by Don Beckett
I'VE BEEN WATCHING CARBO-PHOBIA sweep over the land like a giant tsunami. Apparently, the current dietary "wisdom" has now decreed carbohydrates Public Enemy Number One!
The umbrellas over the tables outside Uncle Billy's now advertise "Low-carb Lite Beer"....and one day in the "health food" store I saw "low-carb" candy. "2g net* carbs," it said on the package -- and the asterisk explained further: "2g net digestible carbs." (Does that mean we have now created some sort of Frankenstein-ish, NON-digestible carbs?) Even more recently, I've seen bags of low-carb, high-protein, tortilla chips! "8 grams impact carbs," they said (no asterisk, no explanation of what is an impact carb). And then, on the radio, I heard an ad for a "30-day free trial" of something called "Carbo-Blocker"!!
This fear of carbohydrates makes no sense to me. I know we've become a nation of Fatties (with the desire to look like movie stars) -- and that certain diet gurus have proclaimed carbohydrates the culprit (it couldn't be that we're simply eating way more than we need, could it!). Now it seems that the majority of Americans are (consciously or not) on some variation of the Atkins diet. But let's take a closer look at carbohydrates....
We don't even need to look at them macro-scopically; even through the micro-scope, certain things are clear to see:
Combining dictionary definitions, we find that a carbohydrate is: "any of a group of organic compounds that includes sugars, starches, celluloses, and gums and serves as a major energy source in the diet of animals. These compounds are produced by photosynthetic plants and contain six (or some multiple of six) carbon atoms, united with a variable number of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, but with the two latter always in proportion as to form water...."
SO -- THIS BIG, SCARY BEAST is composed of....carbon and water! The name itself says it: "carbohydrate" -- hydrated carbon!
Have we forgotten that human beings are carbon-based life-forms, and are more than 70 percent water? How did we allow someone to sell us the idea of trashing carbohydrates and replacing them with large amounts of protein (washed down with gallons of water or other beverages!)?
It's interesting to note how the microcosm and macrocosm reflect each other, in our over-consumption: individually, we Americans gobble down great quantities of protein-rich foods; and, as a nation, we gobble up a hugely disproportionate share of the world's resources -- a major portion of which goes to produce the animals on which we dine, to satisfy our protein cravings.
Going back to the dictionary, we see that carbohydrates are "an essential structural component of living cells and source of energy for animals." Don't get me wrong, we also need proteins, which are defined as: "any of a group of complex organic macromolecules that contain carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and usually sulfur and are composed of one or more chains of amino acids. Proteins are fundamental components of all living cells and include many substances, such as enzymes, hormones, and antibodies, that are necessary for the proper functioning of an organism. They are essential in the diet of animals for the growth and repair of tissue."
The question is: Do we need to get our proteins by eating animals? Most of our fellow-humanoids in the rest of the world satisfy most, if not all, of their protein requirements by combining cereal grains with legumes and/or other seeds. Even if we must eat animals....do we need to eat them in such great quantity?
If the dictionary is right, then proteins and carbohydrates are both "essential" in the human diet. Apparently, proteins are specifically for "growth and repair of tissue" -- and maybe, in these cataclysmic times, we do require extreme amounts of growth and repair (having created such a world full of every imaginable kind of pollution and poison for ourselves!). Even so, we (and the whole planet as well) might be healthier if we ate more carbohydrates and less protein -- and, most importantly, if we simply ate less of everything.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
