Carbohydrates – The Sweet Foods

admin — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:02:04 +0000

Although many people were fed breast milk by their mother when they were a baby, none remember what it tasted like, and only a few brave souls will admit to having tasted it as an adult. As the father of six breast fed children, I’ll admit that I know. It tastes sweet, very, very sweet! This very sweet tasting first food has programmed us from birth to love the taste of sweet food and drink.
If you have ever sat across from an infant in a high chair you know the difference between their reaction to eating mashed bananas or peaches versus green beans. They ate the peaches and bananas with joy but you probably ended up wearing the green beans on your face and clothes.
Nature has a clever way of using that preference for sweet tasting food to get us to eat nutritionally rich food. Here is how it works. Did you ever notice that fresh sweet corn just off the stalk is sweet, and that which you buy in the produce department, even though it looks the same, is just not sweet?
You’ve probably noticed the same is true for most fruits and vegetables as well. This is because Nature only puts the sweet into these items after she has put in all the other nutrition. Produce harvested for market is picked early before all the nutrition has gone in, and thus Nature has not yet added the sweet. Because of our preference for the sweet taste this little trick worked well when we got our food direct from Nature. We waited until it was sweet on the tree, vine, or bush before harvesting it and thus we obtained maximum nutrition.
Today, at least 95% of all people get their food from fast food outlets or the supermarkets. These food outlets get their foods from the giant food processing plants, who in turn get them from huge growing operations. These food merchants know we love sweet foods, but due to the complex growing, processing, packaging and merchandising chain that brings us today’s food, it just isn’t possible to bring it to us “naturally sweet”. So they sweeten it up with the addition of sugar and starch. The problem is, the real nutrition of the food is largely lost during this food production chain, and what is left in most cases is largely simple carbohydrates. Today our consumption of simple carbohydrate foods is more than 100 times greater than it was just 200 years ago. Unfortunately, our body has NOT increased its ability to handle this huge increase in simple carbohydrate foods, as a result, massive and life threatening health problems are occurring at an ever faster rate and at an ever younger age. In talking to patients and teaching nutrition seminars, I have been shocked to find that most people have no real idea what I am talking about when I say “simple carbohydrates”. Nor, do they have any idea why eating large amounts of these simple carbohydrate foods is very dangerous to their health. For example, this Report is on the cause and correction of Acne, and yet at this point, my guess would be that most of my readers don’t see any great connection between a large amount of simple carbohydrate in their diet and developing Acne. Yet this is actually the number one cause of severe acne. Worse still is the fact that serious acne in the teen years brought on by a high amount of simple carbohydrates in the diet is a sure fire indicator of the diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes and obesity to follow. So let me see if I can help you gain this vital understanding of the role of carbohydrate in the diet.

Acne » childhood and carbohydrates

Carbohydrates – The Sweet Foods