Carbs And Sugars: The Most Important Roles Of Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates (also known as carbs and sugars) are simple organic molecules whose basic role in the body is to provide energy, because they represent the easiest and fastest way to get the required energy. The combustion of 1 g of these compounds releases 4.1 calories.

From the aspect of human nutrition, plants carbohydrates are of particular interest as nutrients. Vegetables and fruits are especially rich in these compounds while there are very low levels in animal tissues.

The most important roles of these compounds in the body are as follows:

• Providing energy

• Construction of glycoproteins and other important molecules

• Providing protein binding to specific receptors through a process called protein glycosylation

• Providing molecules

• Polysaccharides, which contain more than 10 molecules (e.g. starch).

From the nutritional point of view, most important carbohydrates are monosaccharides and polysaccharides.

Monosaccharides (also known as simple sugars) are characterized by the fact that when they are entered through food, they are very fast and easily absorbed or used for energy production. While this sounds good (fast and easy providing of energy), this is actually the main reason for obesity. The explanation is as follows.

By entering simple sugars, which are mostly found in almost all sweets, your body creates from them a large amount of energy (calories). However, since body cannot use all of that energy at once, it converts excess carbohydrates into fat, and deposits them. How much simple sugars release energy can be seen from the fact that if you eat only one little cake (of only 30 grams) you have to run as many as 4 miles to spend all the energy created from the cake. Simple sugars only provide energy and have no other benefits to the organism, and they are popularly called "empty calories".

Therefore, all nutrition guides and food pyramids recommend minimum intake of simple