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Carbohydrates
Appears in
Published 1986
Carbohydrates have a poor public image. We tend to think of them as pure stodge – filling, fattening and not much else. And when you consider what’s been done to them in the name of convenience, appearance and palatability, it’s little wonder that this has come about. But recently, just as popular thinking about protein has changed, so too, has the regard for carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates have two main forms – starches and sugars – and a third kind, fibre, the indigestible parts of food, such as cellulose, whose importance in health terms is now recognized. Over the last thirty years, refined carbohydrates have become alarmingly commonplace. Stripped of their fibre, vitamins and minerals, they supply very little nutrition.