What Foods Provide Carbohydrates?

In the food groups represented in MyPlate below and thinking back to what you've learned so far, which food groups do you think contain carbohydrates? If you answered, all of them, you’re correct!  One of the goals of this course is to learn more about the different nutrients in foods and to understand the importance of eating a wide variety of foods from different food groups.

Fruits - Most fruits are sweet, so we know they must contain some type of sugars.  In fact, fruits contain a combination of sucrose, glucose, and fructose. They also come packaged with other essential nutrients, such as Vitamin C and potassium. Whole fruits also contain fiber, whereas juices have little to no fiber; even high pulp orange juice is low in fiber. So, select whole fruits instead of juice.

Vegetables - Some vegetables are sweet and also contain sugar, although much less than fruits. Like fruits, some vegetables (such as carrots and green beans) contain small amounts of sucrose, glucose, and fructose. Starchy vegetables (corn, peas, and potatoes, for example) primarily contain starch, but some are also sweet and contain sucrose, glucose, and fructose (sweet potatoes and sweet corn, for example). Just like whole fruits, any whole vegetables also contain fiber.

Grains - Grains naturally contain starch and fiber. Sprouted grains also contain maltose. If grains are sweetened with added sugar, they might contain sucrose (if white cane sugar was used), fructose, and glucose, or high-fructose corn syrup.

Dairy - This is the one animal food that contains carbohydrate. Milk and yogurt contain significant amounts of naturally occurring lactose.  Processing reduces much of the lactose in most cheeses.  If dairy products (like yogurt and flavored milk) are sweetened, then it will also contain added sugar.

Protein - Meats do not contain carbohydrate, but many plant foods that fall into the protein group, like beans and nuts, contain starch and fiber.

Fats - Concentrated fats like butter and oil do not contain carbohydrate.

This information is summarized in Table 4.1.

Looking at all the foods that contain carbohydrates, you might be able to guess why eliminating carbohydrates from the diet can lead to weight loss. It drastically reduces the variety of food choices, leaving you primarily with low-carbohydrate veggies and meats. Not surprisingly, people usually consume fewer calories when following a "low-carb" diet. However, for most people, this is not a sustainable or enjoyable way of eating, and it is hard to consume a nutritionally balanced diet with so many foods off-limits.

Carbohydrate Guidelines for Intake

Total Carbohydrate Intake

The recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for total carbohydrate intake is 130 grams. This is the minimum amount of glucose utilized by the brain, so if you consume less than this, you will probably go into ketosis. In order to meet the body’s high energy demand for glucose, the acceptable macronutrient distribution range (AMDR) for an adult is 45%-65% of total calories. This is about 225 to 325 grams of carbohydrate per day if eating a 2,000-calorie diet. (REMEMBER: 1 gram of carbohydrate contains 4 calories.)

Fiber Intake

The Adequate Intake (AI) for fiber is 14 grams of fiber for every 1,000 calories consumed. This is about 28 grams for an adult female (19-30 years old) and 38 grams for an adult male (19-30 years old). Most people in the United States get only half the fiber they need in a day—about 12 to 18 grams.

Added Sugar Intake

The 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommended limiting added sugars to less than 10% of total daily calories because diets high in added sugar are linked to obesity and other chronic diseases. ^[1] For someone eating 2,000 calories per day, this amounts to less than 50 grams, or about 12 teaspoons, of added sugar.

The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines take a stricter approach. In addition to recommending less than 10% of daily calories from added sugar, they state that a single meal should contain no more than 10 grams of added sugar.^[2]  To put this in perspective, a 12-ounce can of regular soda contains about 40 grams of added sugar—four times the recommended amount for one meal. We will discuss added sugars in more detail later in this chapter. Table 4.2 summarizes these recommendations.

attributions

This section is an adaptation of "Carbohydrate Food Sources and Guidelines for Intake" 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.