Chapter 4 – Carbohydrates
4.1 Introduction
If someone says to you, “I love carbohydrates, and I eat them all day long!” what would you assume they’re eating?
Do you picture chips, candy, and pastries?
Or do you picture rolls, pasta, and rice?
When we ask this question in class, most students describe foods like the ones above. However, carbohydrates are found not just in grains, or in sweets and processed foods, but in every food group.
In fact, carbohydrates are the most abundant nutrient (except water) in the diets of most humans around the world. Since the dawn of agriculture, human cultures have relied on staple grains, such as corn, rice, and wheat, as the foundation of their diets, and these foods are rich in carbohydrates; however, fruits and vegetables, dairy products, legumes, and nuts also contain carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are also a key ingredient in desserts, sugar-sweetened beverages like sodas, and many of the processed, packaged snack foods that are readily available. In other words, if someone says they eat a high carbohydrate diet, that could mean many different things.
The diet industry likes to sell us simple messages about “good” and “bad” foods, and these days, we tend to hear that carbohydrates are in the “bad” group. But given that carbohydrates are in so many different types of foods, that’s obviously an oversimplified message—and it’s not fair to all of the awesome sources of carbohydrates in the world of food. Not all carbohydrate-rich foods are the same. In this unit, you’ll learn to appreciate the nutrient-dense carbohydrate foods, identify which don’t offer as valuable a nutritional package, and understand how a balanced diet can include all of them.
Chapter 4 Learning Objectives
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
- Explain the role of carbohydrates in nutrition, including how plants produce glucose through photosynthesis and how glucose is used and regulated in the body.
- Classify the major types of carbohydrates, identify common food sources, and describe their digestion and absorption.
- Describe current recommendations for carbohydrate, fiber, and added sugar intake and explain their importance for health.
- Evaluate the role of dietary fiber and sugars in the diet, including the health benefits of fiber and the differences between naturally occurring and added sugars.
- Interpret food labels to distinguish whole and refined grains and identify sugar substitutes, including their potential benefits and limitations.
attributions
This section is an adaptation of “Introduction to Carbohydrates” in Nutrition: Science and Everyday Applications, V.1.0 by Alice Callahan, Heather Leonard, and Tamberly Powell under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
