Welcome to Straight Talk on Health. I’m your host Dr. Chet Zelasko. Straight Talk on Health is a joint production with WGVU in Grand Rapids MI. I examine the world of health. Nutrition. Exercise. Diet. Supplementation. If there’s something new, I look at the science behind them, and let you know whether it’s real or not. You can check out other things that I do on my website Drchet.com and sign up for my free emails.
In today's American Society, carbohydrates have risen to Public Enemy number one in the public's eye. It seems as though the attention that carbs get in health news, in nutrition news, and in the social media world is all pretty negative. “Carbs will make you fat”. “Carbs will steal your energy!” With the keto rage still ongoing, are there really any problems with carbohydrates? I'm going to examine some of the issues in this track.
I want to make a distinction between preparing food for consumption versus the ultra-processing that takes place with too many foods, many of which are made from carbohydrates like corn, wheat, and potatoes as well as others. If you're going to have a potato, you can prepare it a number of ways. You can bake it, you can French fry it and cook it in oil, you can slice it very thinly and fry it into potato chips, or you can cut it up, boil it, and throw in some milk and butter to make mashed potatoes. That is typical food preparation. You may be adding calories from fats and oils to it but it's just typical processing. The same holds true for pasta, considered by some gurus as the worst carbohydrate you can consume. Those are not ultra-processed. They are processed during preparation for eating but they are not completely disassembled and put together with a bunch of chemicals in order to make an ultra-processed food. Anything that has to be extruded through a die, like those identical potato products that come in a can, are probably UPF. Now that we have that done, let's take a look at some of the myths and misnomers about carbohydrates.
Myth 1 - Carbohydrates, especially sugars, cause diabetes. In this case, they are talking about type 2 diabetes. We know that type one diabetes is most likely caused by a virus, with maybe a genetic tendency thrown in. One thing that should be noted is that while it happens in the young, hence the prior name Juvenile onset diabetes, it can happen at any age.
Let's take a look at this in detail. If carbohydrates and sugar caused T2D, then what should happen is that people who eat a typical amount of carbohydrates, which can be between 40 to 70% of their diet, could develop type 2 diabetes even if they are lean, exercise regularly, and follow an isocaloric diet. Isocaloric means that they take in just about the number of calories to keep their body weight stable.
At this point, you might be thinking that it's the carbohydrates that people eat that will make them gain weight, get fat, and then get prediabetes and later type 2 diabetes. That's incorrect. You see, in order for carbohydrates, especially sugars, to be the cause of type 2 diabetes, then it would have to happen if someone were lean and did not overeat.
Wait a minute. You might be thinking something like “but eating carbohydrates and sugars makes you fat!” No it doesn't. It is the overconsumption of any type of energy source that can make you fat by taking in more calories than your body needs. There are plenty of people who have a very high fat and protein diet together with eating no vegetables or fruits to speak of, that are pre diabetic and type 2 diabetic. It is not the consumption of any single nutrient that will make someone gain weight and develop a metabolic disorder. It is the overconsumption of any type of energy nutrient, be it carbohydrate and sugar, protein, fat, or alcohol. There is no evidence that an isocaloric diet, which means you take in exactly the number of calories you need, will make someone overweight and therefore cause a metabolic disorder like type 2 diabetes. It just doesn't work that way. Yet there are many people that believe that's true.
Let's move on to the second myth. “Sugars are just empty calories!” This one has been around for a long time. Perhaps it started with the uptick in soda drinking in the 1950s and 60s. We typically only think in terms of what's available today. But if you go back to when the soda industry jumped from soda fountains in restaurants to being packaged and sold in supermarkets, before there were two-liter plastic containers of soda and there was no such thing as a super-sized drink of any type. Soda or pop depending on where you live, was served in seven ounce glass bottles or in an 8 oz glass at a soda fountain or restaurant. As these types of drinks became more popular, the formulas changed, and something called high fructose corn syrup was introduced. We were also convinced that we needed mass quantities of it to quench our thirst. That led to an overconsumption of all types of sugars.
But when you get right down to it come up sugar, especially glucose, is pure energy. It is the only nutrient that is consumed completely when it is metabolized. The energy helps make ATP and the remnants we excrete are simply carbon dioxide and water. That's it. When you look at the sugars in sports drinks, they are typically a light glucose solution. Why is that? Because they can be converted to energy quickly. The tricky part is that sugar has to be in the right osmotic balance or else it cannot exit the stomach very well. That's why sports drinks are a very weak sugar solution. But there is no question that sugar is pure energy when it comes to improving athletic performance. The research started before the 1st sports drink was introduced in the 1970s and continues through today. Glucose equals energy. Period.
The last myth that I want to talk about is that of fatty liver is caused by the overconsumption of fat. In this case, it is the over consumption of carbohydrate that leads to a fatty liver in most cases. True, it can be caused by the overconsumption of alcohol but fewer people are drinking mass quantities of alcohol based on recent statistics. However, we are eating plenty of starches and other carbohydrates. Over time, the liver gets trained to convert excess carbohydrates into fats. While organs don't have conversations, I imagine it would go something like this: “Oh boy, here comes that big slug of carbohydrates they are eating again! They're never going to use all that energy and burn it up. Let's just convert it into fat where it can be stored in the liver with the hopes that they will need it at some point in the future.”
Imagining that conversation is over, the liver can only store so much fat inside it. What has to happen is that it starts making extra storage of fat on top of the liver itself. And under the right conditions, where an MRI is involved of the abdominal region, someone will be diagnosed with a fatty liver. And again, while it is possible it could be the overconsumption of alcohol or maybe fat, most of the time, it is the overconsumption of carbohydrates that causes the fatty liver.
The reason I did this track is to illustrate the carbohydrates and specifically sugars are not bad for us if we don't overeat them. They are pure energy. They don't make you fat, but they will cause a fatty liver if you consume too many of them. There's no reason to fear them or avoid them. Just remember who's in charge of you-- and carbohydrates can be your friend when you need energy. I’m out of time. This is Dr. Chet Zelasko saying health is a choice. Choose wisely today and every day.
