Enjoy Your Carbs!

While the low-carb diet trend is still going strong, experts suggest you pay more attention to quality, not quantity.

Over the years, carbohydrates have become nutritional villains. It seems everywhere you look, people advise you to watch carbs, cut carbs, or go low-carb. But you need carbs – and more than you may think.

Dietary carbs provide the body’s primary energy source, glucose, which fuels everything you do, from breathing to thinking to running.

The Institute of Medicine recommends all adults get 45% to 65% of their daily calories from carbs, which is 203 to 293 grams per day based on an 1,800-calorie daily diet. This means about half of everything you eat should be carbohydrates.

So why are so many people convinced that it’s better to eat as few carbs as possible? The answer may lie in the sources of those carbs.

Not All Created Equal

The main issue with carbs is that they come from various foods – some good and some bad.

“We get dietary carbohydrates from nutrient-rich whole grains, legumes, nuts, fruit, vegetables and dairy – but also from refined grains and the added sugars in processed foods and sugary beverages,” says Vasanti Malik, a research scientist in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health.