Carbohydrates are a combination of both small and large molecules that comprise about 40 to 45 percent of the energy supply for your body. Certain types of carbohydrates, such as fibre resistant starches don’t get absorbed into your body for energy, but play an extremely important role in your gastrointestinal tract, supporting digestion and absorption, and helping you eliminate toxins and waste products.
Fibre is also divided into two types, soluble or insoluble fibre, determined by how much water that type of fibre actually holds. Providing a full range of all types of fibres, including prebiotic fibres, will support your immune system, and enhance healthy digestion, absorption, and the removal of wastes and toxins. ( Fibre-rich breakfast recipe )
Information on carbs vs fats.
The health of your gastrointestinal tract is largely dependent upon you consuming variety of fibres.
There are two types of carbohydrates, Simple or complex.
Simple – sugar, sucrose, fructose, lactose
Complex – starch and fibre
All starch foods come from plants, with them being the major part of hunter-gatherer diet, in the form of root vegetables, nuts, seeds and fruits.
With increasing agricultural development, cereal grains have emerged as a significant higher proportion of the starch in our modern diets.
Processing and refining cereal grains and incorporating them into modern foods provides a significantly higher starch/carbohydrate density than our ancestral diets.
Starch is made up of amylose starch (resistant starch) and amylopectin starch. Research suggests that amylose starch is harder to digest than amylopectin.
Through the actions of amylase enzyme in saliva, the starch in carbohydrates is broken into maltose (malt sugar), sucrose (plant sugar) and lactose (milk sugar).
Further digestion then takes place in the small intestines, resulting in the release of glucose (simple blood sugar), fructose (fruit sugar) and galactose (milk sugar).
Our ability to breakdown starch effectively has a major impact on your risk of being overweight and obese.
Do you know how your body breaks down these essential nutrient?
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