Carbohydrates – Part 1

As we have been discussing, macronutrients are the basic energy, or fuel, our bodies need for all biological processes. This can be used for exercising, thinking or synthesizing the many biological molecules that keep the system smoothly operating.

Micronutrients are the building blocks – the stuff our body uses to create the many cells, tissues, and hormones.  Like we discussed in our car analogy, macronutrients are the gas and micronutrients are the routine maintenance service for the car .

Today we are going to begin the discussion of Carbohydrates. What I hope to do, is change your reaction to that word.  I don’t want you to say “carb” or think french fries, potatoes, or rice.  I don’t want you to think about ANY food group.  Forget glycemic index.  Those are all useful bits of information for diet schemes, but not to understand how your body works.  When we are done, we’ll move onto the other macronutrients: fat and protein.

So, do we have a deal? No discussion of FOOD for the conceptual understanding of carbohydrates, but I will give examples carbohydrates contained food so that we can understand the bigger picture.

Thermodynamics is the study of heat and energy and how these systems interact. We derive energy from the basic three macronutrients.  Later, there will be detail of this complex process, but for now, it’s just a game of “pass the electron.”  Every whole food you eat contains some amount of the three macronutrients. We call something a Protein or a Carb in response to its greatest portion of macronutrient by weight.

Now, we are discussing energy, the thermodynamics, and really weight has nothing to do with energy other than some means of quantifying the amount you eat.  We’ll see that this macronutrient/weight is extremely useful for food labels, but not very indicative of either the amount energy or macronutrient you might derive from a given amount of food.Telt

Let’s dive into what a carbohydrate is and why we need it.

A Carbohydrate is a Carbohydrate

We’ll see that all this fuss about calorie a calorie is going to be a simple accounting issue, but if you have a negative reaction to the word carbohydrate, if you think that there are good carbs and bad carbs, if you’re worried about blood sugar, then fret no more.  We aren’t going to discuss any of that here.  Not going to even take questions on it.

Instead, I want you to return to 4th grade and think about that simple view of the world. You breath in oxygen, it’s combined with fuel (“burned”)  to give energy and then you exhale carbon dioxide.  That is in turn used by plants in photosynthesis, to yield sugars and other biologically active compounds and they return the oxygen.

See it?

We are all confused about the breathing oxygen and burning part, remember, a calorie isn’t a calorie? So, let’s start with the plant side of the circle. There aren’t many obese plants, maybe they’ve figured something out.

Plants take in carbon dioxide and form sugars, fats, complex carbohydrates (e.g. starch) and structural cellulose. With the exception of venus fly traps and pitcher plants, they just don’t eat.  They also take in Nitrogen from the soil (fertilizer) creating proteins and even even psychoactive alkaloids, like mescaline (peyote buttons). It seems plants are a trip.

In fact plants synthesize every single protein, fat and carbohydrate you need to live.  We eat them or we eat animals and bacteria that eat them and here we are. Perhaps this is what they didn’t tell us in 4th grade. Food and Macronutrients are somehow separated at birth of the concept, but we are here to discuss Carbohydrates, like starch and really understand what they are and how they work.

We all know the word sugars. There are natural sugars, bad sugars, processed sugars, and high glycemic sugars, but really, a sugar is just the simplest molecule that makes up the long chains of stored energy in plants.  It’s their way of saving for a rainy day (literally).  They all named to end in “ose” – glucose, galactose, lactose, fructose, maltose, etc.  Once ingested, you extract energy from them to fuel ATP/ADP through electron transport chain.

For now, just know that your body MUST have glucose. That’s what we measure when we measure “blood sugar” and that is what your brain runs on as a fuel.  It’s chemical formula, C6H12O6 is the building block of two very familiar compounds: Starch and Cellulose. Both of these “polysaccharides” (poly = many, saccharide = sugar) are simply long chains of the EXACT same sugar: Glucose.

House of Potatoes

Starch and Cellulose are made from the same building block, Glucose. They have a different saccharide bond that holds them together. Since many animals don't make the enzyme to break down cellulose, the fiber passes through. If you ever wondered how hippopotamus, rhinoceros, cows, and giraffes grow lean and muscular as herbivores, here's your answer.

That’s right, a baked potato and a wood are essentially the same thing.  So why aren’t we whipping a wonderful Mahi-Mahi dusted in a fine pepper-birch sawdust and parchment-baked? It’s because we happen to be protein deficient.  Yes, it’s true, a polysaccharide like cellulose or “poly-glucose” must be broken down by enzymes, proteins, into glucose so we can use them.

Cellulose is put together in just a slightly different way and we can’t break it down. To a termite, or the bacteria in the rumen (a stomach) of a cow, that piece of wood or grass fiber works as food JUST like a baked potato does for you.  These bacteria and insects create  the protein, cellulase, to extract glucose from cellulose.  We create another protein, amylase, that breaks down the starch.  You have as many as 4-12 copies of the gene that creates amylase enzyme, because it’s so genetically important for your survival.

Carbohydrate, fats, and proteins all enter the electron transport chain to deliver energy to your body in a set of reactions designed around glucose, the building block of carbohydrate.

What do I want you to take away? first, “Carbs” aren’t food groups and neither are proteins and fats. Theses very defined terms in organic/biochemistry, but have been popularized in order to help you “eat healthy.  The irony is we’ve never been more unhealthy as a world.  Proteins aren’t meat; there are also other bioactive proteins, for example enzymes like amylase or cellulase, that participate nearly every metabolic process keeping you alive.

We will eventually come back to food, and calories, and see that nearly every food you eat is a combination of these. You don’t “need a complete protein” and can’t “avoid carbs.”  The truth is that what you need is energy to run the process, fuel. You  probably have a few weeks (months?) supply of fuel you’ve been lugging around for some time. We need to find creative ways to burn it.  None of them involve schemes of putting MORE energy in your mouth. You’ll never run empty if you fill up three times a week.

For today, here is what I want you to take away: carbohydrates are polysaccharides ( “many” “sugars”) that provide the basic energy currency precursor of your body, glucose.  We’ll discuss some of the other (evil – lol) simple carbohydrates in the next blog.  We use and need carbohydrate in our diet.  There is a big difference between starches, like rice, squash and potatoes and donuts. Fruits, on the other hand, contain simple sugars as well and those come with their own issues.  It is key to separate carbohydrates, especially complex carbohydrates, from simple sugars.

We’ll then turn to the other macronutrients, fat and protein, to fill in the basic metabolism energy cycle.

You shouldn’t feel uncomfortable with the idea that ultimately, cows eat grass, gain glucose and amino acids, and grow tasty, “grass-fed” beef. That beef is laden with amino acids.  When you eat it, you can in turn use the amino acids (no significant glucose in beef) to create insulin or pus in pimples (also a protein), whatever protein you need,  and metabolize the left over to supplement your daily energy requirements. You can even store it for “later.”

Perhaps,  it’s not as simple as the CO2->Sun->O2 symbiotic respiration we learned in 4th grade, but it is plenty understandable.  When you no longer see protein, carbohydrate or fat as food groups, your mind will be opened to lots of different options.

Equally important, we’ve all learned the hard way, you can’t out-exercise your mouth.  It is simply put, impossible.

Until next time…

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