I do not understand the general trend right now, apparently carbs are bad for you? When did oats, sweet potatoes, berries become a number one cause of obesity? How in the world did some people come to this conclusion?
Because it’s the pendulum swinging in another direction
A couple decades ago, fats were looked at as “bad” and low-fat dieting was popular.
Then we realized that many fats are actually good for us, and help with our brain function, nutrient absorption. We stepped back and said hey… many of us way very high carb diets. Lots of pasta, pizza, rice. That’s the culprit!
But, then we over-corrected. Tale as old as time. and now many people are afraid of eating a single carb
I’ve wondered this myself and I have a guess. Low carb diets can put the body into ketosis, which makes the body burn fat. People can drop quite a bit of weight very quickly this way. I think because removing carbs can result in quick weight loss, people tend to equate that with carbs being bad.
I think it came about when a lot of very inactive people started crash dieting.
Carbs are essential for energy production and muscle growth, along with adequate protein intake, but they’re super easy to balloon out your caloric intake with for people without much knowledge or discipline because they aren’t very satiating.
Oats for example are surprisingly high calorie, a cup of plain rolled oats is over 400 calories and people will mix that up with yoghurt, berries and honey. If you’re a big eater or already overweight, its not much of a feat to polish off a cup of overnight oats. Mixed with the things people put into overnight oats you’ve already blown out a third of most inactive people’s daily calories at breakfast.
It seems like its probably easier to tell a lot of people to just minimize carbs than it is to understand what type of carbs they should be having, how much, when they should be having them and why.
A low carb diet for an inactive person who is overweight will generally have them feeling less hungry throughout the day because they’re going to be taking in more protein and fats, which are also high calorie, but more satiating.
People realized that a lot of our health issues are due to over-consumption related to added sugars. Then they got scared and overreacted. Plus we have a big holistic/amateur misinformation culture going on right now where lots of these things circulate and stay alive longer.
It pretty much just comes down to what information you are listening to and reading. Everyone has their own opinion and has their own life experiences. For example: someone may preach about a low carb diet because it helped them with their health problems, while another preaches a high carb diet because of the same outcome. Two people, two different diets, the same outcome.
The major problem with the nutrition world is people think nutrition revolves around peer reviewed papers. They ignore analytical data and refuse to try different ways of eating for themselves before coming to conclusions.
The problem comes from the Standard American Diet. Its loaded with carbs and sugars that are at levels way higher then we are supposed to consume. Alot of people eating this way have become insulin resistant and diabetic, making it nearly impossible to lose weight without going to an extreme like Keto or Carnivore to counteract the lifetime of over consuming carbs and the negative effects it has had on peoples systems.