Carbs Are Not a Dirty Word
Whether you are trying to lose weight, or just eat a healthy diet; Carbohydrates are NOT a dirty word.
While the Western Diet is horrible, sites suggesting that all Carbs should be avoided are only making the situation worst. It should be ludicrous to believe that eliminating one of the three major macronutrients remotely makes a lick of sense, to anyone interested in achieving good health.
Carbohydrates are your body's preferred energy source. Always eat a healthy whole fruit immediately before doing anything that is physically demanding. Moreover, carbohydrate rich foods like fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole-grains are your primary source of important nutrients like antioxidants, carotenes, carotenoids, and Phytochemicals like indoles, isoflavones and polyphenols.
When it comes to good health, the only Bad Carbs are SUGAR and Refined Grains. Those who have successfully managed to remove all added sugars and refined grains from their diet, and who want to lose excess weight faster could optionally proceed to eliminating all starchy Carbs, like potatoes, from their diet. When pre-diabetics, people with insulin resistance, and even diabetics adopt a healthy lifestyle and stick to it for at least a couple of years their health condition will improve dramatically.
Of course, there is the concept of the glycemic index for those suffering from the insulin resistance syndrome. The glycemic index purports to take a quantitative approach to the concept of starches in your diet. Maybe so, but the Natural Health Perspective was once threaten with legal action for disclosing copyrighted glycemic index information. Follow the suggestions provided on the Natural Health Perspective, and most should be able to improve their health to the point where paying attention to the glycemic index, will not be necessary at all.
Good Carbohydrates
The Low-Carb Mantra:
What foods should you eat?
Look in the mirror. Those advocating low-Carb diets are still hooked on eating fast food, which contains no fiber and absolutely the worst of all possible carbohydrates. People obsessed with a low-Carb diet are positively still at the earliest stages of eating a healthy diet, by definition. These people are clearly eating more junk, than real food. Frankly, they are still having a hard time equating healthy whole foods with food. All that they are doing is trying to substitute junky Carbs, with other junk foods that are higher in fat or protein.
When your view of a proper meal consists of a soda, burger, and fries the Low-Carb Mantra - What foods should you eat - translates into deep fried chicken nuggets and a milk shake. Why is this even a question? The only possible answer is that when you eat a restricted fast food diet, that is just about the only food options left once you have cut out all the sugar and grains. The notion that you could actually be eating a small fresh garden salad, steamed broccoli, carrots, along with broiled shrimp served on top of brown rice, and a big glass of unsweetened ice tea is simply beyond the low-Carb worldview of what constitutes food.
The objective of eating a healthy diet is to eliminate 100% all junk and fast food from your diet: No matter if it consists mostly of Carbs, Fat, or Protein. However, you slice it, people at the earliest stages of improving their diet are still addicted to eating mostly junk food. Merely, substituting one junk food, for another helps no one improve his or her health.
By ALL Means - Cut Out All Grains
Avoid eating grains of any type in fast food restaurants.
The real issue is that people overly concerned about Carbs have yet to move beyond eating a junky diet. Talking about eating high-fiber Carbs is absurd since all fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole-grains naturally contains lots of fiber. In other words, when you eat healthy you automatically end up with a high-fiber diet. Fast food establishments use food science to remove as much fiber from their food as possible.
For all practical purposes, people in the earliest stages of eating a healthy diet should cut out all grains; since just about all fast and highly process foods do NOT contain healthy whole-grains.
Those at the earlier stages of improving their health should be concentrating on eating vegetables, whether raw or cook. The only healthy fruits, are eaten whole. Otherwise, you would only end up eating a lot of added sugar and even more junk grains. While you can sometimes buy whole fruit at convenience stores, I would view them more as a healthy snack, than as a part of eating lunch out.
To eat out healthy, requires you to identify food establishments that remotely serve something resembling a variety of different vegetables. In other words, they should offer something other than starchy potatoes, no matter how they are cooked. Be sure to check out their list of side dishes. These places do exist. Some might offer coleslaw or just green beans. You might have to pay extra to order something other than French fries, but your health is definitely worth it. The healthier food establishments are high-end joints, offering more expensive meal choices.
The vast majority of junk food restaurants sell only horribly bad refined grains. The only grains worth eating at all are whole-grains, such as: whole-wheat bread, brown rice, and old fashion oatmeal. Most of the whole-wheat bread being sold today is still largely junk food due to the widespread inclusion of added sugar. After reading food labels, you will find that only about one out of 34 different brands of whole-wheat bread remotely qualify as being healthy.
Eating healthy whole-grains is definitely an advanced level health strategy that is comparable to buying organic foods. To seriously make whole-grains a part of your diet requires dabbling in exotic whole-grains, which takes a great deal of time and effort, not to mention requiring excellent cooking skills. Almost no retail outlets are selling these exotic whole-grains other than health food stores.
In conclusion, once you are no longer obsessed with losing weight and are at the advanced stages of a healthy whole-food diet then you will agree that Carbohydrates are NOT a dirty word. Your choices of carbohydrate rich foods will consist of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole-grains. But, until then the Natural Health Perspective advises that people interested in losing weight should restrict their choice of Carbs to non-starchy vegetables.
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