Is a Low Carb (Atkins, South Beach) Diet Safe? Aren"t Carbohydrates Necessary For Your Health?
There are only three components to all foods that provide nutrition for the human body - Protein, Fat, and Carbohydrates.
Just two of the three are absolutely necessary to human life (along with water), and one is not.
Can anyone guess which component is not needed? If the title didn't give you an idea, the answer is 'Carbohydrates'.
There are, in fact, societies that thrive quite well with little to no carbohydrates in their diet - Australian Aborigines and Eskimos are two examples.
The fact that you can be quite healthy, and live a long lifespan without any carbohydrates at all should be a wake-up call to those of you who believe that the USDA recommended levels of carbohydrates.
Back in 1989, the USDA was recommending that more than 50% of your calories come from carbs.
Fast forward to the year 2002, and they modified that recommendation down to just 45%, and specified that at least 25g of these carbs were to be fiber, and that less than 25% of this be from added sugars.
Does it seem strange to anyone that the government is begging you to eat no more than a quarter of your calories in the form of sugar? Prior to the 1900's, the average consumption of sugar was no more than 5 pounds per year...
it's currently around 135 pounds per year! In fact, if you want to eat healthy, its actually quite hard to come up to the levels of carbohydrates that the USDA is recommending, unless you eat a lot of junk food.
If you want to gain the most benefit from eating carbohydrates, you should try to stick with nutritionally dense carbs, such as vegetables.
When eating a carrot, or squash, or spinach - you're getting not only the carbs that are contained in the vegetable, but you're also getting fiber and vitamins - something that raw sugar isn't going to give you.
(and no, bread is not a 'nutritionally dense' source of carbs - it's simply carbs & fiber).
The USDA is in the corner of agricultural business - and is not going to tell you the best way to eat.
Learn the facts, and avoid the common 'wisdom' of healthy eating - and you'll end up living a far more healthy life.
Just two of the three are absolutely necessary to human life (along with water), and one is not.
Can anyone guess which component is not needed? If the title didn't give you an idea, the answer is 'Carbohydrates'.
There are, in fact, societies that thrive quite well with little to no carbohydrates in their diet - Australian Aborigines and Eskimos are two examples.
The fact that you can be quite healthy, and live a long lifespan without any carbohydrates at all should be a wake-up call to those of you who believe that the USDA recommended levels of carbohydrates.
Back in 1989, the USDA was recommending that more than 50% of your calories come from carbs.
Fast forward to the year 2002, and they modified that recommendation down to just 45%, and specified that at least 25g of these carbs were to be fiber, and that less than 25% of this be from added sugars.
Does it seem strange to anyone that the government is begging you to eat no more than a quarter of your calories in the form of sugar? Prior to the 1900's, the average consumption of sugar was no more than 5 pounds per year...
it's currently around 135 pounds per year! In fact, if you want to eat healthy, its actually quite hard to come up to the levels of carbohydrates that the USDA is recommending, unless you eat a lot of junk food.
If you want to gain the most benefit from eating carbohydrates, you should try to stick with nutritionally dense carbs, such as vegetables.
When eating a carrot, or squash, or spinach - you're getting not only the carbs that are contained in the vegetable, but you're also getting fiber and vitamins - something that raw sugar isn't going to give you.
(and no, bread is not a 'nutritionally dense' source of carbs - it's simply carbs & fiber).
The USDA is in the corner of agricultural business - and is not going to tell you the best way to eat.
Learn the facts, and avoid the common 'wisdom' of healthy eating - and you'll end up living a far more healthy life.
