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Comment by eurleif | Hacker News Reader

Vegetables are mostly carbohydrates, so I don't know how you can say we should eat vegetables but not carbohydrates.

That's somewhat misleading. It's true that in vegetables the carbohydrate:fat/protein ratio is much higher than in most other food sources, however the total amount of carbohydrates in most vegetables is still low. Vegetables are mostly water, but are also a source of a great deal of vitamins and minerals.

For their weight, vegetables don't contain a lot of digestible carbohydrates compared to the carb dense staples that are used world wide.

Refined carbs / refined sugar seem to be the problem with most foods these days. With the fear of 'fats' many food producers replaced the 'fat' with refined sugars to add the flavour with less fat (on paper).

- http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/sugar-problem/refined-sug...

- http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/nutrition/a/fructosedangers...

"Sugar" isn't the problem. It's fructose. Hard on the liver, can't even be used by muscles.

That's only partially true, and would still be useless if it were totally true. When people say "sugar", they're referring to sucrose, which is half fructose. Even glucose on its own will spike your blood sugar, which will make it harder to burn fat.

Also, your body converts starch into glucose, so starch can spike your blood sugar the same way. Fiber makes your body absorb glucose more gradually, which is why it's important to eat starch and sugar as part of whole foods, rather than in refined form.

> It's fructose

So fruit is bad?

No, because fruit includes a lot of fiber and releases the fructose into your digestive tract over time. Fruit juice is bad, though. It's essentially uncarbonated soda, and sometimes has a higher sugar content than soda. Compare grape juice to Mountain Dew, for example.

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