To be confused about carb heavy diet?

[GreenestValley]

Just reading a thread on here about weight loss and diet. Many posters commenting that the Op in that thread has a very carb heavy diet.

I feel quite confused about it as I always thought carbs were an important part of a balanced diet and a source of energy. Obviously not too much white bread, white pasta etc, but from a personal perspective I have to have a fairly carb based diet or else I get hungry and end up snacking. And I’ve always had a normal weight.
I was also under the impression that the “low carb” diets of the early 2000s eg Atkins etc that were very popular, were kind of debunked now.
Am I missing something? Do carbs affect some people differently to others? Would welcome a bit of de mystifying here if anyone has expertise just for my own understanding!

www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/enjoy-food/eating-with-diabetes/meal-plans LINK!

People have always cooked and eaten grains

But they haven't really, it's a relatively new thing to be farming rather than hunter-gathering. Previously grain may have been included in the diet but they wouldn't be numerous, nor would they be the modern plump grains we have now, they'd have been lower in energy and higher in fibre.

Yes the genetic modification of grain is a big factor in how we got to where we are IMO.

They have always eaten and cooked grains. Of course it would be from wild sources.

That’s the same with meat. Wild meat is very different in nutritional benefits to farmed meat.

And they ate simple carbohydrates. Some African hunter gatherers get 20% of their calorie intake from honey - a simple carbohydrate.

Different ways of eating (diets if you like) work for different people. OP can eat a high carb diet, great, I can’t. A friend has changed her health for the better on a raw diet - again not for everyone.
Low carbing is now/ still(?) very popular as a lot of people found themselves with insulin resistance/ metabolic syndrome or indeed type 2 diabetes. So low carb diet is not a gimmick just because it’s not something you are interested in.

@ColleagueFromMars

Yes the genetic modification of grain is a big factor in how we got to where we are IMO.

Genetic modification has nothing to do with it, it has been selective plant breeding over the past hundred or so years.

Thanks for that link Blueberries. Some of those recipes look really good.

Selective breeding of plants and animals for thousands of years is why our food is different.

The carrots we eat are not like wild carrots. The cows we eat are not like aurochs. The barley we eat is not like wild barley.

@Stripesgalore

Selective breeding of plants and animals for thousands of years is why our food is different.

The carrots we eat are not like wild carrots. The cows we eat are not like aurochs. The barley we eat is not like wild barley.

This.

Fruit is another - far more sugar in fruit now than even 20-30 years ago.

Selective breeding IS (a form of) genetic modification.

'Eat food, mostly plants.'

And never, ever, ever start any thread on eating or diet on MN because if there ever was a study on orthorexia, it would be a good place to start.

There is some seriously disordered eating on here and a lot of just dull AF, restrictive diets.

@ColleagueFromMars

Selective breeding IS (a form of) genetic modification.

Yes you're correct, but that's not the most common interpretation, certainly on MN.

It was what I meant, @CrunchyNutNC

@quiet01

Didn't Atkins diet mean living off of steak & neat spirits? Was called the drinking man's diet.

No.

It shows that a lot of women on here grew up when carbs = evil.

@SchrodingersImmigrant

It genuinely makes me nervous how many non diabetic people talk about insulin so much...

You do understand the impact of insulin on weight, don't you?

It's not only diabetics who have a problem with it.

I like the way a PP talked about ‘normal’ people who could eat a crappy diet with no health issues versus those who are diabetic/prediabetic. Those ‘normal’ people are still marching towards the same cliff edge, they’re just a few miles behind.

The choice isn’t crappy diet vs. low carb though.

There’s no actual reason for most people to follow a low carb diet.

at the idea that only diabetics should be allowed to mention insulin. In other news, people without alcoholism or cirrhosis are allowed to talk about cutting down on alcohol and people who aren't anaemic are allowed to talk about getting enough iron in their diet.

The choice isn’t crappy diet vs. low carb though. There’s no actual reason for most people to follow a low carb diet.

Neither my dad's gp, nor the specialist at the sleep clinic, advised him to change his (normal, varied, home-cooked,non-crappy) diet. In fact the specialist said that as he was barely overweight, it was unlikely a diet change would make any difference to his sleep apnoea. But as I mentioned upthread, when he did change it to a low carb one, he came off his statins, bp meds and sleep apnoea machine and reversed his pre-diabetes.

Given the number of people with obesity, high bp and pre-diabetes, I'd have thought that a huge number of people might benefit from a diet significantly lower in carbs.

Correlation does not equal causation. What you ‘think’ is not what nutritionists or the NHS base their official advice on.

Some, yeah, not people who live a life of cornflakes, bread, chips, potato and rice and then complain they're always hungry.

Correlation does not equal causation. What you ‘think’ is not what nutritionists or the NHS base their official advice on.

😂 Actually the Framington Heart Study, in which a lot of our modern dietary recommendations are based, was entirely correlational. As was Keyes' 7 Nations Study

@lazylinguist

at the idea that only diabetics should be allowed to mention insulin. In other news, people without alcoholism or cirrhosis are allowed to talk about cutting down on alcohol and people who aren't anaemic are allowed to talk about getting enough iron in their diet.

Correlation does not equal causation

This is true. Correlation seen often enough can be the basis of further proper study to identify cause. The Farmington Heart study isn’t ‘correlation’, that’s weird phrasing. It’s a long term study using medical tests, different groups and spans decades. It’s very different from saying, my husband ate such a such diet and it caused relief from x y z, therefore everyone should do it and get the same result. But you know this. You can observe a correlation in lots of people and often studies will show that, and they will use phrasing like, ‘this may be due to....’. Scientists don’t tend to insist something is caused by a change of diet from a single observation.