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It's not carbs per se, whats proven is this: Insulin spikes in your body drive fat storage. "Foods with lots of carbs" are a very good approximation of the nat

It's not carbs per se, whats proven is this: Insulin spikes in your body drive fat storage. "Foods with lots of carbs" are a very good approximation of the nature of foods that tend to do that. (More accurately, foods with a high glycemic load/glycemic index) So offhand we can say foods that contain a lot of carbs tend to have a high gylcemic index, some more than others. Eating raw sugar is different than slowly eating al dente pasta with other foods in the mix like butter, cheese, etc, even though they both "have carbs." Think about approximately how long it takes different foods to break down. I hope that's intuitive as an example. So "carbs are harmful" isn't quite the right picture. You can eat carbs, they're not going to harm you. But if you want to easily maintain a healthy weight, eat mostly fat and lots of protein. And being overweight is harmful, obviously. (No such thing as fat but fit: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/17/obesity-health-no-such-thing-as-fat-but-fit-major-study https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/17/obesity-heal...)

indogooner 9y ago
Thanks for the intuition. My weight is normal so just cutting down a bit on rice and sugar should help.
filleokus 9y ago
An interesting point (which you bring up) is how complex the behaviour of the glycemic load is. It's dependent on the combination of food stuffs (as you point out), but also on things like the physical shape of the food. In Sweden we have something called "snabbmakaroner", which is basically macaronis but smaller and with thinner walls to shorten the time needed to boil them. Regular "makaroner", with the thicker walls has a lower GI compared to these thinner-walled ones. Even though they have the same exact ingredients and nutrients. I did a report on this during highschool when I tested it out on a bunch of willing classmates, and I was able to confirm it.
majkinetor 9y ago
Carbs are actually harmful. Uniquely damaging for teeth, nobody will disprove that. There is even a well known problem among professional sportsmen related to energy drinks and parandentosis. Since there is no discussion about this, carbs must be generally harmful, as to eat anything, you must use your mouth.

indogooner 9y ago

Thanks for the intuition. My weight is normal so just cutting down a bit on rice and sugar should help.

filleokus 9y ago

An interesting point (which you bring up) is how complex the behaviour of the glycemic load is. It's dependent on the combination of food stuffs (as you point out), but also on things like the physical shape of the food. In Sweden we have something called "snabbmakaroner", which is basically macaronis but smaller and with thinner walls to shorten the time needed to boil them. Regular "makaroner", with the thicker walls has a lower GI compared to these thinner-walled ones. Even though they have the same exact ingredients and nutrients. I did a report on this during highschool when I tested it out on a bunch of willing classmates, and I was able to confirm it.

majkinetor 9y ago

Carbs are actually harmful. Uniquely damaging for teeth, nobody will disprove that. There is even a well known problem among professional sportsmen related to energy drinks and parandentosis. Since there is no discussion about this, carbs must be generally harmful, as to eat anything, you must use your mouth.