Craving carbs.

All too many people are addicted to simple carbohydrates.

Health gurus have drummed on the "cholesterol is bad for you" drum for a few decades now, keeping on about how dietary fat causes high cholesterol levels which in turn cause heart troubles.

Funny, then, that heart troubles are at an all-time high, now that everybody and their uncles are eating as low-fat and/or fat-free as possible, no?

No. Not funny at all. It's very simple:

If you look at all the fat-free foods, and their ingredient lists, you'll find that in order for the food to taste "right" the producers add sugar. And many many many polysyllabic food additives. Unfortunately I can't give a single example of such additives, as fat-free and low-fat has been banned in this household since I looked into the cholesterol myth, about a year ago.

And if you eat fat-free (and low-fat) you don't get as full as fast, and eat more. Fat-free is fooling yourself and your liver. Eat full-fat, but eat less of it: it's easy, as you're not fooling your metabolism with fancy words with more than three syllables.

If you avoid all sorts of fats you have to eat something else, and rice is much easier to boil than, say, cabbage. So you eat more simple carbs.

Simple carbs, which deplete magnesium in your blood. Simple carbs, which mean higher insulin levels in your blood, which in turn means even less magnesium in your blood. And magnesium is crucial for heart health ...

So ditch those simple carbs.

That's bread, potatoes, rice, and pasta; that's soft drinks, honey, sugar, and so on. And don't switch from sweets to sweeteners, they're bad for your liver.

You should also stop eating sugar-rich fruit - grapes are right out, they're just gluctose in a "healthy" package.

And stop eating sugar-rich vegetables: carrot juice is as sweet as they get, and is mostly just sugar (sorry, couldn't find the type - glucose, fructose, something else?), and the very sweet, ripe-today, corn on the cob is mostly sugar, too, I'm afraid. Carrots are more or less OK, if you don't overdo them. Don't overdo beans and lentils, either, they're loaded with simple carbs, as well.

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The Hyperinsulinemia series: Cravings - Craving magnesium - Craving carbs - Doing without carbs - Syndrome X - Cell responses to insulin - Syndrome X supplements
Related entries: Hyperinsulinemia.