Saturday, August 6, 2011

The Essential Carbohydrate?

I would ask each and every reader to try as best you can to check their nutritional biases at the door here as best you can  and let's just talk semantics.  

What does essential mean?  

Something that is essential is something that we cannot do (or in the nutritional context live) without.  By this definition, it is clear that yes, for most humans, carbohydrates are non essential.  However, even this is too simplistic, because without looking very far, we can identify a group of humans for whom carbohydrates are "deadly" essential.  As in imminent death kind of essential.  Relatively rare as is their number, I'm talking about people with glycogen storage/breakdown disorders.

Now, let's look at the other macronutrients.  Well, we cannot live without protein.  Therefore it is essential.  No argument.   However, proteins are comprised of 21 distinct building block amino acids of which only 8 are actually identified as *essential*.  A strict interpretation of this fact might be that ... eh ... 13 amino acids, or the majority are non-essential.  We don't need them.  They can be made by the body from other stuff.
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