Carbohydrate information

These carbohydrate information is a guide to help you understand which types of carbohydrates to include for your optimum nutrition program.

What are carbohydrates?

Carbohydrates are composed of sugar molecules that are chained together. They provide energy for the cells in our body. Carbohydrates come in two categories: sugars and starches.

Sugars are simple carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrate are sweet tasting and can be found in fruit. Table sugar is another example of a simple carbohydrate.

Starch is a complex carbohydrate. Complex carbohydrates take longer to digest. These carbohydrates are found in vegetables, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, among other foods.

Carbohydrates are divided into four classifications:

• 1-Monosaccharides: Single-sugar molecules that can go directly from the small intestine to the blood stream. They do not require splitting by enzymes first. The three types of monosaccharides are glucose, fructose and galactose.
• 2-Disaccharide: Two-sugar molecules. For these sugars to be digested and passed into the blood stream, the molecules must be split into single sugars by digestive enzymes. The four kinds of disaccharides are:Lactose: found in dairy products.Sucrose: found in table sugar. It is used in many kinds of canned and processed foods. Maltose and isomaltose: found in germinating cereal seeds. They are many-sugar starches, but they are digested partly by enzymes in saliva.
• 3-Polysaccharides: Many-sugar molecules chained together. They are the most difficult to digest, as enzymes must break the complex chain of molecules.
• 4-Complex polysaccharides: This type is present in the cell walls of seaweed, mushrooms and yeasts, as well as oat and barely brans, absorbed without being digested, and plays major role to strengthen the immune system.

The body breaks down most carbohydrates into glucose, a single sugar, so that the molecules can pass through the wall of the small intestine and be absorbed.

The Problem of Unabsorbed Carbohydrates:

Carbohydrates are the most difficult for people with digestive problems to break down. Some undigested carbohydrates do not pass out of the body with the feces. Instead, they remain in the small intestine, where they feed harmful bacteria and upset the balance of the intestinal flora.

How Refined Carbohydrates Cause Health Problems:

Refined carbohydrates include white bread, ordinary white and brown table sugar, crackers, white rice, commercial breakfast cereal, and noodles, and pasta made from white flour. When sugar beets, sugarcane, wheat, and rice are refined, their fiber is stripped away, and in the process, many of their nutrients are lost as well. You end up with a skeletalized food with little nutritional value.

Chemically speaking, refined carbohydrates are one step away from sugar. As soon as you eat a refined carbohydrate, your body converts it to glucose-in other words, to sugar. Eating white bread is, chemically speaking, not very different from eating candy. Refined carbohydrates, especially when they are eaten alone, without proteins or fats, invade the body in a rush and cause sudden surge of blood sugar.
This surge has many deleterious effects:

• Decreased tissue growth and repair
• Altered immune function
• Increased propensity toward body inflammation
• Obesity

Which carbohydrates are the best to be eaten?

• fresh vegetables are always the best choice of carbohydrates.
  
• Fresh fruits are a good source of carbohydrates. They also supply the body with fiber, vitamins and minerals, phytonutrients and natural antioxidants
  
• Whole grains even though a good source of carbohydrates, fibers, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants may trigger digestive problems in case of digestive enzymes deficiencies.
  
  

Always watch the calories with carbohydrates.

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