Nutrition basics-Carbs

   After fat  carbohydrates became the enemy.As with fats foods with low carbs ,especially low sugar, appeared but even with them there were no visible results on the overall health of the population.Lets see what is the matter with this macronutrient then.

Who can resist that?

   First of all one gram carbohydrate is equal to four calories.Carbs are the main source of energy for all muscle and body functions(including the brain).They also help regulate the metabolism of the other two macro nutrients.Also you cant forget that they are extremely tasty.There are two kinds of carbs:simple and complex.Simple,mostly fruits and sugars,require little effort by the body for absoption.Complex,wheat products,vegetables etc require more time than simple carbs in order to be broken town from the body.

    In order to make more clear I will try to describe how our body handles carbohydrates.After carbs are ingested they are converted by the body to simple sugar called glucose.Some of this glucose is used as fuel for the body.The rest is either converted to glycogen and stored in the muscles and liver or if the glycogen stores are full converted to fat and stored to the body for later use.Glycogen stores can be mainly depleted by intense exercise.If those glycogen stores are depleted,the body will convert body fat as energy.

   This is the key component of those low carb diets.They keep the glycogen stores as low as possible in order to burn fat.The other useful observation is that you cant gain fat from carbs unless you have full glycogen stores.As I said intense exercise can help prevent that.So it seems that there is a middle ground between using the benefits of carbs and not gaining body fat by them.