Tuesday, October 6, 2009

CARBS

They totally deserve capitalization what with their tastiness and awesome. Also, they are not the devil. When you think of carbs you probably think of pasta and dinner rolls. But congrats! Carbs are actually a macronutrient along with protein and fat and you need all three to live.

Because life is not fair, pasta and dinner rolls are not the carbs that have most of the micronutrients like vitamins. As part of my daily food journal I have two specific categories that allow for carbohydrates. These are the fruit/vegetable category and the whole grain category. If its not those two or a protein it falls in the extras column. Personally, I shoot for two servings of whole grain a day and never limit my fruits or vegetables. I know, its kind of shocking to think of fruits and vegetables as carbohydrates (and also kind of sad for people who think they should always feed their body's cravings so they eat pasta when they could probably eat an orange).

Some people freak their shit out when you talk about grains. There are whole lifestyles organized around avoiding them. And actually there is some science to suggest you should be careful about too much grains in your diet. For me, I'm pretty careful about the carbs and grains I put in my body. I even make my own whole wheat bread. It tastes world's better than the grocery store stuff, my fiance will attest to that. (Although he has a silly fear of the blog world and while he reads this he wont comment to tell you how awesome I am and how great my bread is. He also can't really work our wireless internet or the microwave if something needs cooking for more than the auto-one-minute button. He is good at plenty of other things, don't worry.) We go through about a loaf a week. Yea that's a lot of bread, probably a piece or two a day for each of us (within the 2 per day serving) but considering how much junk we could be eating by buying it, its totally worth making. There are good choices to be made! But really, they're just freakin tasty!

No comments: