Real Food Vs. Processed: What’s In Your Carbs?

While out for a morning walk along the Pacific a few weeks ago, this writer’s walking buddy, a Pritikin alum in her 60s, sighed and announced, “I really need to cut back on carbs…I’ve put on a few pounds.”

That afternoon, I heard the very same comment on the phone with another Pritikin alum.

Poor carbs. It’s 2008, and they’re still getting bashed. Though low-carb diets like Atkins fell out of favor years ago, there’s still confusion – sometimes even fear – about a carbohydrate-rich diet.

So in this article, we’ll try to clear up the confusion quickly and simply.

To begin with: Some carbs are bad. But some carbs are tremendously good for you. How do you know the difference? That’s where the confusion comes in.

Some talk about the glycemic index. Others blame insulin surges. Some rail against individual ingredients like high fructose corn syrup. And others want to know about your metabolic rate. Getting bleary-eyed? Why wouldn’t you – and for that matter, everyone else?

What’s heartening to know is that the whole mess really can be boiled down to two basic rules…

1. Fill your daily diet with real food, that is, carbohydrates that look as if they actually came out of the earth. Eat whole corn kernels, for example, instead of corn flakes. Reach for a whole orange instead of orange “vitamin water,” or even orange juice. Choose brown rice, not white rice. The less processed and refined a carb is, the healthier – and better for your waistline – it tends to be.

2. Steer clear of fake carbs. By fake, we mean food that is more a product of factories than of the soil. Fake carbs are foods that have been so overly processed – fiber stripped, nutrients stripped, water squeezed out, fat added, salt added, sugar added, calories added – that they are something “our great-great grandmothers would not have recognized as food,” writes Michael Pollan in his excellent new book In Defense of Food.

Your Great-Great Grandmother Knew Better

Your great-great grandmother would know potatoes. She’d be wary (and we should be, too) of potato chips, not to mention French fries with chili cheese sauce. She’d recognize fresh strawberries and oats, not Fruit Loops With Strawberries. She’d know whole-grain bread, not Bagel Bites.

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