The fat nonsense about carbs, protein, and fiber

There are three misconceptions in this world that drive me crazy:

1. that pizza, bread, potatoes, rice and pasta are "the carbs",
2. that you need to add fiber to your salad,
3. and that animal food equals protein.

I should start a rock band called The Carbs! Oh my Gawd that's a great idea! But I digress...

Although pizza, bread, and so forth, have carbs in them, and you can never add enough fiber to your diet and animal products do have a lot of protein...get this: fiber, carbohydrates, and protein are not food groups! Period! End of discussion! Stop it!!

Did you know that all plants have protein and all plants without exclusion are mostly carbohydrates and that the human body is mostly designed to digest and function on carbohydrates, and that usually whatever whole foods have carbohydrates they automatically have fiber as well?

It follows that when people say that they eat lots of veggies and avoid carbs or when they point at your plate full of salad, beans, potatoes, and aubergines and ask you where do you get your protein, or if they see you eating a salad and tell you that you should add some fiber to it, they are speaking nonsense.

Here's the life-changing news: all plants are mostly made of carbohydrates, fiber is a type of carbohydrate and all plants have protein in them. Boom! Yes I know, stop reading, grab a coffee and let it brew for a bit.

According to the app Cronometer, most plants if not all of them have all the 9 essential amino-acids that the body can use to recreate all the others in order to make protein. All the 9 essential ones that meat eaters are so worried about! Yes their amounts vary and some plants have more and some way less, so that is why variety and quantity are key, but you get a good fix of protein from plant food, because they are all in there.

Carbohydrates, or how the cool peops like to call them, carbs, are a big fat misunderstanding. Bread, potatoes, pizza, biscuits are not carbs, if they are carbs, then you should call a salad a carb too, a bowl of beans a portion of carbs, an aubergine a carb. If anything rice, bread, pasta, potatoes, pizza, biscuits should be called starches instead.

Let me change your life forever, carbs are a macronutrient not a food group and carbohydrates are three:

1. starches
2. sugars
3. fiber
4. no there is no fourth carb called pizza and a fifth called pasta!!!

So, when you eat a plate with sweet potatoes, potatoes, broccoli, carrots, peas, mushrooms, with a side of rice and beans and a salad with lettuce, watercress, maize, and cherry tomatoes and maybe a slice of whole wheat bread with pistachio nut butter and fig marmalade and sliced banana as a dessert, you are eating a full meal of carbs (starches, sugars and yes, a whole lot of fiber) with plenty of protein in it!

They are all mostly carbohydrates, which are the main source of energy for the human body. And you are eating enough protein and fats too.

You don't need to add fiber to your meal if there is anything like a plant in it, you don't need to add carbs to your veggies, you don't need to eat a piece of protein and by that meaning a chunk of cheese or meat or fish or an egg.

All plants are carbs, all plants have protein, but yes some are better for it, and all plants have fiber without exclusion! All plant foods have them, just as they have fats and protein.

Imagine a big salad with kale, nuts, beans, potatoes and sliced dates for example, you are having all the carbs (starch, sugar and fiber) and you are having protein and you are having fats too.

You don't need to add a slice of bread to add some carbs, you don't need to add a chunk of beef or cheese to have protein, you don't need to add olive oil to add fats and you don't need to add some all bran whatever to add some fiber.

Basically when you eat a fiber-rich diet, you automatically eat a plant-rich diet, which is a carbohydrate-rich diet because all plants are mostly carbohydrates. Worth repeating.

The reason you need to worry about pizza and white bread and industrial cookies is that the carbs in them have been heavily processed and simplified, most of the fiber and nutritional properties stripped away, and processed sugars, processed fats and chemicals have been added, more often than not your so-called carbs have animal fats in them that add to their unhealthiness for good measure.

In such a context, I can understand that Carbs in popular culture is probably slang for processed carbohydrates, meaning bread, cookies, pizza dough, etc. There are differences though, between whole-grain pizza dough or bread, or oat cookies with dates and bananas AND super prcessed white flour dough pizza, white bread, industrial cookies and so on.

Also, worth adding that potatoes are super good for you, grains should not be the main part of your diet, but whole grains in the right amount are very good for you. Saying that industrial cookies, white bread, generic pizza and croissants and fried chips are bad for you doesn't mean that carbs are bad, these are not carbs, they are processed foods whose carbs have been simplified, and refined sugar and salt and oil added to the mix, most fibers have been removed and there might be butter in them and milk and cheese and meat on top of them, like in pepperoni pizza...that ain't carbs!!

Yes, all those are considered carbs...but let me remind you, carbs are not a food group, they are a macronutrient and there are three types of them, starch, fiber, and sugar. In fact, as I already mentioned, if one wanted to call pizza or pasta something, it would be more appropriate to call it a starch rather than a carb, if anything.

You didn't know it, now you know it, you are welcome, your mind has been blown the same way mine has been when I made these discoveries and your life will be better for it, the same way mine has been since.

Now go load up on carbs and live to a 100 like the centenarians in Sardinia.