The main goal of carbohydrates should be to hydrate you!
Carbo. Hydrate. Get it?
We have a carbon based body and carbo-hydrates are hydrated carbons. If you look at the structure of glucose, fructose, dextrose and other sugars, you’ll notice that they are indeed Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen – Carbon and H2O.
Our bodies are roughly 65% water and most of that water is in the form of carbohydrates. It’s just like fruits, while they seem solid, they are actually mostly water.
One pattern I’ve noticed is that what works for plants works for us humans. We need the same basic things for life: water, minerals, temperature, pH and enzymes.
The biggest problem with the Standard American Diet is that the carbohydrates you get from that food group is waterless. They are not ‘real’ carbohydrates.
Real food, real natural food as it comes the way nature intended is filled with water. Starch is not. Starch is manmade.
Here’s something you won’t find in research papers, so let me share with you how I came about this.
When I brew beer at home, I do 5 gallon batches. To do that I need roughly 10 pounds of grain and about 10 gallons of water.
The basics of what I’m doing while brewing beer is converting the STARCH inside the grains into sugar. To do that, I need the right: Water, Minerals, Temperature, pH and Enzymes.
The same thing our body needs, the same thing seeds need to sprout, the same thing plants need to grow, the same thing soil needs to be good soil, etc.
Now, the key thing to point out from this is that I make 5 gallon batches, but I start out with roughly 10 gallons of water, why?
When I mix the grains and water, the starch absorbs the water and the minerals in order for the enzymes to break down starch into sugar. When that process is complete I’m left with roughly 6.5 gallons of water and sugar. The rest of the water is lost during boil and fermentation, but the lesson here is that STARCH will absorb water and minerals in order to become a simple carbohydrate.
So here are the two lessons to take from this chapter. Starch will absorb water and minerals to become a carbohydrate, and starch is man made.
Starch does not exist in a natural form. Starch is considered a complex carbohydrate. It’s like a chain of sugars where every link is a simple sugar, but when joined they create starch. How does this happen?
