Originally Posted by
Hekktor
I have no background as a health expert. I have just been reading a lot of non-academic literature on the subject so allow me to test how well I understand the answer.
The simplest of carbs is glucose and fructose, which combine to make sucrose. Indigested sucrose quickly separates into its component parts.
Glucose triggers an insulin response signally “make fat of unburnt glucose. I include ready stores of glucose in the brain and muscles as burnt. Fructose creates no insulin response and cannot be used in muscles or brain (I will skip repeating “brain” from here on due to the main focus of this website.) Fructose has to be processed with alcohol in the liver before the body can use fructose byproducts. The liver creates triglycerides of those byproducts that it spews into the blood stream. Those triglycerides are easily made into fat tissue. Glucose triggered insulin acts as an accelerant to building fatty tissue.
Without the presence of fiber, protein, or fat to slow the decomposition of sucrose, these fatty depositing processes go into high gear. Complex carbs then keep adding fuel to the fatty depositing process when the fructose byproducts are nearly spent, making it last even longer.
In the absence of sucrose, complex carbs must be more slowly decomposed by the body. The glucose does not set off nearly the insulin surge. The fructose has more time to move from triglycerides to conversion to glucose in the muscles as a workout or protein build occurs.
Without the insulin screaming for fat deposits to be built out of fructose byproducts, the body has more chance to “make good choices,” to quote the neighbors’ 4-year old, about how to use the nutrient components in the blood stream.
In other words introduction of sucrose makes insulin run around like Chicken Little screaming the sky is falling or the end is nigh and that you should stock your bomb shelters now.
Complex carbs without Chicken Little are like a fine meal overlooking the countryside with no worry in the world. The body has time to reflect and leisurely build the best body it can.
That’s all I got. How did I do?