With so many diets to choose from these days, it's no wonder everyone is confused.  One of the latest fads has been the Atkins Diet, which has actually been around for many years, and seems to have some success in the short term. It recommends avoiding most foods containing carbohydrates.  This is a radical change from the high carbohydrate diets we have been eating in recent years. But, doctors and nutritionists are now discovering that eating a low carbohydrate diet may be more healthy than having a diet high in carbohydrates.

Carbohydrate foods can be broken down into two groups: "simple" and "complex" carbohydrates. Both of these groups can be further broken down into refined and unrefined.

The refined simple carbohydrates, or "the sweet stuff", which includes all the sugars of one form or another, remove nutrients required for the metabolism of sugar. Without those nutrients, your body must draw from its body stores to metabolise the sugar. Once those stores are overtaxed, disease sets in, or at least undesirable symptoms that hit wherever your body's weakest link happens to be.

Not only does the refining process remove nutrients, but it also concentrates the sugar within the simple carbohydrate food. This causes extra stress on the pancreas, the organ responsible for removing sugar (glucose) from the bloodstream, and sending it into muscle cells to be burned as fuel. This extra stress manifests as an over-secretion of insulin, causing low blood sugar swings with a subsequent vicious cycle of high blood sugar levels and low blood sugar levels as the body tries to auto-regulate. This effect may eventually lead to Type 2 Diabetes, (also known as late onset Diabetes), as the pancreas becomes inefficient at regulating the production of insulin.

Another problem in most refining processes of simple carbohydrates is the fact that nearly all fibre is removed. The fibre slows the release of the sugar into the system, easing the signal to the pancreas to release too much insulin too fast. The fibre in fruits, which are unrefined simple carbohydrates help make the sugar in fruit much healthier than the sugar in refined carbohydrates. That is why the same healthy benefits are not found in fruit juice, which is concentrated and has the fibre removed in the processing.  Therefore, it is better to eat your fruit with clean, edible skins as the natural fibre in the fruit will lower the amount of sugar taken in.

The basic complex carbohydrates are the edible starches. That is flour, bread, cereals, and grains, along with most vegetables.  Starches are simple carbohydrate molecules (sugars) that are linked together by special bonds before they can be used by the body as sugar. That can be a good thing, since the enzyme process needed for the breakdown takes time to work, and that delay slows the release of the sugars into our system.

Unfortunately, the same principles apply in the case of refined, complex carbohydrates as to the simple ones: the sugars can be concentrated and they can have the necessary nutrients as well as the fibre removed.  As soon as a starch hits enzymes in your mouth, the starches begin the digestion process, and break down to sugar. If those starches start without the nutrients and especially the fibre they originally contained, they become inferior foods. As soon as the starch breaks down to sugar, you are back to a refined simple carbohydrate.

Nearly all our starches today are refined and it's extremely difficult to find 100% unrefined pastas, breads or cereals. Yet, we've been told that pasta is an excellent "diet food"! 

Although the Atkin’s Diet is rather extreme in removing most carbohydrates from the diet, it has made doctors and nutritionists reassess our daily need for carbohydrates.  Increasingly, they are accepting that the high carbohydrate diets they used to advise have contributed to the current epidemic of obesity and diabetes and are now advising lower carbohydrate diets.

A good guide to reducing your intake of foods which cause a rapid rise in blood sugar is the Glycaemic Index (GI).  Carbohydrates that break down quickly during digestion have a high GI and carbohydrates that break down slowly, releasing sugar gradually into the blood stream, have a low GI.

Low GI diets can help people lose weight, improve the body's sensitivity to insulin, help re-fuel carbohydrate stores after exercise, improve diabetes control, keep you feeling full for longer and can prolong physical endurance.

Therefore, in order to prevent the swings in blood sugar which may lead to obesity, heart disease and diabetes, you should avoid as much refined carbohydrate food as possible.  Instead choose wholemeal bread or grainy bread with seeds, pasta, and brown rice.  Use breakfast cereals based on oats, barley and bran. Reduce the amount of potatoes you eat and consume all types of fruits and vegetables (except potatoes).  Vegetables are unrefined complex carbohydrates which are a good source of fibre.  Also eat plenty of salad vegetables as these have a low GI. Preferably, avoid eating after 7pm as any carbohydrates not used by the body as energy will be stored as fat.

For more information about the Glycaemic Index and the individual index numbers for common foods and drink, check out the University of Sydney’s web site at www.glycemicindex.com.