Comment on Can someone explain, calories, carbs, glucose, and gluten?
HubertManne@piefed.social 1 day ago
@depress_mode@lemmy.world did a good job but I want to add a few things that I think are important.
Calories - its pretty interesting to compare calories burned sleeeping, sitting, standing, walking, running. You might have encountered the term aerobic excersise and getting a certain heart rate. That is because most of our calorie usage is really about pumping our blood. Not that the heart uses so much but that its the system that feeds us the calories.
glucose is the sugare that our cells can handle directly. in the hospital you will be given a glucose or dextrose iv when they want to give you calories. the two words are both for the same sugar. you cells metbolize other things but these are usually things your body makes from other types of food during digestion. glucose is sorta the most basic sugar and energy source for your body. that does not mean its healthy though as it actually spikes your blood sugar more than any other.
carbs sorta come in two varieties. simple ones are very easy to break down into sugars and energy. Like rice, bread, potatoes. Complex are hard to digest ones like fiber and generally help make you feel fuller when you eat and help clean out our system
I have nothing to add to the gluten part.
Depress_Mode@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Nice additions, thanks! It’s been awhile since my college nutrition class, so maybe I’m misremembering, but is the starch found in bread, potatoes, and rice not a complex carbohydrate after all? Obviously it’ll be digested faster than dietary (insoluble) fiber, which doesn’t digest at all, but I was under the impression starches still don’t finish digesting until it’d been fermented by our gut bacteria in the small intestine.
adespoton@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
They are complex carbohydrates; the starches have to be broken down into sugars before they can be processed by our bodies. That process takes energy, but not as much as processing plant matter or even meat.
HubertManne@piefed.social 1 day ago
I was not correcting or anything just adding tidbits I find interesting. Your right carbs go along a spectrum with insoluble acting like a brush that pushes your digestion along and soluble being good at absorbing things and taking it along with it and complex carbs that just don’t digest as easily.