Are Carbs Really As Bad As We Tend To Think? | The Truth About Carbs | Tonic

[Laughter] carbohydrates we love them but newspaper headlines keep telling us how bad they are for our health [Music] are they the killer as claimed by many responsible for record levels of obesity and diabetes how do we recognize them and how do we become much smarter with the carbs we're eating i'm zandvantalican i'm a medical doctor i have a degree in public health and i absolutely love eating carbs so much so that i once weighed 19 stone so i'm on a mission to find out how to be clever with carbs i'm going to discover how carbs are hidden in foods you never would have expected so in fact there's the equivalent of 19 sugar cubes in this jacket potato how can you eat the carbs you love in a way that's much better for you for 10 seconds could swelling rather than swallowing your favorite sports drink improve your exercise performance if you win a half hour race by 600 meters you get the gold medal and could eating the right sort of carbs even increase your fertility sometimes you hear about cutting carbs out completely but that wasn't the message it was about the type of carbs not about avoiding carbs so keep watching because this is the truth about carbs [Music] britain is the fattest country in western europe with nearly three in 10 of us classified as obese the numbers of us suffering from type 2 diabetes is on the rise along with bowel cancer and calves are getting much of the blame because so much of what we eat is packed with them there's the sugar in this fizzy drink the bread in the burger bun the flour coating the chicken the fries i had while i was waiting carbs are really hard to avoid because they're in almost all cheap food and junk food but what exactly are carbs [Music] i have a tray of different foods and i'm asking the public which ones they think contain carbs when i say carbs what would be the kind of things you think of potatoes and rice and everything there yeah yeah yeah pasta um potatoes what do you think a carb is i would say a carb is like a wheat or a grain maybe i love carbs really yeah what's your what are your favorite ones uh biscuits really abs vegetables what no one has guessed is that everything in my tray contains carbs from biscuits and bread to broccoli and beans so what are carbohydrates put simply they are large molecules containing carbon hydrogen and along with protein and fat they're one of the most important nutrients for our bodies most people get most of their energy from carbs there are three kinds of carb starch sugar and fiber there's a lot of starch in things like potatoes rice pasta and bread so let's call these the beige carbs and then there's a lot of sugar in things like fizzy drinks sweets and processed foods so we can call those the white carbs once you've eaten them both starch and sugar get quickly broken down into a smaller molecule called glucose and that gets dumped into your bloodstream where your body uses it for energy but if you eat too many carbs then that glucose can be stored as fat and that's what's giving carbs a bad name but it's not all bad news there are some kinds of carb that we're not getting enough of fruits and vegetables like these all contain fiber and fiber is a kind of carbohydrate it releases energy very slowly it's very good for our guts and so stuff like this doesn't tend to make us fat now we can call the fiber green carbs but remember everything in this basket is carbs so put very simply the white carbs are sugar the beige carbs are in all those starchy foods and the green carbs are fiber [Music] the problem is that too many of us are eating way too much of the wrong sort of carby foods and it all began about 12 000 years ago when we eased up on the hunter gathering and figured out how to grow crops they're right at the heart of our diet windmills like whisnine here in rutland grind cereals into flour to make bread pasta biscuits and cakes we've evolved to love carbs but they used to be much harder for us to get now the carbs are all around us we sit at our desks all day we've got fatter and fatter and that's why carbs have been demonized on average we'll eat seven tons of white and beige carbs over our lifetime and because these starchy foods are everywhere they can be very difficult to avoid so how many carbs can i eat well the truth is that some of you can eat almost as many as you like while others like me have to watch it a geneticist dr sharon molem has come up with a really easy test to figure out which type of car beater you might be to try it out i've assembled a group of volunteers students i have in my tray bags of crackers which have got starch in like flour so what i'm going to do is you're each going to take a cracker i'm going to time you and all i want you to do is when i say put the cracker in your mouth start chewing and let me know when it changes flavor you might feel it's tasting a bit more sweet or maybe some other flavor taste stick your hand up i'm going to record the time if it doesn't change flavor that's fine too okay ready on your marks get set go 17 seconds 23 seconds 29 seconds 35 seconds go and keep going nothing no no you're not getting anything jackie nothing at all that's all right that's that's legit jackie you're allowed to have no change so the results are very interesting i'm going to start with rochelle and phil you both had the fastest time you noticed that the change in was 17 seconds now that is quite fast and what that suggests is that you have a high concentration of amylase enzymes in your mouth those enzymes are chopping up the big starch molecules into smaller molecules of sugar or sugar-like molecules that you can taste that means you two should be able to eat a lot of carbs without having any problems now the next four you're going much more slowly and that suggests that probably you should watch your carb intake you're doing okay with carbs they're not a big problem but you probably can't go to town in the same way that rochelle and phil could and then finally shani and jackie you really didn't notice a change at all now dr moelum suggests that that's because you have a low concentration of amylase enzymes in your mouth and that suggests that you might struggle eating carbs it's still early days with this research but the cracker test demonstrates just how varied our tolerance for carbs is to try this test at home use a small unsalted cracker if like me the taste doesn't change after 30 seconds then you might want to ease off the white and beige carbs just a bit so just where do all these white and beige carbs lurk in our food well looks can be deceiving dietitian alison barnes wants to show a group of office workers just how much energy in the form of sugar these carbs release into their bloodstream okay so i've lined up a selection of foods we've got a bagel and a chocolate muffin okay so i would say that that is more sugar than this one maybe two cubes for that one we're calling this blood sugar bingo can our volunteers guess the equivalent cubes of sugar in each of these foods what do you think yeah that's five tomatoes let's go let's go five okay so you've gone for the the muffin as the slightly higher one i'm just gonna add to that oh oh whoa double oh my goodness okay so ten sugar cubes in that muffin this one so you've gone for two so it's more starchy less sugary yeah let's see what we're guessing yeah so let's just add to this one oh well wow maybe not that's the same as the muffin i'm gonna add one more more sugar so there's 11 sugar cubes equivalent in this bagel i'm shocked i won't lie i'm shocked yeah what you're saying is that in the bagel when you eat it you chew it up and start to digest it your body is breaking that starch down into that quantity of sugar the equivalent of sugar yeah yeah exactly this is a portion of white rice and then you've got a nice bowl of strawberries the rice yes let's go for five because i would never have put sugar with rice strawberries i would put half of that bowl they are sweet too yeah okay so in this amount of strawberries there is for sugar cubes so yeah so although they taste sweet actually the amount of carbohydrate that they contain is is quite small so let's compare that to this portion of rice then so you've gone for five so just let me know what you do i'm just gonna do this no even rice again oh works oh my god really it's grains of sugar that we're eating yeah i'm not eating rice no more so that is that's 20 sugar cube equivalents jacket potato yeah can you not do that it's my favorite food potato i would go with similar to the bagel yeah like about 10. you've got quite a good poker face alison so in fact there's there's 19 sugar cubes in this in this jacket potato it's almost almost double what you thought and i'm so sorry hannah yeah [Music] where are they hiding all the sugar i think one of the one of the key things to take away from this is that looks can be deceiving so just because of food doesn't necessarily taste sweet doesn't mean that there's not going to be sometimes an awful lot of sugar going into your system after you've eaten it the thing that this really rams home for me is that there is a huge amount of energy in a potato and that pile of glucose there that will your body will turn the potato into will be stored as fat unless you burn it off unless you've done it you have to be careful about what you're putting in your mouth yeah yeah so what should we be eating instead of all these sugary carbs well this fiber most of us could use a bit more of that but there's also resistant starch now resistant starch resists digestion and it's a type of fiber it travels all the way down to our large intestine and goes to work feeding our gut bacteria and i want to show you how good it is for you and the surprising ways you can get more of it into your diet but first i need to discover how much resistant starch i'm eating to do that i gave a poo sample to get the bacteria in my gut analyzed the analysis has done two things it's looked at the profile of your microbes particularly the dominant ones that we believe to be largely beneficial or certainly harmless but it's also done a more targeted analysis of potentially harmful bacteria and and other microorganisms that might cause disease you don't have a lot of uh raminococcus detected in this sample which suggests to me that you don't have high consumption resistant starch because one of the main species of ruinococcus is a specialist degrader of resistant starch now resistant starch is your area of expertise isn't it yes so i should be eating more resistant starch what does what does that mean and why should i be doing it okay so resistance arches is a form of fiber most of the starch that we eat is digestible about 95 of it but there is a small fraction that gets through to the large intestine where it can then be acted on by gut bacteria so that's what we define as resistant starch these are carbohydrate molecules that get through our small garden into our lodge absolutely okay absolutely yes would it make a big difference if people increased the amount of fiber and resistant starch they were eating undoubtedly it would i think that there's very good evidence um that that increased fiber intake and resistant starch intake is is important in in suppressing that infection and disease actually seeing these friendly little bacteria it does inspire me to change my diet it's good i'm pleased which is what i need to do so resistant starch feeds the bacteria in my gut like ruminococcus which in turn keep me healthy [Applause] but i'm not eating enough resistant starch so how can i get more in my diet i'm going to show you a way of eating more guilt-free carbs and to do that surprisingly i've come to a bakery bread it's one of our favorite and most highly consumed carbs we eat over 140 million slices every day and about 60 percent of this is white bread full of starch which quickly gets digested into glucose so is there a type of bread we should be eating instead head baker julian carter is going to show me all right so these are something we baked last night and that one that's the borodinsky that's the pumpernickel it's in a smaller tin in that one pump a nickel pump and yeah i'll get a knife and we'll cut them up this one contains none of the grains but you can see that it's got a chewy texture to it yeah if you look at the texture to the bread it's like malt loaf almost let me have let me let me start with this oh absolutely that is very delicious yeah whole grain loaves contain resistant starch molecules and fiber which our bodies struggle to break down into glucose this is a totally different kind of food to a white bread is that a reasonable way of thinking about it completely different it's completely different process completely different product at the end of the day the only way you can get the whole grain into your bread is to stone grind it the only way you do that is to put it in a windmill between two stones where the whole thing comes through and comes out to the end then all you need to do is add water to that to make bread it really is that simple that is amazing next time you're in your local supermarket look out for the whole grain loaves but do check the sugar content because some mass-produced brands add sugar to counteract the bitterness of the whole grain but there's some good and surprising news if you can't stop eating bread stick the loaf in the freezer this turns some of the easily digested starch in bread into resistant starch then toast the sliced direct from the freezer amazingly the act of freezing and then toasting means that your body gets far fewer calories from the bread in effect the resistant starch feeds your gut bacteria rather than feeding you it really is that simple [Music] and what about potatoes rice and pasta those foods we all love but which contain the beige carbs that can make us fat well scientists have discovered that cooking and cooling turn some of the refined starch into resistant starch in these foods too which your gut bacteria will love and it's even better to reheat and make sure everything especially the rice is piping hot this further increases the resistant starch content but why is this imagine that this is a starch molecule say the kind you find in pasta in a lasagna dish what you can see is that it's made up of a long chain of sugar molecules joined by bonds and when you digest starch your enzymes break those bonds and give you individual sugar molecules now when food is cooked and then cooled down again fats and oils in the surrounding food attach themselves to the starch molecule and that makes it harder to digest and then if you take that cooked food and heat it up again more fats and oils attach themselves to the starch molecule and that's one of the ways that we get resistant starch [Music] how else can we make carbs work for us they might have a bad reputation when it comes to our diet but carbs can improve your performance in the gym [Music] i'm going to show you a way to have your cake and eat it we're always told that exercise forms an important part of a healthy lifestyle but we're often being told this by the same companies that are trying to sell us carb-laden sports drinks and supplements so what i want to know is do carbs and exercise mix people certainly think they do because sports supplements are a multi-million pound industry now i've always thought that carbs are a pretty good fuel if i'm going to the gym i'll bring a carb drink or maybe even some jelly babies but do i really need those extra carbs to exercise dr howard hurst is carrying out research into the effects of carb drinks on our bodies at the university of central lancashire so what i want to know is what do carbohydrates do for us when we're exercising okay are you feeling fit yes okay we've got a bike set up let's want you up on howard is getting me to do two 30-minute time trials i will be rinsing my mouth every five minutes for 10 seconds with two of his mystery solutions the aim is to see which drink increases my performance the most okay so if you want to swill that for 10 seconds but howard isn't going to tell me which solution is which and this is bizarre i'm not allowed to swallow any of it okay excellent my speed the distance cycled and the calories burned are all being carefully measured by howard okay great efforts and keep it going we're nearly there [Music] push push push out as you can last couple of seconds okay and you can stop ah it's the first one done we'll see you in two days we'll do it all again right two days time gonna rest up two days to let my body recover [Music] it's 48 hours since the last bike ride and i'm back to do exactly the same thing more swishing more spitting [Music] under howard's watchful eye i'm now rinsing and spitting the second mystery solution and the ride really doesn't feel any easier than before okay if you want to rinse that for 10 seconds hippie [Music] great efforts on well done do i get the results now yeah if you get your breath back give me a couple of minutes and then we'll sit down and we'll have a look at the data okay [Music] can you talk me through what we've been doing howard i've cycled twice i've rinsed my mouth twice what are we hoping to prove okay you did two 30-minute time trials one was with plain water and one was with a carbohydrate drink okay so what we were trying to do is look at can you get a performance benefit purely by swilling a carbohydrate mouth solution run your mouth so i can't see any reason for this to work i'm not absorbing any and i'm just rinsing at my mouth and spitting it all out so i cannot believe that there'll be any difference between the two cycle rides should we see how you got on then all right if we have a look at distance first distance covered in the two 30-minute periods condition a was the plain water and condition b was the carbohydrate my threats that's an increase in performance that's so what is that that's 600 meters it's a significant difference yeah i mean if you can win if you win a half hour race by 600 meters you you get the gold medal don't you i mean that's like a big deal that's a big difference yeah yeah that's mad it sounds a power output that was nearly eight percent higher in in the condition do you know how it works yep so the science behind it is there's receptors in the in the mouth which interact with specific areas of the brain that are responsible for motivation reward and motor control the brain thinks it's going to get carbohydrates and as a result of that the athlete self selects a higher exercise intensity um without the the feelings of fatigue so performances is increased and this is consistent with what a number of other studies have found as well so even though i'm spitting out the carbs in the sports drink rather than consuming them the receptors in my mouth are nevertheless telling my brain that it's going to get carbohydrates which then tells my body that it can work harder along with performance benefits there are also potential benefits for those hoping to lose weight in the first condition you burn 440 calories over the 30 minutes in the second condition you burnt just over 470 kilocalories when i go to the gym i can drink two 300 calories of carb drink through a session which i think is doing me good and you're saying it's pretty pointless particularly if you want to lose weight then you may only be putting back in what you're losing so that means situation it would be better to um rinse and spit it out so i'm mad to be drinking my sports drink at the gym when i could just be rinsing my mouth spitting it out and getting actually a better result certainly rinsing it has been shown to be more beneficial than taking on the carbohydrates um particularly for exercise lasting less than an hour kind of a bucket to spit in the gym might not be too happy about it carbs clearly improve performance but this experiment suggests that it's possible to trick your brain into getting the same result but without the calories when cycling or running between 30 minutes and an hour research indicates that you might as well dump the jelly babies and make your own sports drink just sugar and water and if it doesn't taste that great don't worry because you're simply spitting it out [Music] just drink water to rehydrate and enjoy your ride [Music] many doctors and scientists believe that our increasing consumption of the wrong sort of carbs is contributing to significant [Music] as you can see i'm having my lunch now i know i should be having a salad but what i really wanted was the pasty so i think a sandwich is a reasonable compromise but these are bad carbs now the reason they're bad carbs is that when my body digests the bread turns it into glucose that puts my blood glucose up and that causes my body to release insulin insulin is the hormone that controls our blood sugar and keeps it on track but there's been a worrying increase in the number of people becoming resistant to insulin causing poor blood sugar control which can ultimately lead to type 2 diabetes and often a lifetime of medication now it's pretty hard to overstate how dangerous type 2 diabetes is blindness ulcers heart attacks strokes limb loss and ultimately death it's a disease that is characterized by weight gain over three and a half million people in the uk live with type 2 diabetes and 90 of them are overweight or obese it's been called the hidden killer because over half a million have yet to have it diagnosed and many think this disease is on the increase in part because of the type and quantity of the carbs we're eating [Music] so could simply cutting down on all the white and beige carbs and replacing them with more green carbs like fiber and resistant starch be the answer i'm on my way to meet a family gp who along with his wife is trying on a local level to help his patients with type 2 diabetes and they're doing it with a diet rather than pills and saving the nhs thousands of pounds [Music] talk me through what the diet is you're replacing dense carbohydrates refined carbohydrates with things that are less sugary and less refined instead of the chips or the rice or the potatoes you might have a pile of green i mean what's often forgotten is actually green veg has got carbohydrate in it so it's not that you're not having any carbohydrate at all is it fair to say that almost everyone in the uk is eating more carbs than they need and more carbs than is good for them i think that's probably fair should everyone be doing this low carb diet really there is no one diet that suits everybody i think it's much better to begin with why what you're hoping for and the answer to that will help you decide how low carb are you going to go so that if you're not diabetic and you're not overweight it might be just healthy to give up sugar and reduce the amount of biscuits and refined carbs that you're having is sustainability something you've worried about it depends upon them finding food that they really enjoy because you can't you have to have a lifestyle that you enjoy it's not a diet because that implies it's sort of a big punitive and it's going to end it's actually a lifestyle so you shouldn't be suffering because you'll never keep it up a calorie is a big part of this this diet or this this lifestyle change the trouble i have with calories or indeed weighing measuring food that all sounds like like a diet to me and not like a lifestyle i just want them to eat healthy food and it seems to work so how does dr onwyn's plan work he reckons it's possible to lose weight and improve your health by making simple changes like cutting back on white and beige carbs so what's the science behind this plan well jaffa cakes are classic white and beige carbs they contain refined sugars and starch and my digestion is breaking that starch down into sugar so after i've eaten a jaffa cake my blood sugar will now be starting to rise quite quickly now an apple is different [Music] although this apple contains exactly the same number of calories as those two jaffa cakes the fiber in the apple means the sugar the natural sugar in the fruit gets absorbed much more slowly that fiber will travel the whole length of my digestive tract making me feel fuller for longer so gram for gram with the apple i get less sugar and that sugar that could have been stored as fat that's the theory dr unwin has arranged for me to meet one of his patients who has been on his low-carb plan for over four years [Music] is it chris hi zand okay good to meet you very good to meet you chris was a type 2 diabetic and on three different kinds of medication he's brought along some photos of his old self like me he was once seriously overweight this is what you used to do that's what i used to look like zandia um so the first one doesn't look that bad okay you're a heavy guy heavy guy there heavier guy there but that is a big man yes how heavy were you at that point in excess of 19 stone yeah okay okay what was it like being 19 stone i didn't have half the energy i've got now that's what i noticed because i was 19 stone i found i was always hungry as well i was always looking for the next meal and what what were the results of going on the program immediate weight loss um the blood test results that came back uh david was extremely pleased they were very positive and i went from all these all this medication to zero in six months wow i've not taken any medication since and that's 2013. a lot of doctors just think of diabetes as a permanent disease that you have that's amazing isn't it i understand i'm classed as pre-diabetic i imagine as long as i follow this program and don't revert to my old ways that i shall remain uh pre-diabetic david is very persuasive and what chris has done is really nothing short of a miracle to get off all those pills is incredible chris was part of dr unwin's original trial what i want to know is can we make this work in the real world just how hard is it to change your lifestyle and stick to a low-carb diet this is kirby on merseyside obesity type 2 diabetes and heart disease rates here are all above the national average i've enlisted the help of local gp faizal masarani who has selected a group of his patients with weight related health issues some do have type 2 diabetes or are considered pre-diabetic others are simply obese or have a family history of heart trouble i'm hoping this experiment will have positive results on all the patients health as we've seen knowing the sugary carbs in food can be a challenge and for diabetics dangerous so before they start the experiment dr mazarani wants to show them the foods they should avoid now each of our volunteers is wearing one of these this is a blood glucose monitor and it is continually measuring my blood sugar so i can check it now there you go 4.5 that's all right so dr mazzarani wants each of the volunteers to do an experiment using these monitors and he's put the instructions here i've got a test to see how same carbohydrates affects your system especially in the morning for breakfast let's um have a bowl of fruit and fiber some semi skim milk some toast with butter and a banana and 200 ml of apple juice and let's see how that affects your sugar level and how your body responds first up is neil i've been asked to have a cereal breakfast to show the difference in glucose blood sugar glucose before and after wholemeal toast a normal reading is around six to seven after eating but a reading of over 11 indicates they are diabetic even if you're not diabetic the truth is that this seemingly healthy breakfast actually contains loads of hidden sugar in fact it exceeds the recommended daily allowance in just one meal the effect on their blood sugar is about the same as an extraordinary 28 cubes of sugar well from 6.4 which is where it was just over an hour ago before i had the breakfast it's now 13.6 left untreated this level can be very dangerous hence neil and phil currently requiring medication to control it i've now just taken a reading it has now gone up to 15.5 [Music] so it's crucial that our volunteers especially the diabetic ones stick to the kinds of carbs that won't push up their blood sugar so what are their options well i could always try porridge not the processed kind because that releases sugar very quickly but whole oats which are high in resistant starch and in fiber and they could top those off with a few berries which are also high in fiber and relatively low in sugar or you could go to work on an egg eggs are no longer considered bad for us and are only one percent carb [Music] it's the first night of our big experiment with our volunteers to swap all those high sugar white and beige carbs for green carbs and we're starting with a blowout meal in a local community college restaurant and by blowout i mean we're blowing out the unhealthy carbs and introducing good carbs to our seven diners so instead of seeing a pharmacist i'm meeting a chef hey i'm very good to meet you thanks very much are you doing the meals here we are yeah we're cooking all the meals the low carb or smart carb meals for the for the patients out front can have a look at what's going on by all means so at the moment we've got kieran who's uh making cauliflower rice and then we've got chantel who's doing our slow marinade chicken drumsticks which we make our own cajun spice but it's all the commodities that you have in your own cupboard i have to say it smells amazing it looks really good and it and that is very important because you've got seven people out there whose lives depend on you seducing them into low-carb food yeah lecturer david critchley has been tasked to come up with a range of simple and economic dishes i love that the most important bit of this evening is not down to a doctor it's down to a chef this is a carb clever meal all the starchy beige carbs like potato replaced with a green fibery carb alternative like celeriac but this is a whole week's food we're happening in one table yes the cauliflower with the chicken one night and you have the cottage pie another the chicken curry another night essentia is just everyday food with a very slight week it's like this i love the visual of that because that gives me the illusion that i'm having me roast these don't feel like i'm giving something up and just it's a lifestyle change it's actually changing some of the things that i am eating dave why are you here basically i've been type 2 diabetic for about 17 18 years i've had the fear of god put over me people saying you lose your toes and fingers and your eyes and things so i mean obviously nobody wants that do they so this is serious stuff for our patients i'm back in the kitchen with david to find out what's coming out next is this pudding this is ella hi ella ella's doing chocolate covered strawberries you still can't have chocolate on this diet it's not full of sugar it's not the kind of terrible milk chocolate and then the strawberries of fruit so yeah okay great i would not have thought of that i don't know what i thought you were going to serve for pudding but i wouldn't have thought that this is just one of them somewhere along the way there's something for everyone here isn't there it is there is and it's again it's just getting back to making sure that you're smart with your choices because there's always going to be a low car putting out there for someone so can i just ask what does everyone think of the food stunning so at the end of this meal does everyone feel optimistic about making this change to their lives yes yes it was my biggest worry that the food was going to be but i i've quite enjoyed what we've had tonight i mean i could eat everything i don't mean everything literally there's a lot at stake our team's health depends upon them sticking to low carb food for the next two weeks before we catch up again but also for the long term too i thought that was a really great start and hopefully it will be the motivation that our seven volunteers need to make some really good progress [Music] if they and i are going to change the carbs we're eating they still need to be satisfying and full of flavor i'm back with dietitian alison barnes to get a few tips alison we've got a healthy meal here but you've kind of fiddled with the carbs is that right yeah that's probably a good way of putting it so sometimes when people are trying to cut things down in their diet they think that they have to cut them out completely right what we've tried to do here is just to be a bit smarter with the carbs so this is some stuffed chicken thighs are stuffed with mushroom and onion so where you might normally have potato we've substituted that so what we've used here is rose celeriac and squash the squash is half the carbs that potato would be and the saline racket is even lower this has that nice stodgy carby fillingness but for a mouthful of squash it's like half a mouthful of potatoes exactly so we've done a veggie curry here okay um so this has got its chickpeas cauliflower and spinach in the curry itself we've substituted the white rice for bulgoi this time okay it's still carby but more of that carbohydrate is is fiber okay um so the white rice um has all of the fiber stripped from it no no fibre at all this is a it's about a tenth fibre i think if i wasn't paying attention i don't think i'd even noticed exactly that's a very easy substitution to make you've got loads of flavor from the curry it's not very different to rice is it no so the third main dish we've got is a lasagna okay but we've replaced the the lasagna sheets the pasta in there with uh aubergine okay which means that we've we've got fiber in there but it's much much lower in carbohydrate what about pudding so everybody likes a bit of a bit of a sweet treat right so low-carb puddings to me are a waste of time this is a key lime pie but we've used nuts for the base there so there's some hazelnuts and some almonds just whizzed up in the food processor and that makes the base so the difference that that makes to this dessert it's a tenth of the carbs that you would get from a digestive biscuit base it's two to three times the fiber that you would get from a digestive biscuit base and it's a healthier type of fat as well okay so better fat much less carbs much more fiber so that's all good that's it i don't think anyone would say that that wasn't a good key lime pie that was lovely being clever with your carbs isn't just about weight loss it really could save your life as well as helping type 2 diabetes eating the right source of carbs can significantly reduce your chances of getting bowel cancer too this cancer is such a big killer that the nhs is now offering screening to older adults although i'm a little younger than the minimum age i'm going to have a procedure called a colonoscopy it involves a meter long probe with a camera at the business end and i'm in surgeon ken park's hands so you're all set i'm ready to go okay ken's looking for polyps while i'm on the gas and air just bear with us a second while we get round this corner so there's the image there oh the first part of the boat oh it's a manner it's an insane view isn't it what we can see is we can see the lining of the bell here pretty normal looking nice pink we can see the blood vessels through the lining of the bowel see the toblerone effect there i mean that's a hell of a tubular in this thing yeah it does how dangerous is bowel cancer it is a very significant cause of cancer death and indeed in the uk is the second commonest cause of cancer death really we're seeing yeah really and we're talking particularly about bowel cancer there is an association between obesity and bowel cancer so when you're doing colonoscopies on people you're really looking for cancer is that is that one of the main cancer all the pre-cancerous conditions because bowel cancer is preventable in probably just over half the patients that develop it it's preventable because we know that the sequence of events is that before a cancer develops you will get a polyp now polyps like a little warty growth in the lining of the bowel which in itself is not going to um cause significant health problems we can remove those and not cause any problems but the risk is that if you ignore that over the course of maybe 10 years or so that starts to grow and become malignant and then you've got bowel cancer and that's why the emphasis on colonoscopy about screening i just want to see the last little bit and it's very important that we see this because if i don't see it i don't know that i've done a complete examination okay so so apart from just the roughage keeping my guts moving it's also obesity it's also about what i eat all of that's reducing my risk of bowel cancer of course yeah so what's happening in our poo and in our guts can tell us if we're eating the right kind of carbs and they're absolutely vital for making our bowels work properly and how am i looking did you find anything you're looking pretty good i'm glad to say that you're pretty healthy that's good research shows that one of your best ways of avoiding bowel cancer is to eat more foods high in fiber the healthy carb [Music] eating the recommended 30 grams a day of fiber could reduce your risk of bowel cancer by a whopping 30 percent [Music] carbs affect many aspects of our health and new science is revealing they can even affect our fertility studies are showing an association between carbohydrates and growing fertility problems hey great it is pleased grace dugdale a reproductive biologist runs a program looking at the underlying causes of infertility in both women and men making a new human being is an energetic process there's a new you know a whole new person being created and the components of that the egg and the sperm both need good energy you have a poor diet and that starts to really disrupt that process and all the processes that are needed to successfully conceive a child so you're really talking about um the kind of metabolic biochemical processes inside the sperm and the egg yeah and that those are shaped by among other things that the carbohydrates you're eating in your diet yes absolutely so if you eat refined carbohydrates the sugars the white bread the white pasta all the things that we kind of are starting to learn about that basically rapidly converts into blood blood sugar then you have too much energy available and that basically damages the battery of the cell that provides all the energy for the cell and they are really important for both egg and sperm quality how should people be changing their diets if they're trying to get pregnant in terms of carbohydrate have the whole meal versions lots of vegetables are very very important and the fiber in those vegetables are important so it's the quality of carbohydrates and also not overdoing carbohydrates in general grace's message is to look carefully at the sort of carbs you're eating and she's had considerable success teaching couples all about nutrition and food groups especially carbs let's take a little look and see what's going on here one of her successes is emma who conceived naturally after attending the support group beautiful picture there of the heart beating can you see that we're here in the fertility clinic so i'm guessing that it wasn't as easy for you to get pregnant as some couples no we've been trying for about 12 months just over 12 months and went to our gp and got a referral here clearly you've made a number of changes to your lifestyle overall but it sounds like the emphasis was on diet and of those dietary changes were a lot of them around the kind of carbs you were eating yeah it was about the type of carbs not about avoiding carbs which i thought was quite interesting because sometimes you hear about cutting carbs out completely but that wasn't the message and it was about thinking about which carbs you were going to have but it's not only about getting pregnant it's about having a healthy pregnancy reducing the risk of miscarriage and ultimately of course having a healthy baby and if couples can conceive naturally without needing the high-tech ivf or other treatments that obviously we have everything here but if it can happen in the bed rather than in the laboratory it's much better all around for everybody so too many of the wrong carbs can affect your ability to create new life but now it seems you can also pass on your health problems to your children because too many of the wrong carbs can also alter your genes so basically what you do before you're conceived impacts your lifetime's predisposition to disease and there's an impact through both the father and the mother so lots of people think it's just about the women but there can be changes in sperm as well that also impacts health of the child there are thousands of genes modified in the sperm of obese men really actual genetic changes that you could potentially pass on to your kids yeah absolutely this is a growing research area that male factor problems can be passed on to the next generation through the modification of genes resulting from our damaging lifestyle wow okay [Applause] we owe it to future generations to be carb clever what we eat can impact our children before they've even been born otherwise we could be programming our offspring to a lifetime of obesity not by what they eat in the future but by what we're eating right now i think that's absolutely fascinating that just by changing the quality of the carbs you're eating you can not only improve your chances of getting pregnant but also the long-term health of your child and that seems to me to be really important information for anyone hoping to start a family it's just over two weeks since i last saw our low-carb volunteers during that time they've been using social media to keep in touch to share food ideas and to egg each other along if you want to follow our plan maybe just to shed a few pounds then why not form a group online it can make a real difference helping you to stop falling off the [Music] wagon [Music] i'm back in kirby to see if any of our group have managed to turn their health problems around so we haven't seen you all for two weeks how has everyone been getting on good good ready yeah really really something i've actually enjoyed doing and actually felt that i'm not actually hungry at all so for me it's a sign of no no significant change in what i'm used to eating and what i've been doing so and education wise it's been brilliant did anyone really struggle no no wow i do think that is amazing that you've got a group of people here who've been on not a diet but have changed what they're eating for two weeks who are not coming back going i'm starving i'm hungry i hated this this is miserable um okay impressive these patients have all previously struggled losing weight so how have they got on with our plan so richard over this two-week period you've lost half a stone and your hdl your good cholesterol is going to buy about 10 brilliant which is fantastic and if you move on to maureen you've had half a stone weight loss in this two-week period your waistline has gone down by 10 centimeters which is fantastic yes good in fact all of the overweight patients have done exceptionally well considering they've been counting the carbs not the calories each one has lost half a stone for those with type 2 diabetes dr mazarani also measured their average blood sugar levels their hba1c a key blood marker for a diabetic so we'll do you kneel first if you're a type 2 diabetic on three diabetic medications your controls cluster's very poor or was when we started but in the two week period about a 14 improvement in your hba1c so i'm 100 confident in another month or so maybe three months we should be on the way to reversing your type 2 diabetes fantastic absolutely so phil over to you so you're a type 2 diabetic as well over this two-week period you've lost half a stone your diabetic controls improved by six percent and your fatty liver is reduced again by 35 percent so that's excellent as well so dave you've been diabetic for a number of years now haven't you 17 17 years but the fantastic news here is at the start of this program you were a type 2 diabetic but you're now classed as a diabetic in part remission so only a stone's throw from being diabetes in reversal which is amazing i'm amazed too because after 17 years on medication it's looking like dave can turn his type 2 diabetes around simply by being clever with his carbs what do you think of that i think it's fantastic they're actually improving the health those are literally hard biochemical markers that we're finding in your bloods that are will have a huge i mean those are the important blood results for life expectancy so when we talk about stroke heart disease all the complications of diabetes it's these numbers what's been achieved in two weeks is pretty extraordinary david's low carb plan could potentially save lives and save the nhs millions of pounds a year in medication alone is it fair to say i think there are a lot of doctors throughout the uk who would simply not believe that this was possible and and i would say i'm one of them i don't think i've ever experienced anything like this for us as doctors you become a doctor because you want to make a difference and it makes me wonder what you're going to achieve in the next six months yeah i think i know the answer to this but are you all planning to continue doing this yes most definitely brilliant well look really good luck you have done fantastic work thank you thank you [Music] i don't think i've ever seen anything quite that impressive those people have not only lost significant amounts of weight in two weeks more importantly they've improved things about their health that are literally saving their lives dr unwin and dr mazzarani have discovered something that has massive implications for the health of almost everyone in the uk including me [Music] dr mazarani has already extended the low carb plan across his surgery and it's being rolled out online by the royal college of general practitioners as part of a wider program using nutrition and diet to manage type 2 diabetes it will soon be available to gps across the whole of the uk so why not start to become clever about the carbs you eat by reducing some of the white and beige carbs like potatoes pasta and white bread we all handle carbs a little differently and it's important to eat a balanced diet but if you're trying to lose a little weight then it's worth considering the type of carbs you're eating and not just obsessing about calories the next time you're heading to the shops have a think about what you're putting in your basket if you reckon you're eating too many of the white or the beige carbs you might want to try something like swapping white bread or whole grain varieties like rye or sourdough and give yourself enough time to prepare meals using fresh ingredients so that you don't have to rely on convenience foods that way you can lose weight improve your health and it doesn't have to cost a fortune it's all about making carbs work for you

Channel: Tonic

Views: 8,995

Rating: 4.685185 out of 5

Keywords: Tonic, the truth about carbs, the truth about carbs documentary, the truth about carbs bbc documentary, are carbs bad for you, are carbs bad for weight loss, are carbs good for building muscle, are carbs bad, are carbs good for you, are carbs necessary, are carbs essential, are carbs sugar, are carbs good, documentary about carbs, nutrition documentary, carbs documentary

Id: ueoWRp_VUUc

Length: 57min 31sec (3451 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 24 2020