'Good' Carbs?

#21

There are a number of past threads here about ultraprocessed vs. processed vs. whole food carbs. Carbs can be quite different in their impact on the system - as some are devoid of nutrients, some are chockfull of chemicals or PUFAs, others are nutrient dense and offer healing/grounding (like sweet potatoes and fibrous fruit & veg).

At the same time, I don’t believe in the ‘clean food’ trend which seems to share some of the same privileged psychological tendencies as veganism. Besides, very little in this destructive industrial culture is clean & tidy - as written about so well by Lierre Keith in The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability.

I care about where/how foods are sourced, whether they are real, and their nutrient density.

On the other hand, I also am a fan of cross-cultural community flex and living a little - should the special occasion arise, I’ll gratefully enjoy some New Mexican fry bread, some homemade chapati, or some likely GMO tortilla chips from one of the oldest Mexican restaurants in the U.S. - but I stay mindful of frequency and degree of indulgence.

For 2019, I’ve eaten said tortilla chips on 5 occasions, 2 times of overindulgence (indicated by a little headache the next morning) - and 3 times of more modest servings. And I’m glad I did, I think I’m better for it :wink: I’m not doing medical keto - so I find value & meaning in Realistic Keto as defined by me and my measurements and energy level. This, in a context of being often a 50g net carbs/day or less person.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #22

We have this discussion periodically. People just don’t seem to be able to let go of starch and grains and look for some reason to re-incorporate them into their diet. My thinking runs along the following lines:

  1. Fructose is destructive to the body for a number of reasons, so it should be avoided at all costs, as well as sucrose, which contains it.

  2. I went to a great deal of trouble to re-train my body to return to metabolising fatty acids in place of glucose, so I really don’t want starches or grains, either, since all they are is long chains of glucose molecules.

  3. As a sugar/carb addict, I really want to avoid things that might trigger a binge and get me to eat more than my threshold. That is another reason for avoiding sucrose, fructose, grains, and starches.

Since the few above-ground vegetables I do eat are enough to vary the taste of meat, bacon, and cheese, I am content.

(BuckRimfire) #23

Add: The less cooked the better, I think. At least, IIRC raw carrots have a lower glycemic index than well-done carrots. I guess your last bullet point covers that.

(Ken) #24

Yeah, yeah, I remember all the “Violation of the Sacred Tempe of My Body” stuff started in the 1960s, mostly used by early Vegans in regards to meat. I think this is one of those cases where you do a little experimentation and find foods you’re happy with. Having a little evil processed food now and then is highly unlikely to wreck your health within your normal healthy pattern. I also was eating clean carbs when I introduced them, but eventually found that since I was eating then so infrequently that it didn’t really matter.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #25

. . . particularly by kale, beets, soy, and okra! :face_vomiting:

(Wendy) #26

I do think I’d rather eat a small amount of cantalope over an Oreo. It tastes way better to me and I am sure it is not adding as much toxins as is found in that highly processed cookie. Not that I would never indulge in the cookie I just don’t believe it is the better choice.
I think we each have a list of foods we feel great about eating and know it is a healthy choice and some things that are on the "well if I’m going to have a treat, let’s say, I’d rather eat a than b. Sometimes b is the one we go for for whatever reason but in our hearts and minds we believe a would have been better for us. Whether what we believe is true or not is another matter. And it also may change as we learn new things and have our own experiences.

(Full Metal KETO AF) #27

This is wrong. There’s a huge difference between a sweet potato, winter squash, or split pea soup and grains, white sugar or HFCS. Dairy Queen, pastries, donuts, and things like that are junk food. No way carbs are carbs. You may not care what you consume but that’s just over the top when someone asks about healthier carb choices. :cowboy_hat_face:

(Ken) #29

Can this be moved to Spam? It.doesn’t even get the basic Science right.

(Full Metal KETO AF) #30

Maybe the forum should give out sobriety chips. :joy::joy::grin::cowboy_hat_face:

#31

I flagged it.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #32

I agree. There are no ‘good carbs’ or ‘bad carbs’. The only difference is how long they take to become glucose. Since we don’t need to eat glucose, carbs serve no useful function. It’s not the carbs in a sweet potato that make it more nutritious than a DQ vanilla cone. I eat bok choy daily since it contains an alphabet soup of nutrients. The 1+ gram of carbs per 100 grams of bok choy is incidental to the nutrients. I pay the small carb tax to get the nutrients. I don’t eat bok choy to get ‘good carbs’.

(Polly) #33

We all make our own personal decisions about what we are prepared to eat based on all sorts of factors including early life experience, intolerances and reactive experiences.

I suspect that the OP needs to discover what works for him in the medium to long term and that none of us can do more than share our own experiences of what works/ has worked for us.

After the basic rule of keto to limit carbs, my first rule is “Just eat real food” and if my Granny (born 1901) would not have recognised it as food it probably isn’t. On this basis, I generally avoid industrial seed oils, artificial sweeteners, anything processed on an industrial scale.

#34

Are you familiar with Marty Kendall’s work at Optimising Nutrition? He has various lists of optimal foods depending on your goals. You can pay for a full on analysis but I think he has some less in depth stuff available for free - perhaps enough to steer you in the right direction.

('Jackie P') #35

This is the whole point. Nature supplies us with carbohydrates bound with fibre, it is the job of fibre to slow the absorbtion of glucose! This can further be slowed by the addition of vinegar, ACV in particular.
By removing the fibre from food, ie processing, it is vastly altered, and causes extreme insulin spikes. This is the reason so many of us are on this site trying to sort out our metabolic issues.
A carb is a carb is as stupid as saying a calorie is a calorie!

(Libby) #36

Chips are too carby

(mole person) #37

Exactly. And as Lustig points out carbs bound to fiber can get lower in the intestines where the are consumed by gut bacteria rather than broken down and hitting your blood as glucose at all. When you eat whole fruits and vegetables a fraction of your carb load gets turned into fatty acids in your gut prior to absorbtion. This is not happening with Oreo cookies.

(Jill F.) #38

@ChrisW I am at the start of maintenance mode myself and I have started eating fruit and Greek yogurt again. Occasionally I will eat something breaded like chicken nuggets or colorful veggies that I completely avoided before. I was very strict while I was in weight loss mode and didnt cheat, now when I do and eat the true junk like ice cream or brownies, even if it’s a few bites, I feel like dying. I dont feel bad emotionally or physically when I eat yogurt or fruit. I have been doing this for about 6 weeks and have maintained my weight thus far.

I agree to an extent carbs are carbs, however I believe that in maintenance mode eating a little oatmeal or a sweet potato is healthier and far less addicting than Oreos or pie. I think, for me anyway, if I try to incorporate healthy non processed carbs like that my body will respond better than with the junk.

For me maintenance is about being healthy. Bring at a healthy weight, eating a healthy diet, and never gaining back those 40 + pounds I lost. I am sure it is the same for you too, so I say try out a half a baked sweet potato and see how you respond. Eat a bowl of oatmeal and check your energy levels and your weight regularly. If it goes well, I think that may be the beauty of the long term keto WOL is to balance everything in moderation, not feel hungry, and feel healthy.

('Jackie P') #39

I have always found yogurt to be a weird one. I avoided it for many months until I read that the carbs on the label didn’t reflect the carbs in the product. Live bacteria eat approximately half of the carbs (never sure why they didn’t fancy the other half!).
I am in the UK and eat Yeo Valley organic, made with milk from pasture fed cows and live cultures. It’s delicious and I always feel better for it.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #40

To bring this sort of thing to the attention of the admin staff, please flag the post in question.

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#41

If you eat oats, don’t forget to soak them with lemon juice overnight before cooking them. Those things are otherwise phytic acid bombs.

In my opinion, if you are healthy, no metabolic issues, no disease, and don’t have any weight to lose, then maybe you can benefit from eating 50-150 grams of carbs a day instead of staying in the 20 grams range.

Some good options might be potatoes, sweet potatoes, bananas, carrots, squash, plantains, chestnuts, cassavas, taro roots and yams. A controversial one, if you can get your hands on it, is raw milk at about 12 carbs a cup.

I like my potatoes 1/3 cream, butter or marrow, so they still fit the HF part of LCHF :joy: