Keeping Carbs Simple

Really simple -- only plant foods have carbs. Oh, and milk has carbs. Consider milk a secondary plant food since the cow makes it from the grass she eats.

Without glucose, a carbohydrate, we die. Our brains run on glucose.

Carbohydrates are sugars, fibers, and starches made up of hydrated carbons (get it? carbo-hydrates?) or carbons attached to water molecules.

The most basic carbs are single-unit sugar molecules called monosaccarides, such as glucose, fructose and galactose (and pictured below, mannose, a second-tier monosaccaride). They have the same chemical formulas but different arrangements, conformations, leading to different responses in our bodies.

The simple sugars, two-unit sugar compounds called disaccarides, include:

Sucrose (table sugar) = Glucose + Fructose
Lactose (milk sugar) = Glucose + Galactose
Maltose (grain sugar)= Glucose + Glucose

Starches are considered complex carbs because they contain more than two sugar units. Starches are essentially chains of glucose.

For us to use the energy in carbs, our digestive system breaks down carb compounds to their single-unit bases. Carbs enter our bloodstream as glucose, fructose, or galactose. When they're not broken down, carbs stay in our digestive system until we eliminate them. Sometimes that's good as with fiber. Sometimes that's bad as with lactose deficiency.

Why do you care? A lot of people talk about weight control connected to insulin and insulin resistance. To understand insulin and insulin resistance, you have to understand carbs. To understand veggies -- and all the other plants and how to eat a balanced diet, you have to understand carbs.

To keep it simple, different carbs are digested at different rates. This is the principle behind glycemic-based diets. Insulin is related to the amount of glucose, not galactose or fructose, in the blood. Increased insulin resistance is connected with increased waist circumference.

Stay tuned for more.