Response for Joanne Re: Carbs

Joanne recently commented on my nutritionist rant:

joanneaspinall said...

I have a stupid question out of ignorance: are all carbs equal? You said you toss on cereal and sorbet to add carbs at the end of the day. Is there a difference between sugary carbs (sorbet) and other carbs (pasta)? I've always heard to eat pasta the night before a tourney, but no one has ever said sorbet would also work. I partly ask because we (Keith and I both grew up with Italian mothers) probably eat way too much pasta.

Here's a long-winded response sans citation that broke the 4096 comment character limit. Fwiw:

I wouldn't call that a stupid question at all, and it's actually somewhat enlightening that the nutritionist herself failed to differentiate. The short answer is no, not all carbs are equal - among other things, soluble and insoluble fibers are carbs (and get counted as such in nutrition info), but you get no calories from fiber by definition. So any notion that increasing fiber alone would help you with energy is nutty on face. The distinction that you're making is the classic "simple vs. complex" (mono- or disaccharides vs. polysaccharides), and true enough, these carbs aren't the same. But the nutritionist recommended "fruit juices" as a carb supplement, and those are mainly fructose, a simple sugar. So it's a solid question regarding carbo-loading and pasta - allow me to provide a long-winded explanation.

This is one of those instances where "it depends what you mean by healthy." You can read all of this stuff in reputable online sources, but here's a quick Nyet-guide:

The story you usually get is that whole grains with complex carbohydrates are just "better for you." This is because whole grains tend to:

1. Have more fiber

2. Have more nutrients (vitamins, minerals, etc.)

3. Get absorbed by the body more slowly

4. Result in lower and less "dramatic" spikes in insulin.

For 1 and 2, if you need more fiber / nutrients, then yes, eating the complex will be better. This is largely an efficiency concern - if I'm going to eat, say, 2000 calories of carbs, and my choices are to eat them with or without the nutrients/fiber, all things being equal, I should eat them with the nutrients/fiber. You can also eat your 2000 calories in simple sugars and take supplements, but this is less efficient - you just have to do more eating/consuming - and the bioavailability of the nutrients when eaten this way can be limited (e.g., you'll just pee out a good portion of super-multivitamins).

For 3 and 4, it's really an issue of satiety. Sodas (or even fruit juice, really) will give you a rush and then make you crash, needing more sugar, and this is pretty tightly coupled to your insulin reaction. So you're hungrier again sooner. For non-athletic health purposes, you want low insulin reactions largely just so that you won't want to eat too soon - frequent hunger = frequent eating = more overall calories. And if you take in more calories than you consume of any form, you'll store a limited amount of that energy as glycogen (in the liver and muscles) , but then the rest will be converted to fat.

This last point, the inter-convertibility of all of these energy sources by your body's metabolism, is the point that gets lost. When the concern in energy, it's important to remember that these biochemicals are all being changed into one another, so the initial source is not necessarily as dramatically important. Polysaccharides take longer to digest because they have to be broken down to glucose or other mono- / di-saccharides to be absorbed into the bloodstream and generally used as a fuel. So when you eat complex carbohydrates, you have to break them into simple ones before you can use them. The classic way to teach yourself this is to chew on a saltine for a long time - it's starchy, but there are enzymes at work in your mouth that will break those starches down to monosaccharides, so eventually (if you chew long enough), it will start to taste sweet. It'll also dry out your mouth; have fun!

Anyways, simple sugars, for the general non-athletic population, are "bad" because they don't have as many nutrients (hence "empty" calories) , they tend to make you eat more calories (because you're hungrier more often), and when you eat too many of them they'll be converted to fat. So dieticians recommend complex carbs accordingly. Another issue that I'll leave out here is the processing of complex carbs - remember, the "healthiness" isn't strictly from the carbs themselves but from the associated fiber/nutrients, so if you have starchy foods that have been overly-processed, you're possibly not really getting benefits even though you are strictly speaking eating complex carbs. I'm thinking McDonald's french fries here, which are starches no doubt, but have been stripped of anything good and holy that was originally in the potatoes.

But as a carbo-loading athlete, you're generally not worried about nutrients / fiber in your "extra" carb calories as you'll be getting those in your regular diet. And eating things that fill you up too quickly or make you tend to not want to eat a lot can actually interfere with you getting enough calories - and really, eating a ton of extra fiber with your extra carb calories can mess with your digestive system; less than ideal for an endurance athletic event. So "health" in this case isn't focused on the same issue - here, it's about what will maximize my glycogen stores in my liver and my muscles to help fuel me throughout the following day. And anything you eat will eventually be converted to glucose and replenish those glycogen stores, but 1, carbs will do it more efficiently, and 2, complex or simple carbs will do the trick roughly the same.

Now, that's not to say you should just drink coke the night before a tournament - that will give you bad insulin spikes and goof you up with acute sugar rushes. You still want to eat stuff with relatively low glycemic indices like pasta. But fruits - even mango tangerine sorbet - and starchy cereals - e.g., cheerios instead of fruity pebbles - won't give you those insulin spikes because they actually consist of a fair mix of complex and simple sugars. So, for the purposes of replenishing glycogen stores, which is what health means here, the difference between simple and complex carbs is not as important. And oftentimes, it's just faster to eat a lot of cereal than to eat pasta.

That's probably enough. There's lots of stuff out there about the best ways to carbo-load. Its benefits are probably exaggerated for non-pure endurance sports like Ultimate - you can manage your glycogen stores throughout a tourney just by eating throughout the day (which you can't do as easily during a marathon). Sure, it's better to start at max capacity, so eating the night before and morning of are good ideas, but eating a lot of pasta the night before and munching on smart start throughout the day at a tourney are not going to be all that different.

Again, there are a lot more scientific-y things to read out there. And I would give myself an F on this paper for not citing any of my evidence. But this is the way I think about it, which again, makes the nutritionist's recommendation to "increase my carbs" just seem wacky - I'm eating a ton of them already, certainly more than I need to replenish my glycogen stores in both muscle and liver on a daily basis. UGH!

Hope that helps!