For years we have heard about good LDL and bad LDL. Is it true
that there are good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates?
A- To kind of boil it down into a nutshell, if you look at it everybody is
trying to answer that question and again you can draw a correlation
between what people are eating and who is doing the study.
One thing that is obvious is that diabetes is on the rise and it
probably has something to do with digesting simple sugars. I think
the jury is out on what is causing the rise in diabetes. We keep
coming back to practicality and just balance.

I still use sugar on my cereal and eat chocolate chip cookies. I don’t
exclude those from my diet but on the other hand I don’t overdo it.
We have some family friends who have teenage kids and we get to
visit them quite often. We would eat out together and their parents
were on the overweight side and I still remember that when the
kids would use any kind of condiment like on their toast they would
use like 2 tablespoons of butter. If you want to add butter to your
toast fine but a little bit goes a long way. There is this kind of an
attitude that if a little is good more is better.

What are phytochemicals?
A- Phytochemicals are chemicals that occur in growing plants. It’s just
another catchy term. It is more about food antioxidants and the
role they play in metabolism and cholesterol and heart disease.
I am going to say that it is a term that popped up about 10 years
ago like functional foods. Basically phytochemicals are those
chemicals that usually act as an antioxidant in metabolism. There
is so much talk about free radicals and oxidation of fat and
metabolism you know when fat gets metabolized. Those chemicals
will basically act to reduce free radicals. Therefore they are
supposed to be effective in reducing cardiovascular disease.

I think it all keeps coming back to balance. You know my son and I
had an interesting exchange of emails the other night. He had come
across an article on energy consumption and where our nation was
on consuming energy. You know the price of a barrel of oil and
what was going to happen to energy costs and the rising
consumption.

It was an article that was quite lengthy and it was basically a
doomsday article about how we were going to run out of energy.
Bottom line was that it left out human nature and innovative ideas
that they will come up with when they need one. Then we read a
totally different article that was optimistic and upbeat.

My point is, here are two articles with completely different points of
view having to deal with the energy crisis or energy consumption.
The same thing is true about nutrition. You can find different
studies on either sides of the fence on about anything. What you
have to do, and what I know in my professional experience, is know
that studies can vary like that.

You know the fellow that I worked for that had the genius IQ? He
used to tell me that when he graduated from high school and he
thought he was a know it all and when he graduated from college
with a 4 year degree he thought he knew a little less than when he
got out of high school. But as he learned more and more he
decided he knew less and less about what was going on in the
industry. He said to me repeatedly that the food process is just a
big gray area. If you just take one piece of information and hold on
to it as the gospel truth you are going to be dead wrong about it.
You have to keep an open mind about nutrition because it is
constantly changing. You have to be current because it is a rapidly
changing field.

__________________
Christopher Berry
Diabetic Discussion