Carbs and Grains - Calories
& Nutrition
This food group contains
pasta, rice and noodles and is full of starchy carbohydrates - your body's
main source of energy.
Apart from potatoes, all
the foods listed in this group began life as a grain, such as wheat, rye,
corn, rice or barley. Potatoes and grains are very healthy and filling,
however, you can be even healthier if you choose unrefined versions of
these foods over refined versions.
Unrefined carbohydrates are
relatively low in calories and make ideal foods for dieters or anyone
wishing to lose weight. Unrefined carbs still contain the whole grain,
including the bran and the germ, so they're higher in fiber and will keep
you feeling fuller for longer - great if you're trying to lose weight
and hate feeling hungry. Examples include wholegrain rice, wholemeal bread,
porridge oats, and wholewheat pasta.
For Optimum Nutrition and
Calorie Control Eat 45-50 Percent Calories from Carbs
Most mainstream nutritionists
recommend that the bread, cereals and potatoes group makes up the bulk
of your diet - roughly 45-50 percent. They also suggest that your dietary
intake includes 18g of fiber every day.
An easy way to do this is
to make sure that a food from this group forms the basis of every meal
- and opt for fiber-rich unrefined carbohydrates.
If you decide to increase
the amount of fiber you eat, try to drink more water too. Your body doesn't
digest fiber, so you need the extra water to help it flow through your
digestive system with ease.
Carbs and Glycemic Index
(GI)
The Glycemic Index is becoming
a new method of classifying carb-rich foods according to their speed of
digestion and the resulting effect on blood glucose. Although Glycemic
Load is important (that's the amount of carbs in a particular food), low
GI foods are preferable to high GI foods. For more about the Glycemic
Index and carbs, see Glycemic Index
More Nutrition and Calories
Information
For more nutritional and
calorie information about foods, please see:
Nutrition - Fruit/Veg
- Carbs - Protein
- Dairy - Fats
- Sugars
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Sources include:
BBC Health (London), US Dept of Agriculture.
Information
About Carbohydrates
For calorie details of 2500
Foods, see Calories
in Foods
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