I'll spare you my soapbox against the argument that red meat is to blame for this and talk about a new study that came out showing a connection between eating simple carbs and heart disease in women and men.
This study looked at not only the number of carbs ingested by people, but also looked at the glycemic index of those carbs.
Taking in foods that are higher on the glycemic index are associated with higher levels of triglycerides and the lowering of HDL cholesterol (the good kind) which in turns can increase your risk of heart disease.
The Italian researchers in this study had over 15,000 men and 32,000 women fill out questionnaires of their dietary intake and then followed them for 8 years.
What they found:
..the researchers found that women who consumed the most carbohydrates overall had about twice the incidence of heart disease as those who consumed the least. Closer analysis showed that the risk was associated with higher intake of high-glycemic foods.
"Thus, a high consumption of carbohydrates from high-glycemic index foods, rather than the overall quantity of carbohydrates consumed, appears to influence the influence of developing coronary heart disease," the researchers wrote.
What's really interesting is that they didn't find this same connection between high glycemic index foods and heart disease among men.
The researchers speculated that:
The difference might be due to the action of sex hormones....Male hormones, androgens, appear to slow the transformation of carbohydrates into blood sugar, whereas the female hormone estrogen speeds the process, she said.
The researchers concluded that women need to focus not only simply low in carbohydrates but low in simple sugars.
"Look at the label," Steinbaum said. "It says 'carbohydrates.' Under that, it says 'sugars.' When you have a high number for sugars, that's a way to know what the glycemic index is."
I REALLY don't like that simplistic view of how to connect a food to it's glycemic index, and I'll go even further to say I don't even like the use of the glycemic index when evaluating whether a food is "good" or "bad."
Here's an example of what I mean.
An apple. Using what she says and only looking at the sugar content of a cup of apple, out of 22 carbohydrates, 16 of them are sugar. So using what she is saying, that must mean that the glycemic index on that apple is high and should be avoided.
Then let's look at white bread. In 40 grams of white bread, there are 30 carbohydrates and out of that only 7 grams are sugar.
But when you look at the actual glycemic index of both of these foods, an apple rates anywhere from 28-40 (which would rank as low out of a scale of 100), and white bread is ranked anywhere between 70-100 (very high).
So I think the researcher's try at simplifying things won't work for a lot of different foods (especially fruits since they tend to be for the most part, composed of simple, natural sugars).
The whole glycemic index might be useful in some ways but from a practical standpoint, it can just make things more confusing. Most of these foods would show the estimated spike in blood sugar only if the situations were right: empty stomach, it was the only food being eaten, and you ate enough of it.
But most people rarely find themselves eating foods all by themselves. If you add protein and fat to carbs in a meal, that protein and fat slows the absorption of that carb (even the high glycemic index carbs) into the blood stream.
In the end, a lot of carbs are processed and the best thing we can do is just stay away from them.
I think it would go a long way in changing heart disease in women and men in this country if you stuck with eating just meats, fruits, veggies, nuts, and oils and for the most part, leave out the rest.
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