Carbohydrates — A Nutrient Your Body Requires

Carbohydrates are a nutrient found in food. Your body requires carbohydrates for energy, and especially for the energy your brain uses to function.

There is a pattern that happens in your body when you eat food that contains carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are made of individual molecules called sugars that are linked together and create chains. Your body breaks those chains apart, mainly in your small intestine, into individual sugars, mostly glucose. Glucose enters your bloodstream. (This is why glucose is called blood sugar.) In your bloodstream, glucose travels to your cells. The glucose becomes usable energy in your cells. This energy powers everything cells do.

Your brain depends entirely on glucose for your brain cells to have the energy they require to function. Your brain is only about two percent of your body weight, yet it consumes about twenty percent of the energy your body produces. This is one reason why carbohydrates are important for your body.

Carbohydrates come in two forms, and the two forms differ based on how quickly your body breaks them apart.

Simple carbohydrates are one sugar or two sugars linked together, so your body breaks them down quickly. This gives your body fast energy that rises and drops quickly. Simple carbohydrates occur naturally in fruit, milk, and honey. Simple carbohydrates are added to soda, candy, and packaged sweets as sugar.

The difference between simple carbohydrates that occur naturally versus simple carbohydrates that are added to food matters. Naturally occurring simple carbohydrates arrive in the body with fiber, vitamins, and minerals alongside the glucose. Added sugars arrive in the body with almost nothing else. This is why an orange and a candy bar do not do the same thing inside your body, even though both contain simple carbohydrates.

Complex carbohydrates are long chains of sugars linked together, sometimes hundreds. Your body has to work through those links one at a time, which takes longer. This means glucose enters your bloodstream gradually, keeping your energy steady. Complex carbohydrates are found in potatoes, taro, ulu, oats, beans, brown rice, and whole grain bread.

Fiber is a complex carbohydrate your body does not digest like other carbohydrates. Fiber slows down how fast sugar enters your bloodstream, feeds the helpful bacteria living in your gut, keeps your food moving through the intestines, and helps your body feel satisfied so there is less urge to keep eating. Fiber is found in vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts, seeds, and whole grains.

When glucose enters your blood, your pancreas (an organ behind your stomach) releases insulin. Insulin is what allows glucose to move out of your blood and into your cells. If your body has more glucose than it needs at any given moment, insulin signals your liver and muscle cells to take glucose out of your blood and store it. When your liver and muscle stores are full, your body turns the extra glucose into fat for longer-term storage.

The liver and muscle storage system is why steady energy matters. When glucose arrives slowly, your body can use it as it comes and store what it needs to. But when glucose arrives all at once, more of it goes into storage, and your body turns more of it into fat.

Carbohydrates are found mostly in plant foods: potatoes, taro, ulu, rice, oats, bread, pasta, beans, lentils, fruit, and vegetables. They are also in dairy, in the form of the milk sugar lactose.

Here is something worth knowing. When you eat enough carbohydrates, the protein you eat stays available for the jobs it does. But when you don’t eat enough carbohydrates, your body takes the protein you eat, or the protein already in your muscles, to make glucose. This is one reason why eating enough carbohydrates matters, even when someone is trying to eat less. Without carbohydrates, the body starts consuming itself.

Eating carbohydrates more in their natural form rather than after they’ve been refined and the nutrients have been taken out is more beneficial for the type of energy the carbohydrate gives you.

If you are increasing the nutrient dense food you eat, foods that contain carbohydrates along with fiber, vitamins, and minerals are an important place to start.

Stacy 🌺

I share my experiences and my perspective. Eating and healing look different for everyone. If you are struggling with food or your relationship with your body, please find support. You don’t have to do this alone.