The Truth About Good and Bad Carbs
Carbs have a big reputation in diet and weight loss circles. Depending on who you speak to, carbs are either your best friend or your worst enemy when it comes to weight management.
With all of the contention, many dieters find it unclear whether to include carbs in a healthy diet plan or not. As with most things, the truth lays somewhere in the middle.
You may have heard carbs described before in two different categories, good and bad carbs. While it’s true that carbohydrates in certain forms have a higher nutritional value than others, we generally try to stray away from blanket terms like good or bad at TeleHealthNP.
That’s because we believe that the key to nutrition is actually in finding balance with all foods, regardless of their nutritive value. Barring allergies, all foods can have a place in a healthy and balanced diet.
That being said, we want to clear up the confusion around carbs and help to empower you to make choices around your diet that will help you to reach your own fitness goals and achieve the healthiest, most confident version of you.
What Are Carbs, Anyway?
Carbohydrates, or carbs, are one of three macronutrients that make up the majority of your diet including protein and fat.
Carbs function within the body to provide energy for your brain and muscles. When you eat carbohydrates, your body breaks them down into glucose which is burned by your body for fuel. An excess of carbs can also be metabolized into fat and stored by the body for later use.
Dietary carbohydrates can be further broken down into three different categories, sugars, starches, and fiber. The difference between these are the complexity of their molecular makeup. Most carbs will contain a combination of all three in different amounts.
Sugars are the shortest chain carbohydrates, are sweet, and digest quickly, leading to big spikes in blood sugar because of their fast absorption. Examples of sugars are glucose, sucrose, and fructose.
Starches are longer chain molecules. They are still broken down into glucose but because of their more complex structure, they are digested more slowly, slowing down the absorption of sugar into your blood stream.
Fiber is not digested by the body but rather by the good bacteria that lives in your gut. These bacteria help break down food and produce fatty acids which fuel your cells. Fiber also helps regulate digestion.
Do You Need Carbs in Your Diet?
The short answer is yes! Carbs are a necessary nutrient and their main function is to provide energy for your body to do everything from moving your muscles to using your brain.
In addition to the energy they provide, carbs also help your body protect against disease and maintain a healthy weight.
However, not all carbs are made equal. There is a significant difference between the carbs you find in items like white bread, pastries, and sugary soda versus those you find in foods like whole grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables. You can classify them broadly by simple or complex carbs.
Read on to find out more about the difference between these types of carbs and how much of each you should include in your diet.
Simple Carbs
Simple carbs (sugar) get their classification because their molecular structure is much simpler than complex carbs like starch and fiber. Because of their simple structure, these types of carbs are easily digested, and absorbed into the bloodstream, causing your blood sugar to spike.
When you think of these carbs you probably picture foods full of refined sugar such as soda, white bread, cookies, and pastries. However, you can also find naturally occurring sugar in foods like fruit and milk.
The difference is, foods with naturally occurring sugars also have the added benefit of vitamins, minerals, and fiber. For example fruit has sugar but it also contains fiber and milk contains additional proteins.
This extra fiber and protein actually slows down digestion and therefore absorption of sugar, controlling those blood sugar spikes when compared to refined sugar.
Complex Carbs
Complex carbs digest slower than simple carbs because of their more complex molecular structure. Instead of a big spike in your blood sugar, this slower process absorbs sugar steadily, providing you with more sustained energy and helping you to feel full longer.
Complex carbs can come in the form of whole grains, legumes, and vegetables, and are bolstered by the presence of fiber which simple carbs lack. Fiber is not digested by your body and instead serves two important functions.
The first is that fiber feeds the healthy bacteria that make up your gut microbiome, which aid digestion by breaking down food into fatty acids and other necessary molecules.
The second function is that fiber slows down the digestion of carbohydrates further, giving your body time to absorb the nutrients within.
As a whole, you should eat complex carbs in higher quantities than simple sugars, as complex carbs usually indicate that a food has a higher nutritional value. It’s not hard to identify complex carbs which occur in whole foods rather than processed foods.
Good vs. Bad
Complex carbohydrates are generally seen as “good” while the simpler carbs are classified as “bad.” This classification doesn’t tell the full story, though.
While it’s true that as a group, complex carbs look better on paper (the longer digestion time means more stable blood sugar), simple carbs in the form of fruit and milk are still packed with micronutrients that keep your body healthy as well.
Generally, it’s not that useful to classify foods as good or bad in this way, because almost all foods serve a purpose. Even cake, which is a special treat that helps you celebrate a joyous occasion like a birthday or wedding.
That doesn’t mean you should eat cake everyday though, as the secret to a healthy diet is finding the right balance.
Finding Balance
Try to prioritize consuming carbohydrates in the form of whole foods as opposed to processed foods. Both simple and complex carbs from whole foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains contain not only good carbs, but micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals that keep you feeling healthy and strong.
Generally, experts suggest that the typical adult get about 45–65% of your daily calories from carbs, 20–35% from fats, and 10–35% from protein. These percentages can shift depending on your goals and you can read more about counting macronutrients in this past blog post.
Simple carbs in the form of sugar and refined white flour can be consumed in smaller quantities as a treat rather than the majority of your diet. Sugar can be sneaky, appearing in many processed snack foods disguised as high fructose corn syrup, agave nectar, evaporated cane juice, molasses, and more.
You don’t have to spend all your time reading labels though. Just try to focus on ingesting more whole foods and avoid processed foods except as a treat.
The bottom line is that simple and complex carbs are not bad for you, but a vital part of a healthy diet.
