http://www.lowcarbwizard.com/carbs/bad.html Bad carbs - now these are your enemy, find out the difference between the bad carbs and the good ones! en-us Fri, 18 Nov 2005 10:56:54 EST Fri, 18 Nov 2005 10:56:54 EST Weblog Editor 2.0 Not all carbohydrates are created equal The biggest misconception that the low carb diets perpetuated is that all carbs can be lumped together into one big starchy mass of fat producing gunk. It seems as though everyone was trying not to eat carbs for a while there - they weren't eating any healthier and they weren't exercising any more - but they were cutting out the carbs that they knew precious little about. In fact, most of us knew and know enough about carbs to be dangerous. Dangerous because there is much more to weight loss and health than the cutting out of a few carbs that your body could probably use anyway. One thing that everyone who is even thinking about going on a low carb diet needs to know is that first, we need carbs, and second, that we do not need bad carbs - we only need the good ones. What's so bad about them? Bad carbs are digested by our bodies very quickly and so, as a result, they trigger a rapid spike in blood sugar. The rise in in blood sugar then tells the body to start producing more insulin - the insulin, in turn, provokes the body to store all the excess sugar as fat. And there, in a nutshell, is the cause of such overwhelming obesity in this country (which, of course, is the cause of the dramatic increase in the cases of diabetes at such young ages). Basically, bad carbs are present in anything refined like sugar and white flour - take these examples: french fries prepackaged baked goods white breads, rice, and pasta many chips and other similar snacks It was never the carbohydrates in general that we should have stayed away from, it was only the bad carbs. The diets that we were on so religiously a few years ago have changed for the better and finally we are getting much more information that we can use to make more informed decisions about how we should be treating our bodies - and what we should really stay away from - bad carbs. cc Fri, 18 Nov 2005 10:56:54 EST