When you don't eat for a while, the body turns to its fat stores to run the machinery, but during the course of a day it's the carbohydrates that keep you going. The newly formulated food pyramid, advanced by the National Research Council, advocates that you eat five servings of fruit and vegetables, and six to eleven servings of cereal and grain products per day. This leads to a diet in which approximately 55 percent of calories will come from carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates include table sugar. Compound carbohydrates are the fruit sugars.
Complex carbohydrates are starches of vegetables and grains.
It is important to recognize that for your body to burn a potato for energy, the complex carbohydrates must be totally broken down to the simple sugars of which it is basically made. In a sense, therefore, a potato or piece of bread ultimately becomes sugar before it is used. Diabetes The most common defect in the body's ability to use carbohydrates is diabetes, which has two forms. The first, which is less common and is termed juvenile diabetes, results from the destruction of the pancreas' ability to make insulin, which facilitates sugar usage. The more common form, adult onset diabetes, develops, in my view, as a result of lack of exercise and consequent fat gain, leading to the relative inability to use blood sugar for energy.