On every nutrition label (on the ones i’ve seen at least) there’s a section called “Carbohydrates”, and right under it is “of which sugars”
For example, this pack of chips I have lists that in 100g there’s 61g of carbohydrates, of which 2.4g are sugars (speaking of which, what sugars are these, even? monosaccharides? polisaccharides? both?)
And that made me wonder - what makes up the other 58.6 grams, and what purpose do those carbohydrates serve in the body? I’ll admit that I’m really inexperienced when it comes to stuff like this, so apologies in advance if this is something really obvious.
There is no difference between carbs as sugar and carbs. They all end up in the blood stream as glucose.
Fructose is really bad and usually doesn’t get converted to glucose.
Fiber is not absorbed by the body and just passes through.
Carbohydrates are not essential for human life. You can be perfectly healthy without eating them. The body does use glucose for blood cells and about 15% of brain metabolism, but that can be created by the liver on a as needed basis.
There are people who differentiate carbohydrates based on how quickly they arrive in the blood stream as glucose, in my view that’s a unnecessary distinction. Elevated blood glucose is really dangerous for the body, regardless of how delayed it is. That’s why the body prioritizes burning the glucose off first when it’s elevated in the body.
What function does elevated glucose have? (I.e. why eat carbohydrates)
The sports term is carb loading, and for non-fat adapted athletes it does help their endurance, prevents bonking. But for fat adapter athletes who don’t eat carbs, it’s unnecessary as they don’t bonk. The blood only carries 5g of glucose, and when you use it all up you can bonk, the body does not store glucose at all… the body stores fat. So people who burn fat don’t bonk because they don’t run out of energy
What benefit does fiber have?
Obviously, reducing the nutrition from the food you eat is only a “good” thing if your diet is unhealthy.
The SCFA’s are interesting, you can eat fiber and have some of it turn into fat by bacteria, or you can just eat fat directly and skip the middle man. This is the whole “fiber feeds the gut” argument you hear, gut research is still early stages. Its not clear what the ideal biome is, but whatever you eat will determine what lives in the gut. The bacteria will adapt to your diet and stabilize in about 9 months.
Some people believe fiber helps with constipation because of the reduced transit time, that isn’t actually true. Fiber is actual causal of constipation (in one RCT, the only fiber RCT that exists…)