Why do we need carbohydrates

Giovanna N. Mason

December 12, 2011

It is sad that Americans are fed the misconception of carbohydrates being bad. If more Americans more were physically active or involved in an athletic sport at some point in there life they would know that carbohydrate's are a necessity to their performance. Yes carbohydrates can make you fat when taken in abundance or in the wrong state or even type. French fries come from a potato but my track coach told us sorry that is not what you eat the night before a track meet! Though we did try to our own reasoning. I am fascinated by carbohydrates; they do so much for the human body, yet are not consumed as they should be because we are afraid we will get fat. The benefits of carbohydrates range from having a healthy colon, to providing energy to the body(muscles), allowing our brains to work correctly and most of all keeping us full satiety. When we avoid carbohydrates both of the plant form and grain form our bodies are missing out on important “vitamins,minerals, and phytochemicals” (Sizer & Whitney, 2011, p.113). Fiber is also necessary for our diets because it provides a means of I like to visual think of as scraping our colon clean of things that may get trapped on them. Fiber does just that, the skin of an apple, strains from celery and the husks from corn, roughage as mom always reminds me is necessary. I prefer a large glass of water and an apple in the morning to get “things going” as opposed to some over the counter fiber drink. “The American Dietetic Association suggests 20-30 grams of daily fiber”, “without the distinction between the two types of fiber” (p.118). Dietary fiber also gives a person a sense of being full, it is also for that reason you will see psyllium husk in some diet drinks or as supplement to provide fiber to a persons diet without the added calories of eat fruit. The diet and supplement companies see the money inn this market and persuade individuals to purchase in terms of weight-loss. The market is carbs make you fat, well no, but yet Americans have been getting fatter and still consuming relatively the same intake of carbohydrate since 1970 (p.143). Yet we can see from figure C4-4 on page 145 our text that the sugar portion of carbohydrate intake has gone up. This increase of sugar has cause the increase of diabetes, and obesity. So our bodies muscles in particular use 2/3 of the total glycogen to use for physical activity, the muscles and adipose tissue take up the execess glucose but if we don't become physically active what happens to all this stored energy? The body stores it in our blood stream and it gets picked up by the fatty tissue and gets stored there causing those lovely indents in our skin! When we consume carbohydrates in the proper form from the most benefical sources and use the energy we wont become fat or cause issues to our bodies systems, but when we sit around and eat and not move well we know what happens. Every nutrient has a purpose to our bodies, hey we may even get smarter if we snack on the right carbs :-).

Reference:
Sizer, F.S., & Whitney, E.N. (2011). Nutrition:Concepts and Controversies(12th ed.). Cengage Learning: Belmont, Ca