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Carbohydrates – Part 2

By admin On October 21, 2011 · 41 Comments

In Part 1, we began the process of distinguishing the difference between a food group and a macronutrient. Carbohydrates (Carbs) are probably the most vilified of the macronutrients. This is probably due to the ubiquitous availability of starch foods throughout human history. For the most part, oils, fats, and meats were the food of the rich. Everyone else ate beans, rice and potatoes.

If we listed the many staple foods: grains, rice, beans, squash, quinoa, potatoes and corn we see a high amount of starch. Remember, starch is simply a long chain of glucose. We all need glucose to live and our primary energy is derived from glucose and stored glycogen or fat (more later).

I want you to know that a carbohydrate need not be fattening, nor lead to diabetes. In fact, Carbohydrates can be very satiating (1) for 4-5 hours after meals. What seems to be the big diversion, where the “bad carbs” come in, is the processing (blending, frying, flouring, pasting, etc) of carbohydrate. When we break down starch too much in the food preparation process, it leads to lots of simple sugars. These are both easy to overeat and can have other deleterious health effects.

Starch digestion begins in the mouth with the amylase in the saliva. The starch begins to break down to glucose. A great way to experience this first hand is to take a unsalted cracker and just hold it in your mouth. You will begin to generate a lot of saliva and as you hold it there, begin to taste sweetness as the glucose is formed. Remember, a termite can do exactly the same thing with cellulose in wood.

From an evolutionary biology perspective, the AMY1 gene that is responsible for making amylase is so important that you have as many as 12 copies of it (2). It was extremely important to our hunter-gather predecessors. While there’s been much put forward on the “hunting” side of the equation, some of the most recent anthropology suggest that the “gathering” side dominated. Underground storage organs (USOs – tubers, bulbs, corms, and rhizomes) played a significant role in our energy management of times past.

Men like the idea of beating their chest and running through the woods hunting and they write a lot of the stories, but gathering is actually a better (less sexy) explanation of our survival. It even allows the elderly to participate productively in the group, even grandmothers would have a significant role in the earliest tribes. Anyone can dig up a potato, they aren’t very fast, and they grow in predicable places.

The naked mole rat is found with archeology of hominid population explosions and points to USOs as a gathered food source. click photo for NPR Story

Many of the early tools used to process USOs were probably made of wood and didn’t survive in the archeological records, but the early Hominid starch crystals in teeth have. Also there are also fossilized populations of mole rats that surge with every human population expansion (3). We’ll also learn that the mole rat has some FASCINATING genetics that impacts thermal loading.

I don’t want to get into the Paleolithic debate. What I want everyone to see is that starch IS an important evolutionary part of your fuel system, but at the same time recognize french fries are NOT the starch I am talking about. Your view of carbohydrate has been jaded since the beginning of diets. In the earliest of diets (Banting) it was simple breads combined with butter/sugar that caused the excess energy to creep in. Processed starch (sugars) of all kinds can lead to excess caloric intake; it’s just easy to digest and pleasurable to overeat, especially when combined with salt and fat.

For today, understand that primary complex carbohydrates: squash, legumes, onions, carrots, whole corn, whole rice, and potato are all good bases of energy. They are satiating ways to make up for caloric deficit, but don’t confuse those items, “items your great grandmother would recognize as food,” Michael Pollan might say, with the “carbs” served at school lunch.

Most importantly understand that many of these “starchy” foods also contain significant proteins with complete compliment of the essential amino acids your body will use to synthesize your own protein. These complex carbohydrates are broken down by amylase to glucose: the fuel for your brain and many cells in the body. If they aren’t consumed with excessive alternate energy sources (like excessive fat or simple sugar), your body will tap into it’s own fat reserves. If too much pre-processing is performed, then you might see increased problems managing blood sugar.

Eating carbohydrate is convenient and pleasurable, and know there is room for “carbs” in your diet if you make the correct choices.

So, when we are putting this all together and I say carbohydrate, I want you to think about these whole, starchy food items that enter YOUR kitchen/cooking reasonably resembling how they came out of the ground or off the plant. Sugar, raw, brown…whatever, is refined. I challenge you to eat the 250 lbs of sugar a year gnawing on sugarcane, however; you might be able to do it with grapes or beets.

Others have commented on fructose, a simple sugar in fruit, and I think there is merit to the issues that come from too many simple sugars, especially highly processed. This likely includes high fructose corn syrup, apple juice, sucrose, agave nectar, etc…). Fruits are not found in nature year round, but USOs are. Similarly, think about what is easily stored (beans vs beets). It’s amazing to hear people rave about “natural agave nectar” (inulin/fructose squeezed from agave) and then begin to lambast the food industry for high fructose corn syrup (fructose squeezed from corn). Yes there are some differences, but we’ll debate it in 5-10 years. It’s all simple sugar to me and best avoided.

These simple sugars are energy without the fiber or micronutrients. Others, like Robert Lustig, have covered the issue of fructose in far better detail than I will, but likely our problem as a nation is probably more related to drinking, for example, too much apple juice, rather than eating too many apples. The same is true of french fries vs potatoes. The larger group health statistics just don’t separate the issues (e.g. apples vs apple juice or fries vs potato) with enough granularity and it is all complicated with saturated fats and other compounding, synergistic concoctions we now call food.

Many energy dense foods are now available year round (like fruits or avocados) and so we must be careful with these foods. We’ll see a similar trend with fats, oils, and nuts.

Starch is a wonderful molecule and has been around for millions of years. Starch is just one bond different from wood. You are designed to eat starch, with back ups systems in place (AMY1). We can identify paleolitic starch in teeth, even knowing the plants that produced it, and so there is nothing wrong with carbohydrate as a food – it highly processing it and combining with other energy-rich processed product that causes much of the issues.

You will inevitably hear more about the amazing work anthropologist, Nathaniel Dominy is doing with starch and USOs. I personally believe the depth and thoroughness of his work will have an impact on what many, like Loren Cordain, believe to absolute. Nate has a very uncanny ability to see past the obvious. For the record, he’s a meat eater, despite what he’s uncovered in the last few years about starch in anthropology.

In terms of the thermodynamics, most natural starches come with a compliment of other micronutrients that are beneficial. These are “energy foods” and so we absolutely CAN lose weight by eliminating them from your diet. I am not suggesting diets higher in fat or protein (atkins, paleolithic, slow carb) cannot be used to lose weight – I am diet agnostic. What I can explain is on whole the overall management of energy, heat (not temperature), that is responsible for your success.

If we stop isolating these foods based on our perceived/suggested notations of macronutrient content and return to simple food, A calorie will be a calorie. Once you learn to recognize what you are consuming at every meal (and snack) you’ll see the results you’ve been after. It doesn’t even take discipline once you understand the underlying principles.

Gauging on the comments/questions, I might dig in a little more (Part 3) on carbohydrate. Eventually I will post the overall biochemistry and some have written asking me to explain the TCA cycle (that complex part in the middle of a Lustig presentation if you’ve seen one). Otherwise, I will move onto fat and catch sugars in the wrap up.

Next week is TEDMED in San Diego. It’s hard to believe a year has past. I’ll probably have at least one update on what I learn there, but will *try* to write two posts on fat before I leave so they can post next week.

(1) Carbohydrates and human appetite, Blundell, JE, et al.,Am J Clin Nutr 1994;59(suppl):728S-34S.

(2) Diet and the evolution of human amylase gene copy number variation, Perry, G.H., et al., Nature Genetics 39, 1256 – 1260 (2007)

(3) Communication/presentation with Dr Nathaniel Dominy, Dartmouth University Dept of Anthropology

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Carbohydrates – Part 1

By admin On October 18, 2011 · 17 Comments

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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Burn, Baby, BURN

By admin On September 29, 2011 · 43 Comments

As we discussed in the last post, I want you to suspend all that you know about carbohydrates, proteins, and fat. I want you to clear notions of glycemic index and eating for blood type. I’m asking you to not have conclusions about our paleolithic ancestors. No, let’s talk about the very basics of energy in our body, but check the Chakras at the door.

Today we’ll take a rather geeky-side step. We are going to talk about energy, oxidation, and heat (not temperature). These are all things that we can see, measure, and repeat. Let’s reserve comments to questions and clarifications – I don’t want a similar scheme from someone else. I am confident that what I am saying is true – to the best of our current understanding.

Quick background. We are “homeotherms” in that our body temperature stays constant. This temperature (around 37C +/-) is the net result of waste metabolic heat. We need to stay in an environment cooler than our body for the most part, so that the waste heat can leave – else we just burn up. Cars need radiators. We are the same. Heat (not temperature) always flows from hot to cold. At the atomic level, that’s just lots of atoms bouncing together – just like rubbing your hands together and getting warm.

Heat (not temperature) is then the net energy in that object. Hot coffee has MORE heat than your tongue. It transfers (rapidly) when you sip it. That is what causes the discomfort. That is a very visceral picture of heat, but in thermodynamics we talk about heat in a far more general way. Most of the discussion has absolutely NOTHING to do with temperature and in fact, temperature is something that goes up and down in many cases to preserve the balance of energy when heat is transferred.

Riding The Wave

At the top of a roller coaster, you have a LOT of potential energy just before you fall. At the bottom of the hill you have lots of kinetic energy (energy of motion). Stand on that track and splat, you are mowed over my the massive car. Chemical reactions release and absorb energy in much the same way. Hold some explosive in your hand, you have potential energy, light the fuse and bang, release of all that stored energy at one time.

Get the picture?

The process of extracting energy from carbohydrates, proteins, and fats is metabolic oxidation. We add oxygen to the “fuel” and “burn it” to release energy. This is a extremely complex process, with lots of steps, but we can attack the problem from the basic energy in, energy out approach.

Let’s say you eat some glucose…or even table sugar, sucrose. In both cases those two molecules have Carbon (C), Oxygen (O) and Hydrogen (H). These individual atoms are all linked together with chemical bonds. Breaking these bonds requires energy (pulling the roller coaster up the hill) and then releases energy (going down the hill).

Some of the energy does work – like move a muscle, beat the heart or fire a neuron in the brain, but MOST of the energy (80%) is just waste heat energy (not temperature) that gets transferred to surrounding tissue and the tissue then increases in temperature.

What we will learn on specific posts about carbohydrates, protein, and fats is that each of them is processed a little differently by the body, but all can be used for that fundamental energy we need to live (pulling the roller coaster up the hill).

Additionally, we’ll discuss that proteins have a dual use – they can not only be burned like fuel, but they provide a store house of amino acids that are the basic building blocks of our tissue, hormones, and hair. In that sense when you EAT protein, it is not USED by the body; rather it is broken down into amino acids and the body picks out the ones it needs to make whatever is on the “to-do” list – be it eye tissue, insulin, or keratin (hair & nails). The rest of the unused amino acids get tossed into the burn pile. We don’t store them. When we dig into proteins, you’ll see that this word is so misunderstood, that it’s caused huge problems. We’ll find why our body doesn’t actually “burn” protein in much the same way as our body can’t burn “starch.”

On the other side of the balance, fats are places our bodies (and plants) can store energy. We’ll talk about one other form of stored energy, glycogen, in the post on carbohydrates, but just remember that adipose (fat) tissue is a place to dump excess, non waste heat energy until you need it later (gas in the trunk).

So all of these hand-waving sentences: I need more protein to build muscles, high glycemic carbs are my problem, or it’s the good fat, are just distractions at this very basic level. If you were not fat, or competing in an intense triathlon, then really, any of these three fuel sources would do just fine for energy. All of them are acceptable for fuel. Some have more heat energy stored within and others have less. Some can cause secondary hormonal issues, etc…but your body has evolved to process all three of these. Alcohol is another fuel we can throw in the mix – it’s digestible, but the by-products are toxic; it’s certainly energy that can be processed.

Sweet Mistakes

Ultimately, it is glucose – a simple sugar (carbohydrate) that fuels your brain and keeps the cells nourished. We monitor “blood sugar” and for most of us it stays in a pretty tight range. Proteins and fat can be inserted into the process with some fancy tricks, but all the heat energy they contain is eventually assimilated to some part the overall system to process glucose.

What do you need to know from this to move on? Simple. These three macronutrients: carbohydrate, protein, and fat are all useful sources of energy. If you are about to run a race and are 6% body fat, you might want to stock up on energy. If you are worried about the scales and the only exercise you get is looking for the remote control, you probably have plenty.

Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Weight loss, ALL WEIGHT LOSS, is then the process of going on a naturally “high fat” diet and consuming your body fat to fuel the roller coaster of life. For each and every heart beat, mouse click, or push up, you need some energy and you’ll want to get it out of your own reserves, not help plants and animals lose weight by eating theirs. If you only drink water, you’ll have no choice but lose body fat.

The problem with the starvation approach is that your body also has to constantly replace proteins (not necessarily your meat, but more hormones, cells, etc..) and in the next post we’ll look closer at how that complicates things and makes severe starvation, not the most appropriate form of weight loss.buy big water slides

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Carbohydrates – Part 2