Carbohydrates

Carbohydrate foods are those that contain significant amounts of sugars: bread, pasta, potatoes, tubers, fruits, honey, and sweet foods. Official recommendations favor the share of carbohydrates since, depending on the country, these must cover 50 to 60% of energy needs (50 to 55% in France). If one does not exercise much, these fairly high recommendations can lead to consuming an excessive glycemic load.

Read:  What is glycemic load?

In many studies, a high glycemic load is associated with a higher risk of overweight and diabetes, possibly cardiovascular disease.

We can reduce the proportion of carbohydrates to “only” 40% of calories while respecting the major metabolic balances. But, depending on the level of your physical activity (strength worker, athlete), carbohydrates can represent up to 55% of your energy intake.

We have therefore retained a wide range of carbohydrates ranging from 40 to 55% of calories depending on physical activity, the main thing being to choose the right carbohydrate foods, that is to say, those whose nutritional density is the highest. high, whose caloric density is the lowest, and whose glycemic index is low. This means getting your carbohydrates as a priority from vegetables, fruits, tubers (limiting potatoes), and minimally processed cereal products. Above all, we should avoid ultra-processed foods and added sugars which are associated with many health problems.

Lipids where to find them? What lipids to avoid? How many grams of fat per day?

Lipids are added fats and fatty foods. The consumption of lipids is important for health because they participate in the proper functioning of the body, their role is even essential. Lipids, in the official French recommendations, are proposed at 35 to 40% of total calories. For The Better Way to Eat (MFM), they can represent 30 to 40% of your total energy intake. However, there are several families of fats.

Lipids definition, types of lipids

95% of dietary lipids are triglycerides, that is to say, molecules that contain 3 fatty acids attached to a glycerol molecule. Glycerol has little nutritional benefit. These are the fatty acids that are important for the balance of the body and it is they that give their properties to fats.

Fatty acids are chains of 4 to 22 carbon atoms with, at one end, an acid group (COOH) and at the other, a methyl group (CH ₃ ). Fatty acids are distinguished based on the number of carbon atoms and the number of double bonds. These parameters determine the general shape of the molecule and its properties, particularly when it is included in a biological membrane. So there are short (less than 18 carbons), long (18 carbons), and very long (20 to 24 carbons) chain fatty acids.

• When a fatty acid has no double bonds, it is said to be “ saturated ”.
• When it contains a double bond, it is called “ monounsaturated ”.
• When it contains several double bonds, it is called “ polyunsaturated ”.

Short (4 to 6 carbons) and medium chain (8 to 10 carbons) fatty acids never have a double bond. Only long-chain fatty acids, from 18 carbon atoms, can be unsaturated.

Saturated fatty acids are of animal origin. They are found in butter, milk, and meat. Unsaturated fatty acids are essentially of plant origin.

There are other lipids in the diet:

• phospholipids, molecules that contain fatty acids and phosphorus (lecithin from soy and egg yolk)
• cholesterol.

What are lipids used for? What is their role and function in the body?

Once absorbed by the intestine, fatty acids can serve as a source of energy for muscles (with 9 kcal/g, they are the most energetic nutrients). When we consume more than necessary, they are stored in adipose tissue, in the form of triglycerides. But their role is not only energetic. Fatty acids are structural constituents of cell membranes, this is particularly the case of neurons. The brain, thymus, and retina are the organs richest in fatty acids. Finally, depending on the body’s needs, certain fatty acids are transformed into messenger molecules such as thromboxanes, prostaglandins, or leukotrienes.

Cholesterol, whether of dietary origin or manufactured by the liver, is used to produce essential substances such as bile, sex hormones (progesterone, testosterone, estradiol), or stress hormones (cortisol). It is also an essential constituent of cell membranes.

Dietary fats serve as a vehicle for fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K (for example: vitamins A and D in butter, and vitamin E in vegetable oils).

How to distribute them ideally in your average consumption?

Saturated fats moderation but not exclusion

Saturated fats are found in foods of animal origin, such as butter, full-fat dairy products, and certain meats. It is also found in vegetable fats, in particular tropical oils (palm, palm kernel, coconut).

The MFM offers a global diet from which saturated fats are not excluded. The reason is that the latest studies do not find a clear link between the consumption of these fats and the risk of cardiovascular diseases. However, everyone agrees that it should not be abused. Excess saturated fatty acids can make the membranes of our cells too rigid which when in excess, prevents, for example, red blood cells from slipping into small blood vessels (risk of clots) or does not allow cells to nerves from receiving important chemical messages (risk of depression).

We consider that these saturated fatty acids could represent 10 to 12% of your total calories, or about a third of the fats you consume, which amounts to limiting them without excluding them. For a woman who consumes 1,800 calories (kcal) per day and a man who consumes 2,400, this corresponds to approximately 20 and 27 grams per day, respectively.

We can therefore continue to consume a little butter (rather on toast than in cooking), coconut oil and milk, cream and cheese, and cold meats for pleasure. In any case, if you reduce them, you should not replace saturated fats with carbohydrates with a high glycemic index, but rather with other fats: monounsaturated and polyunsaturated.

Monounsaturated fats are about half of your daily fat

Olive oil contains around 70% monounsaturated fatty acids (especially oleic acid), and rapeseed oil around 60%. There is also a lot of it in avocado, hazelnut, macadamia nuts, and pecans.

We can say that overall monounsaturated fatty acids are favorable to cardiovascular health. According to the most recent scientific data, monounsaturated fats can make up 14 to 20 percent of your total calories, which is about half of the total fat you consume.

By using them regularly for seasoning (olive and rapeseed) and cooking (olive mainly, peanut occasionally), you have a good chance of achieving your physiological objective. Almonds, walnuts, and hazelnuts as snacks can be considered without fear of gaining weight.

Polyunsaturated fats pay attention to the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio

These are vegetable fats from the omega-6 (sunflower, corn, grape seed, cereal, and cereal-fed animal oils) and omega-3 (linseed, rapeseed, walnut, oily fish, egg chickens fed on flaxseed), essential to our body.

Collectively, they can ideally make up 4.5-6.5% of your total calories, or one-sixth of daily fat (16%). For a man who consumes 2400 calories per day, this represents approximately 15 g (11 g for women).

Omega-6 could account for 3 to 5% of total calories, including 3.6% on average coming from linoleic acid (the leader of the family).

Omega-3s, between 1.4 to 1.8% of total calories

• 1.2% from alpha-linolenic acid (ALA, leader of the family) or 2.4 g of ALA;
• 0.4% from long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, including EPA and DHA from fatty fish, or 800 mg per day.

The objective with polyunsaturated fatty acids will be to avoid any imbalance between them, that is to find an optimal omega-6/omega-3 ratio which we consider to be close to 2 to 3.

If you have too much omega-6 in your diet, inflammatory phenomena will be stimulated and the blood will be less fluid, which can promote heart attacks or certain cancers, for example.

If you have too much omega-3, the risk of heart attack will be very low since the blood will circulate perfectly well and even too well: therefore, the risk of hemorrhagic stroke will be higher.

So the objective will be in the menus

• to reduce the share of omega-6, which is not always easy since they are hidden almost everywhere and especially since most animals are now fed with corn (rich in omega-6) except those bearing the label blue-white-heart who have flax seeds in their diet, rich in omega-3, which are found in their flesh or their eggs;
• to increase the proportion of omega-3 by favoring rapeseed and walnut oils (or flax or camelina if you go to organic stores) for raw vegetable seasonings and by reintroducing fatty fish (salmon, mackerel, trout, etc.) ) and certain oilseeds (walnuts, flax).

If you suffer from inflammatory (joint pain) or cardiovascular (platelet aggregation) pathologies, the objective will even be to reduce this ratio to 2, or even 1.

If we were to consider that our intake of unsaturated fats comes from a single oil, more than half of the fatty acids in this oil should be monounsaturated (omega-9) and 16% polyunsaturated, with 3 times more omega -6 (linoleic acid) than omega-3 (alpha-linolenic acid). Which gives, one part omega-3, three parts omega-6, and 12 to 13 parts omega-9. There is no oil with this ideal composition. Only the combination of two oils can come close. These are olive oil and rapeseed oil which must be mixed in equal parts.