8 The Complexities of Carbohydrates
8 The Complexities of Carbohydrates
Carbohydrate is a major category of food, including all the fruits, vegetables, grains and starches. If you choose-as I hope you will-to do Atkins for a lifetime, you must bring some exacting standards to the process of deciding what carbohydrate foods you intend to eat. And make no mistake, I ' m determined to teach you how to fashion a great way to eat-long termnot simply a weight loss regimen.
When doing Atkins, you will control the number of grams of carbohydrates you eat and will focus on certain food groups rather than others. One reason you will need to do this is because not all carbohydrate found in food is created equal. Most carbohydrate is digested by your body and turned into glucose-and most nutritionists refer to this as digestible carbohydrate. However, some carbohydrate can be digested by your body but not turned into glucose( glycerin is one example), and some carbohydrate is not digestible at all, such as fiber( see " Fiber: A Form of Carbohydrate," opposite) and is therefore eventually excreted by your body. These last two types of carbohydrate don ' t have an impact on your blood-sugar levels. Understanding the different behavior of carbohydrate in your body can help you make smart food choices.
But you cannot necessarily rely on food labels. Recently( in 2001) the Food and Drug Administration( FDA) rejected a request by numerous health food manufacturers to allow non-digestible and non-metabolized carbohydrates to be listed separately on packaging, so that diabetics and other people with glucose / insulin disorders would be able to have the information upon which to make health-promoting decisions. I can ' t tell you I agree with this decision, and I certainly don ' t agree with the apparent notion that all carbohydrates are the same and affect your body the same way.
================================================================== Fiber: A Form of Carbohydrate
Perhaps your grandmother called it roughage; physicians call it bulk. No matter what it ' s called, dietary fiber is traditionally used for relieving constipation, an important consideration when changing the way you eat as you do when you start Atkins.
What exactly is fiber? Simply put, dietary fiber is the indigestible parts of plant cells. Although it is a carbohydrate, fiber does not convert to glucose and thus does not raise your blood-sugar level the way carbohydrates typically do.
In fact, fiber actually slows the entry of glucose into the bloodstream. This in turn reduces the blood-sugar spikes that cause insulin production and encourage the body to produce and store body fat.' And by slowing down food ' s transit time in the digestive tract, fiber helps you feel full longer, resulting in fewer food cravings.
But that ' s just the beginning. Fiber also:
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