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| Your Sweet Tooth |
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Of course sugar is an easy target and the favorite bogeyman of dietary habits. The average North American consumes the equivalent of 20 teaspoons of sugar a day – more than double the recommended amount — and drinks 53 gallons of soft drinks per year, a whopping 40 per cent increase over the consumption levels of 20 years ago. But that’s just the beginning of the good carb vs. bad carb debate . . .
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If your sweet tooth doesn’t undo your best intentions with regard to sugar, count on the body to perform its own secret act of sabotage. When you severely restrict carbohydrate intake, your body gets sweet revenge by converting available fats and proteins into blood sugar; essentially forcing other nutrients to become unwitting soldiers in the carbohydrate army.
Nutritional fads tend to select a culprit, point a collective finger and then set out to eliminate the offending nutrient from diets. Sugars have been on just about everyone’s most wanted list at one time or another — implicated in increased risk for everything from obesity to diabetes to attention-deficit disorder.
It may not be that simple. Carbohydrates are a molecular mix of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen that function as either simple or complex sugars and provide calories or energy to the body. Many carbohydrates occur naturally and are distinguished by the way in which the body processes them — most carbs and sugars eventually become glucose, a body fuel. Lactose is the sugar in milk, fructose is fruit and vegetable-based, sucrose or table sugar is a blend of glucose and fructose. Starch is also a form of glucose.
The glycemic index, which is very popular right now among some nutritionists, charts the way that specific carbs cause blood sugars to rise. Starch, for example, has a high glycemic index, causing blood sugars to rise quickly — faster than fructose and sucrose. Some experts believe that high-GI foods contribute to the development of diabetes and encourage people to think in terms of “good” and “bad” carbs.
“There’s no such thing as a good carb versus a bad carb. A carb comes from a food that’s part of a meal that’s included in a diet, so it’s silly to focus on the carb without knowing what food it’s in and what else is in the meal. Generally, all this glycemic index, glycemic load goes away. Carbs with high glycemic effect mix with carbs of low glycemic effect and mix again with protein, fat and fiber. When you put this tasty food in your mouth, it’s all neutralized. It’s the wrong focus,” says renowned nutritionist Dr. George Blackburn, assistant director of Nutrition at Harvard Medical School.
So what is the right focus?
Balance, according to Dr. Blackburn.
“Canadians have joined with American scientists to come up with recommendations concerning ranges of foods and meals and diets. The upper balance in a healthy diet should be carbohydrates, the minimum being 45 per cent and the maximum being 65 per cent of the calories, with the remaining calories coming from protein and fat. So, these healthy ranges won’t cause any excess insulin stimulation or adversely affect diabetes or be anything but healthy eating.”
Healthy Eating with Carbohydrates:
- Enjoy at least three daily servings chosen from among whole grain breads, brown rice, nuts, seeds and fiber-intensive breakfast cereals, legumes and beans.
- Add wheat germ to cereals and desserts.
- Eat whole fruit as a substitute for fruit juices, which lack fiber.
- Limit soft drinks, which are high in calories but nutritionally depleted.
- Be moderate — excess carbs can elevate serum triglycerides, blood fats suspect in heart disease, and sugar has been linked to increased tooth decay.
- Exercise regularly and limit your fat intake to the prescribed healthy range — research indicates that people with high sugar intake are frequently sedentary and eat too much fat.
“Sugar has been tested and re-tested and rejected as a contributor to hyperactivity in children or attention deficit disorder. We want to have a lot of empathy for parents and children who face the problem, but to compound it by suggesting that it’s related to one form of calorie intake, such as sugar, is misdirection,” says Dr. Blackburn.
“Sugar is not the bogeyman. If you’ve drawn that conclusion, you’ve done it in error. You’ve done it without the scientific evidence.”
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