Huge oversight with new ‘carbs test’ fad

It ignores your muscle mass and fitness

Carbs! Carbs! Carbs! It drives you nuts. At least it does me. Why are we so obsessed with them? And why do health writers feed that obsession? The latest fad is to find out which carbs are making you fat and eliminate them from your diet and, hey presto, your dieting woes are over. And how will you know which carbs are keeping that weight on? Oats? Bread? Baked potatoes? Rice? Chick peas? You test your blood sugar, of course, after eating each individual carb. You track your blood sugar for two hours and if the reading is between 4.4-6.4 mmol/l, you have a normal reaction and that carb isn’t a problem. If it’s higher, then this food could be one to avoid. The author of this test, Robb Wolf, claims: “Properly managing our blood sugar is important for health, but even if we just want to look and feel better, and lose extra weight, it is helpful to get our blood sugar right. Avoiding the problems of high and low blood sugars helps people to eat the right amount of food and stop having cravings.” And the story goes, carbs could be the key. So take yourself off to the chemist and buy a glucose monitor for £10, the kind that people with diabetes use. You prick a finger to extract a drop of blood and take a reading with the device. Over the next seven days you’ll eat a different type of carbohydrate at the same time each morning and measure the blood glucose response two hours later. This is supposed to give you an idea of which carbohydrates your body handles most efficiently. Pick five to seven carbohydrates that you eat often and have a different one for breakfast each day – don’t have any other food. I can’t tell you how pseudo this science is. It sounds plausible doesn’t it? Control your blood sugar and all your worries are over. Well, yes, if the simple test advocated by Robb Wolf in a recent book didn’t ignore two important factors that affect your blood sugar. The first is your muscle mass. If you’re well-muscled your muscles suck sugar out of your blood and lower it. If your muscles are flabby they don’t and your blood sugar stays up. Then the second factor is how active you are. Eat your carbs and go to the gym and your blood sugar will fall whatever carb you ate. Sit in front of your laptop and it won’t.