Low Carbohydrate Diets

Introduction Carbohydrates are essential to the human diet, but sometimes people want to lose weight, so they start a low-carbohydrate diet. A low-carbohydrate diet is a diet that is defined as limiting a number of carbohydrates that a person can ingest. While some people find carbohydrates to be the source of weight gain, they actually keep the human body functioning properly. A low- carbohydrate diet is a great way to lose weight and provide the body with energy, but it is important to know the difference between processed sugars and natural sugars and what they are composed of.
Discussion
People typically try to stay away from carbohydrates in a low-carbohydrate diet, but some types of carbohydrates are healthy to ingest; these carbohydrates …show more content…
Natural sugars are in foods such as fruit, grains and vegetables. These natural sugars not only provide energy, but they protect the body against diseases. In lecture, we discussed and observed pictures of fructose, being a hexose monosaccharide. On the other hand, refined sugars are normally processed food products such as sugar cane (Cancercenter). It is typically found as the disaccharide sucrose, which is a combination of glucose and fructose. These extracted sugars are added to foods such as cookies, cake and soda. Cookies, cake and soda are examples of foods that contain extra sugar that eventually ends up being stored as fat. In lab, we built polysaccharides. These polysaccharides contain multiple sugars opposed to a disaccharide, which is only composed of two monosaccharides. In a low carbohydrate diet, it is important to stay away from products that contain many polysaccharides because polysaccharides contain more sugar, hence resulting in weight gain. An example of a polysaccharide that people should stay away from if they are on a low-carbohydrate diet are products that contain