vegetables that not only maintain a stable blood sugar and energy levels but also supply your body with fibre, vitamins and minerals, phytonutrients and other important nutrients that don’t exist in other foods.
This article will clear up any confusion surrounding carbohydrates and provide you with some simple and easy tips to teach you how choose the right carbs. So that you can maintain a stable blood sugar allowing you to experience more energy, a better night’s sleep, minimise craving for unhealthy sugary foods, keep you lean and provide vital nutrients for health and beauty!
Carb secrets of our Ancestors
What do our stone-age ancestors have in common with us? More than we realize: DNA evidence shows that genetically, humans have hardly changed at all, as the human genome has changed less than 0.02% in 40,000 years. This means that the genetic make up of stone-age people is virtually identical to our own. We are literally stone-age bodies living in the space age: thus our dietary needs are the same as theirs. Our genes programmed to thrive in a world in which all the food eaten had to be hunted, fished or gathered from the natural environment – a world that no longer exists. Nature determined what our bodies needed thousands of years before civilization developed; before people started farming and raising domesticated livestock.
Therefore built into our genes is a blue print for optimal nutrition-a plan that spells out what foods make us healthy, lean and fit. We need to give our bodies the food we are designed to eat. Just like your car is designed to run on petrol and when you put unclean diesel in the fuel tank, the results are disastrous for the engine. The same principle is true for us: we are designed to run best on wild animals, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds that all humans gathered and hunted up until 10,000 years ago.
Virtually all carbohydrates our ancestors ate were, wild fruits and vegetables. Consequently, there carbohydrate intake was much lower and there fibre intake much higher than those obtained by eating the typical modern day diet. The foundation of today’s diets grains, dairy products, lots of refined added sugars, trans fats, processed foods loaded with chemicals – are like dirty diesel fuel for our bodies metabolic machinery. These foods clog our engines, make us fat, reduce our energy levels and cause disease and ill health.
The transition from hunting to farming created many health problems for early man. The fossil remains tell us that in pre agricultural times human health was excellent. People were tall, lean, had well developed, strong dense bones, good teeth with little if any decay, and little evidence of disease. However after the advent of agriculture and the changes in our diet that it brought our health deteriorated. Post agricultural man died younger, was shorter, fatter, had more brittle bones, suffered from tooth decay, and had a high incidence of malnutrition and chronic disease.
Choose the correct carbs for energy and health: Organic fresh fruits and vegetables
Humanity’s original carbohydrate sources- the foods we have survived on for millions of years-didn’t come from grains, potatoes, bread, pasta, breakfast cereals, fruit juice or anything else that comes in a package. These modern unnatural foods have a high glycemic index (see later for an explanation) that rapidly cause your blood sugar to rise, are devoid of any nutrition and can only be thought of as empty calories. Instead our ancestors ate foods with a low glycemic index such as fresh fruits and vegetables which produce a natural, gradual rise in blood sugar.
Good quality vegetables are fundamental to a healthy food plan! They are nutrient rich and provide an abundance of the vitamins and minerals that sustain your body. Every meal should contain some sort of good vegetable source. Quality and variety is the key. Your body is most nourished with organic produce. Look to your shopping carts and to your meals and ask, "Do I have a rainbow of colours here?" Fruits and vegetables with their antioxidants, phytochemicals, and fiber are some of the most powerful allies in the war against obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis. So eat as much raw fruits and vegetables as possible while following the proportions of your metabolic type.
Variety is the spice of life
You and I evolved eating a variety of foods. However today it’s been estimated that far too many people eat only 12-14 different foods. That’s a big mistake as different foods provide us with different essential nutrients and in different balances. To maximize your health and reduce the chances of developing food intolerances you need to vary what you eat. Remember too that the deeper its colour the more nutrients foods are likely to contain and always wash your fruits and vegetables to help remove any pesticides or parasites etc. that may sitting on its skin. Even organic food should be washed as you don’t know whose hands have been touching them!
Raw is best!
Cooking most of your foods increases your risk of becoming vitamin, mineral and enzyme deficient, because many of these nutrients are heat sensitive. Cooking is a modern habit, our ancestors cooked there food minimally and only to aid digestion. So heat your food as little as possibly and eat as much as you can raw!
Raw foods, vegetable and fruit juices have been used for thousands of years for health and to detoxify the body. This is a great way of supplying the body with nutrients, but if you are juicing you need to drink them straight away so as not to loose the essential nutrients which are lost when the juice comes in contact with the oxygen in the air. You should also drink everything, not just the juice but also the fibre and pulp as they not only contains many nutrients but they also help prevent large swings in your blood sugar. Store bought juices don’t count as they have been pasteurized at high temperatures, a process that destroys all the vital enzymes and vitamins. They may also contain harmful preservatives.
What we have to remember before we put something in our mouth is that it takes life to give life. To be healthy we needs to constantly supply our body with foods that are full of life and overflowing with nourishing nutrients. If you survive on “dead” over processed or packaged foods and drinks that have been sitting on the supermarket shelf for months where is the health-giving vitamins, minerals and enzymes going to come from?
Packaged “dead” non foods are not just calorie rich nutrient sparse, they actually suck life out of your body. This is because you need vital vitamins, minerals and enzymes to digest and assimilate your food. If the food you are eating doesn’t contain these then your body then has to drain its vital resources to provide the nutrients to make this process possible. Packaged and processed foods literally reduce your life force!
Whole fresh fruits are good snacks for between meals. Your best fruit choices with regard to maintaining a stable blood sugar are; berries (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, etc), bananas (make sure they are not too ripe), pineapple, grapefruit, oranges, apples, pears, peaches etc.
Avoid grains, such as bread, pasta and other trendy modern foods.
Despite the fact that so called health experts and our government recommend via the controversial food pyramid that we consume lots of grains in the form of bread and pasta, it always surprises people when they learn that scientific evidence clearly shows humans were never designed to eat grains. In fact up until 10,000 years ago they were largely absent from our diet. Most cultures before the invention of agriculture thrived on a primarily meat based diet with fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds consumed seasonally and supplementary to meat. Despite what experts tell you, grains in the form of bread, pasta etc. do not form not part of a healthy diet for humans. Bread and pasta are fake food. If we think about it logically where in nature do you find pasta or white bread growing in trees ready to eat?
In addition most grains are also heavily processed and therefore devoid of most of the nutrients they once contained. Reducing or even better avoiding grains is one of the best things you can do for your health. If you do eat some grains then make sure they are organic whole or sprouted grain products. Stay away from anything which is made from wheat and white flour because it contains a protein called gluten that many people are intolerant to. Some experts believe upto 50% of white skinned people are intolerant of gluten containing foods! Unfortunately because wheat is a very very cheap ingredient you find it added to many packaged foods – that’s another good reason to read labels before you buy something!
Alcohol
Humans are not designed to drink alcohol, that’s why most people don’t like the taste of it the first time they try it. Despite what you are told there is little health benefits from beer and wine, apart from a relaxing component if drunk in moderation. They can be thought of empty calories as they contain little or no nutrition, even worse alcohol can block the absorption of certain vitamins and minerals from food. Much of the alcohol on sale still contains the pesticides etc used to keep the bugs of the fruits and grains used as its ingredients. Furthermore due to the fact that they cause a rapid rise then fall in blood sugar alcoholic beverages increase your hunger. In moderation its fine but always drink alcohol during meals not before not between and definitely not before bedtime if you want a good deep nights sleep!
Sugar the white devil
Up until 100 years ago we ate relatively little sugar as it was simply not available and too expensive to produce. Instead our sweat tooth was satisfied by eating naturally occurring whole foods such as fruits and vegetables and small amounts of honey. Today’s fruits and vegetables are vastly different from the ones our ancestors ate, because via thousands of years of selective breeding by farmers their sugar content has been drastically increased. Most wild fruits and vegetables have much more fibre and far less sugar content than the domestic equivalents found in supermarkets
Furthermore our average sugar consumption (sugar that’s been ADDED to the foods we eat as opposed to the naturally occurring sugar found in whole foods) has increased from 1kg per person per year in 1900 up to 80kg today. That’s a massive increase that has serious health consequences. Today we add sugar to everything: breakfast cereals, package drinks, soft drinks, sweats and biscuits, chocolate, bakery products, jams and almost every packaged food to give it some taste. The amount of soft drinks and sweats we consume has more than doubled in the last few years and our children on average eat at least 1.5kg sweats and ice cream per month.
Sugar is an unnatural food and considered a poison by many doctors and health experts. Sugar, is pure refined carbohydrate, it has been depleted of its vitamins and minerals and because it contains no nutrients it literally has to suck nutrients out of the body in order for the body to digest it, thereby depleting you body’s nutrients stores. Furthermore sugar causes an acid environment in the body and to protect it from this acid, minerals from your tissues including bones and teeth are used to redress this imbalance. This causes decay and weakening, the result being the early development of osteoporosis and dental caries, both of which were rarely found in primitive society’s eating their natural diet. Our high modern day sugar intake has caused serious health consequences and is probably the major reason the incidence of degenerative diseases and obesity is rapidly increasing. Type II diabetes for example used to be thought of as a disease that only affected old men but today we are seeing an explosion of children affected by it. That’s scary!
But diabetes actually decreased in World War 2 when sugar was rationed – this fact literally gives us food for thought!
Too many of us have literally become sugar junkies. We not only love the taste of sugar, but constantly crave it and simply cant get enough of foods containing this delicious white poison. If you are a parent before you give sweats or a sugar loaded drink etc to your child be aware that 1 spoon of sugar (a bottle of cola contain 12 spoons of sugar) depresses your immune system for up to 4 hours.
In addition children given sugar at a young age develop a taste tolerance for the white devil. In effect as they get older they will need more and more high sugar foods to get the required kick to satisfy their sweat tooth. That’s why it’s tragic to hear stories of parents giving young kids and even babies cola etc. There is no need to be fanatical of course your kids are allowed to have cake, sweats etc at birthday party’s, but be aware if it’s a sugar party every day you are potentially setting your child up for serious health problems such as diabetes in the future and an uncontrollable sugar craving.
The dangers of artificial sweeteners
Donald Rumsfelt had to do a lot of work to get the dangerous chemical aspartame approved for use in foods to please his pharmaceutical friends. But at what price as nobody has shown aspartame or the other artificial sweeteners such as sucralose, Acesulfame potassium etc are safe. In fact they are neurotoxins that can damage your brain and nervous system.
The idea of artificial sweeteners may seem a good one but do they actually work in helping to reduce the calories you consume? Surely by drinking all these calorie free soft drinks people would be loosing weight and not getting fatter? And why is it fat people often have a diet drink in there hands? This is because the artificial sweeteners trick your brain into thinking food and nutrition has arrived but when the drink reaches your small intestine, the receptors find no nutrients. So a signal is sent back to your brain to keep eating, often resulting in over eating and cravings for sugar. As discussed above for health and vitality you want to eat foods that deliver life, foods that supply you with the nutrients you need not “foods” that are simply empty calories and devoid of any nutrition, make you overeat and contain potential toxic side effects!
What the food manufacturers don’t want you to know!
The people who sell us food know sugar is not healthy but they also know if the food they are trying to sell to you doesn’t appeal to your sensitive taste buds you won’t buy it again. They also know sugar is a very addictive substance and if they add it to the foods they sell, there is more chance we will get addicted to them and buy them again. So what they do is try to hide the sugar content by using fancy names such as glucose, maltose, sucrose, dextrose, lactose, fructose, ribose etc. You can beat them at there own game by becoming a sugar detective and reading the labels of the food you buy. If you see “ose” on the label then you know they are trying to hide the fact that the “food” contains added sugar. You will find sugar as an ingredient in almost every packaged food even meat!
A stable blood sugar; an essential ingredient for health
Have you ever wondered why after eating a large carbohydrate based meal such as a big bowl of pasta a short time later you are hungry again? This is because when you eat carbohydrate foods, digestive enzymes convert most of the carbohydrate into glucose, which then enters the bloodstream. Normally, your pancreas secretes just the right amount of the hormone insulin to transport glucose into muscles, liver and other cells of the body. This keeps blood sugar at normal levels. However if you eat or drink a food containing too much sugar or the wrong type of carbohydrate, large amounts of insulin are released-then, just as rapidly, sugar is pulled out of the blood and deposited in the liver. When the liver is full the excess sugar is stored as fat. This reduction in blood sugar, called hypoglycemia, makes you hungry and tired even if you have just eaten a large meal. The result being your body is screaming for more sugar to restore your depleted blood glucose.
One of the best tools you can use to choose the correct carbohydrate foods is the Glykæmisk indeks (GI). Its a system that describes, how different foods affect your blood sugar. Researchers have shown that eating low-glycemic index foods (natural rise in blood sugar) can have a strong positive influence on your health and vitality. But eating high-glycemic index foods (which all cause a rapid unnatural rise in blood sugar) such as bread, pasta, breakfast products (cornflakes etc) , sweets, high sugar drinks etc causes you to:
1. Store more fat; The hormone insulin regulates fat metabolism. We cannot store body fat without it. Think of insulin as a switch. When it’s on, in the few hours after eating, you burn carbohydrates for energy and store excess calories as fat. When it’s off, when insulin levels are low, you burn fat as fuel. Eating high-glycemic index foods results in the over production of insulin, reduced fat burning and the “turning on” of the fat-storage enzyme called lipoprotein lipase – not good news for people wanting to loose a few kilos!
2. Increases hunger; After a high glycemic index meal, the resulting rush of insulin transports the excess sugar into muscles and the liver as fuel and soon, your blood sugar is lower than it was before you ate. Your body effectively thinks it has run out of fuel and in a short time after eating the wrong foods you are hungry again and a craving for more high sugar carbohydrates. Its vicious circle and another situation ripe for obesity.
3. Low energy and poor concentration; Eating too much sugar causes a drop in energy levels because insulin overreacts to the spike in blood sugar, by switching off the burning of fat for fuel, storing sugar in cells, causing a low blood sugar and resulting low energy levels. If your brain is not getting adequate energy from blood sugar its function is diminished.
Glykæmisk indeks: choose the correct carbohydrate foods
The gist of the glycemic-index idea is that the longer it takes the carbohydrates to be digested, the lesser the impact on blood sugar and insulin and the healthier the food. Green vegetables, fruits, legumes and whole grains cause a much slower rise in blood sugar because they have fibre, a non digestible carbohydrate, which slows down digestion and lowers the glycemic index. Protein and fat also slow down the absorption of carbohydrates and produce a satisfying stable blood sugar that will keep you full, thinner and your energy levels up. It’s important to understand a high-glycemic index response is a very artificial unnatural state; one that nature never intended you to experience! Its one of the major reasons as to why we are getting fatter, hungrier, tired and are developing many degenerative diseases such as Syndrome X, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and obesity.
How to reduce your cravings for sugar and sweat foods
If you have got a sweat tooth and find it almost impossible to get through the day without eating sugar filled sweat foods, then controlling your blood sugar is the key. Use the tips below to help achieve this goal:
1. Eat right for your metabolic type – see chapter
2. Choose foods with a low glycemic index
3. Eat protein and fat together with carbohydrate at every meal. Never eat a carb only meal!
4. Eat 5-6 meals per day
5. If you are up during the night to go to the bathroom, it is most often an indicator of blood sugar mismanagement during the day. The more that you get your blood sugar into balance during the day, the more soundly you will sleep and the better you sleep the fewer sweat cravings you will have. Studies have shown if you are not getting 8-9 hours of sleep most nights then you will crave sugar in the morning and pack on the kilos.
Conclusion
Carbohydrates play an important role in providing your body with energy. However choosing the right kind of carbohydrates for energy and health is essential. When we talk about eating carbohydrates for health and vitality we mean fruits and vegetables. Not bread, not pasta, not breakfast cereals, fruit juice or any other dead “food” that comes in a package. These foods are just empty calories, devoid of any nutrition, not compatible with our genes and are so over processed they literally suck the life out of your body.
Eating too many of the wrong carbohydrates at the wrong time in the wrong amounts results in hunger, gain weight, falling asleep during meetings and compromises your health. But, the right carbs at the right time in the right amounts, while following your metabolic type diet guidelines is one of the keys to optimizing your health. It’s just a matter of knowing what to look for in a carb, which carbs to use when and how much to use.
If you have got a sweat tooth and find it very hard to say no to sugar loaded delights, then you can reduce your sugar cravings by better controlling your blood sugar. This you can do by following your metabolic diet plan via eating the correct ratios of proteins, carbohydrates and fats at every meal. Eating 5-6 small meals and staying away from high GI foods and by getting to bed on time. Remember eating too much sugar is one of the main reasons why we can’t fit our favourite jeans, because excess sugar in the diet is stored as fat.
In an attempt to reduce sugar intake artificial sweeteners have become increasingly popular, but these are just as dangerous as sugar. Don’t go there!
It’s best to use grains sparingly and if you do use them choose brown or wild rice, Millet and Buckwheat. Do NOT eat foods containing wheat (bread, pasta etc.). Due to its gluten content many people are allergic to wheat even though they are not aware of it! Look at the foods labels if you see wheat as an ingredient then leave it on the shelf!
If you are seeking to enjoy health and vitality, loose weight, improve your sports performance, have more energy and not be hungry all the time, controlling your blood sugar is essential. The correct carbohydrates (fruits and veggies) normalize your blood sugar and insulin levels, promote weight loss, and make you feel energized all day long. So eat up your veggies and thank you mum as she was right all along!
References:
1. Price, Weston. “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration“. Price-Pottenger Foundation, 1945
2. Fallon S and Enig M. “Nourishing Traditions.” 2nd ed. Washington DC: New Trends Publishing, 1999.
3. Chek, P. “Under the Veil of Deception”. Encinitas, CA: A C.H.E.K Institute Publication, 2002.
4. www.mendosa.com/glycemic_index.pdf
5. Ernæringsrådet: Sukkers sundhedsmæssige betiding
6. Davis ER, Epp MD, Riordan HD. Changes in USDA food composition data for 43 garden crops, 1950 to 1999. J Am Coll Nutr. 2004 Dec;23(6):669-82.
7. Carbonaro M, et al. Modulation of antioxidant compounds in organic vs. conventional fruit. J Agric Food Chem. 2002 Sep 11;50(19):5458-62.
The secret is to success is to firstly make fruits and vegetables loaded with nutrients your number 1 source of carbs, secondly evaluate is the food a natural source of carbohydrates and lastly what the effect a particular carb will have on your blood sugar via using the glykæmisk indeks liste.
Diabetes actually decreased in World War 2 when sugar was rationed
TIP 1 – Choose the correct carbohydrates (lavt glykæmisk indeks fruits, vegetables and grains)
