Makes you fat, accelerates skin aging, and induces diabetes? You may have misunderstood carbohydrates...

Tuchong Creative

What do you think carbohydrates are? Are they the dispensable staple food as claimed on the Internet? Are they the root cause of obesity, the black hand that accelerates skin aging and induces diabetes? Let's uncover the secrets together.

Those are just common misunderstandings about carbohydrates. Its benefits are actually beyond your imagination.

Carbohydrates, nicknamed "Carbohydrates" on the Internet, age and gender unknown, origin: animal and plant foods, the eldest among the seven sisters of nutrients. The physical characteristics are very complex, from visible flour and sugar to the hard lactose and dietary fiber, to the hard wood fiber, all of which are considered carbohydrates.

If we have to give it an official identity, carbohydrates are a type of organic compound composed of three elements: carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. It is the most abundant organic compound in nature and has a broad spectrum of chemical structures and biological functions. Of course, it is also the most economical and main source of energy for humans. This is also the main reason why people need carbohydrates to live, but it is not all.

Many people think that eating carbohydrates is eating sugar, which is actually wrong. There are many types of carbohydrates, and sugar is only one of them. We generally call those that can be digested and utilized "effective carbohydrates", such as starch, added sugar, and lactose. Those that cannot be digested and utilized are called "ineffective carbohydrates", such as cellulose in vegetables and fruits and lignin in wood. In a narrow sense, sugar mainly refers to carbohydrates that we can taste sweet.

For example, glucose, fructose and maltose, and some "effective carbon water" are not sweet, such as starch. It belongs to polysaccharides, which can be simply understood as many monosaccharide molecules like glucose, which are combined together in a certain way and can be decomposed into sweet monosaccharides under certain conditions. For example, the starch in steamed buns will be hydrolyzed into glucose under the action of oral salivary amylase, which is why steamed buns will have a hint of sweetness after being chewed for a long time.

Are carbohydrates really the root cause of obesity and are they dispensable? Of course not.

The biggest role of carbohydrates is that they can provide a continuous supply of heat to sustain life. You may say that protein and fat can also provide heat, and the heat provided by fat is still times that of carbohydrates. That's right, but carbohydrates are the cheapest and greenest among them. Why do you say that? Remember the composition of carbohydrates just mentioned? There are only three elements: carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, so it only produces carbon dioxide and water when it decomposes, and the efficiency is very high. However, if protein is used for energy supply, the situation is different. It also contains a large amount of nitrogen, sulfur and other elements. The decomposition process will produce harmful substances, which will not only increase the burden on the liver and kidneys, but also the production efficiency is not high.

In addition to providing calories, what other magical functions do carbohydrates have?

First of all, our important organ, the brain, likes carbohydrates and only recognizes carbohydrates. Do you believe this? In fact, almost all the calories needed by the brain every day are supplied in the form of glucose. If the supply is insufficient, it will not only slow down thinking and make you sleepy, but also affect brain function in serious cases.

In addition to providing energy to the brain, eating carbohydrates can also save protein. Do you believe this?

Protein is good for the body at any time, so it should be saved, especially when meat, eggs and milk are scarce. It cannot be used as firewood. Therefore, having carbohydrates to provide calories is equivalent to saving protein. Especially for those who have poor liver and kidney function, weak body and cannot eat high-protein food, the effect of saving protein is more obvious.

There is a saying that carbohydrates can also detoxify. Do you believe this? Although detoxification is pseudoscience, carbohydrates do have this effect. They can combine with toxic and harmful substances in the body to generate glucuronic acid, and then excrete them out of the body through redox reactions.

In addition to these functions, carbohydrates also help maintain the survival of intestinal flora, provide vitamins and short-chain fatty acids that are beneficial to the body. They can stimulate the synthesis of creatine in the body and promote muscle growth, which is something that fitness friends know. Of course, carbohydrates can also fight the production of ketone bodies, relieve fatigue, regulate fat metabolism, etc. There are simply too many functions.

Although carbohydrates are good, many people still worry that eating too much staple food will make them fat. Is this really the case? Carbohydrates are really more unfair than Dou E.

The root cause of obesity is excessive energy, or more specifically, eating more and moving less. As for eating more, it does not just refer to more staple food or more carbohydrates. According to the results of the Chinese Residents' Nutrition and Chronic Disease Report, the intake of staple food has decreased in recent years, while the intake of vegetable oil and animal food has exceeded the standard.

So in life, we still have to eat staple foods, but it is best to combine coarse and fine foods, and it is best to eat as little sugar as possible added to food.

This article is a work supported by the Science Popularization China Creation Cultivation Program

Author: Zhang Yu, PhD in Nutrition

Reviewer: Zhang Na, Associate Researcher, School of Public Health, Peking University

Produced by: China Association for Science and Technology Department of Science Popularization

Producer: China Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd., Beijing Zhongke Xinghe Culture Media Co., Ltd.