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Low carb. No carb. Ketogenetic. Atkins, Wheat-Belly, South Beach… It’s hard to keep all of these diets straight in what you can and can’t eat, but one thing is for certain – carbs are supposed to be “The Enemy”.
But not all carbs are created equal! Don’t fall into the trap thinking that just because something is a carb, that makes it bad for you. These are 3 major myths about carbs that you probably believe but are negatively affecting your diet.
This is a common belief that carbs make you fat, and the popular low carb craze is not helping that myth at all. The truth is that anything you eat can make you fat if you eat the wrong amount, and the term ‘carb’ is way too vague to simply put a ‘fat’ label on it.
Carbs that come from refined products will probably increase your weight. Things like cookies, crackers, white flour, white pasta, and white bread all have been stripped of the outside grain, making them basically empty calories. These products can spike your glucose levels when you eat them as well.
Whole grain products, on the other hand, have both fiber and some protein still within them, meaning that they have something to contribute to your body.
This doesn’t mean that you can go crazy eating carbs and still lose weight, but it does mean you don’t have to avoid them like the plague! Keep your portion size small – about a cup a meal or less – and if you’re going with carbs, use whole grain products.
This one is just confusing, but it is still wildly popular. If the food is white, it must have carbs in it, because all carbs are white!
There are a lot of things wrong with this, so let’s start from the top: white foods do not always have carbs in them.
It’s true that a lot of foods that contain carbs are white, like white bread, white pasta, cookies, and more. These foods are white because they have refined sugar or refined flour, which as we talked about before, is empty of calories, fiber, and protein.
White foods that are healthy and do not have carbs (Or minimal ‘bad’ carbs!) include white beans, onion, ginger, cauliflower, garlic, nuts, seeds, and apples. These are all foods that are good for you (Some in moderation!) and do not contain an excessive amount of carbs.
It’s true that fruit has both carbohydrates, and sugar, within them. And a lot of people give fruit a bad rap because it is high in natural sugars, which should be consumed in moderation.
But fruit isn’t bad for you. If you’re going to choose something sweet for dessert, fruit should always be what you reach for.
Fruit is high in vitamins, minerals, and fiber. The sugar found in fruit is a natural sugar that your body will react to better than if it were a white processed sugar, which is more likely to spike your glucose levels.
The only thing you need to watch for is fruits with added sugars, because you don’t need to make them sweeter, and eating a larger serving size than recommended. A serving size of grapes is about 17 grapes! That’s much smaller than most people think.
As a side note, fruit juice gets a bad reputation for a reason. Fruit juices have all the sugar but none of the fiber of the actual fruit, and it’s much easier to overconsume. A 12-ounce serving of apple juice contains about 39 grams of sugar, which is almost equivalent of a soda – the same serving size of the average cola is about 40 grams of sugar!
