Question
JJ M
Concerned about getting too much sugar & too many carbs on WFPB. Someone told me they eat approx 200 grams of carbs per MEAL. And certain veggies like carrots contain sugar. ?
Answer
So, um, just to address the sugar on carrots, I wouldn't worry too much about that because you're eating the vegetable whole and it's it's whole state. You're not gonna get tons and tons of sugar out there. You know, you get a lot of sugar if you're eating processed sugar. That's something I would worry about a lot more. But on a whole food plant-based diet, if a vegetable or a fruit has a sugar in it, I wouldn't really worry too much about that. In fact, there's a certain diet out there called fruitarians for people to eat nothing but fruit. Um, hard for a chef sometimes, especially when you're catering. But, uh, you know, so I wouldn't worry so much about the sugar if you're eating the whole foods and not adding processed sugars to them. Now on the carbs, it's kind of a personal preference. Um, I think everybody's a little bit different on that, and you do need carbohydrates to survive, so you don't wanna cut them out completely. Um, some people do well with low carb diets to be able to just have a minimal amount of carbohydrates. Um, but if you, you know, go towards a specific carbohydrate, so say like picking a sweet potato instead of a white potato, um, might be a little more beneficial into what you're talking about. Um, uh, those sweet potatoes will actually help, you know, uh, stave off different things. They have different vitamins in them than the regular potatoes as well too. Um, and it is true that a lot of people, when they switch from a meat focused diet to a vegan or a vegetarian diet, a lot of people's staples go right to a very carbohydrate heavy diet. Um, you know, as an example, like a, somebody who was eating meat might go to pasta and they'd have pasta a lot, or pizza or, you know, things like that that would, you wouldn't eat on a regular basis, on a normal diet. Um, I mean, you might have it like once a week or something like that, but you wouldn't have it like every day, right? So I think that that's probably the area you might wanna kind of focus at a little bit, is look at your carbohydrate intake and what kind of carbohydrate doing on a daily basis, and you can plan your meals around that. Now, um, again, different people have different, uh, ways that they process those carbohydrates. So myself, um, you know, I'm not really big on eating bread with every meal, but my wife is, she loves her carbohydrates and she kinda gets angry if she doesn't have them. So I make sure to have those kinds of things for her, but I might not, um, partake in something like that as much. But, uh, that's just a great kind of an example of how different people even living in the same house, um, uh, have different dietary plans for themself and what makes their bodies feel best as well. So, um, so if you're eating a whole food plant-based diet, don't worry about the sugar intake that's coming from a specific vegetable or a fruit. I dunno if you're doing carbohydrates. Um, if you're worried about eating too many carbohydrates, just pick the good carbohydrates, um, over the, the less healthier ones.
