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#11
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High and Low Carb Foods?
"FOB" writes:
Like nuts are nut trees, apples are apple trees, grapes are grape vines, mmmmm hmmmmm. A better rule would be to think seeds as high carb, the rest of the plant is low carb. Seeds, like eggs, contain a lot of energy to get the new plant started. That's why green peas are fairly high carb but snow peas, which are picked before the seeds are fully developed and eat casing and all are lower carb. Root vegetables are similar, most of them are tubers which will grow if you plant them so they also store energy. Some seeds break the rule a bit, nuts are generally higher in fat and protein than carbs, they store their energy in a different form. Leafy greens are hard workers, lean and mean. It'd probably be more accurate to say that seeds are high-*calorie*. Tree seeds tend to have more of the calories as fat, grasses have more of the calories as carbs, and legumes have more protein. (There are surely exceptions.) Off the top of my head, I can't think of any seeds that aren't packed with calories--of the ones we commonly eat, anyway. -- Aaron -- 285/254/200 -- aaron.baugher.biz |
#12
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High and Low Carb Foods?
Doug Freyburger writes:
Looking at a radish I see it grows at the surface so it should be medium carb by my approximation. Looking at a diakon it looks like it grows below the surface so it should be high carb by my approximation. More exceptions. Looking stuff up in tables definitely works better than my approximation. Yeah, the underground test doesn't work too well, since root vegetables run the gamut from the very low-carb radish, up through turnips, onions, carrots, beets, sweet potatoes, all the way to the very high-carb potato. -- Aaron -- 285/254/200 -- aaron.baugher.biz |
#13
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High and Low Carb Foods?
Doug Freyburger writes:
It is easy to guess at the carb level of veggies based on what they are and how they grow - Maybe so (with a bunch of exceptions), but how many people know that information? How many know that sweet corn is really a grass, that peanuts are a legume, that horse apples aren't a tasty snack? I *wish* people knew more about where their food comes from; but I suspect that for the purposes of carb counting, most would find it easier to keep a carb chart handy than to learn about vegetable biology and then make educated guesses. That's the method I use when I am shopping for veggies that come from other lands. In a store that specializes in Chinese grown veggie types I won't find them in the common lists so I look at them and see if they grew above or below the ground or on the line. It's not a hard judgement to make based on what they look like. Yeah, if they aren't on the lists, that's all you can do--or simply don't eat it until you find out. I'd hate to assume something was low-carb based on its looks and find out later it was the Bolivian version of the potato. This approximation even works for veggies that grow both above and below the ground. Consider that celery stems are so low in carbs they count as salad but celery root is starchy high carb. Beet greens are so low carb they count as salad but beets are carby enough that one type is used to make white sugar. Celery root is something like 12 net carbs per cup. That's higher than the stalk, but not exactly "high carb" either, for something that's usually used as a minor ingredient. The next easy approximation is about fresh or dried. If a type of veggie comes both fresh or dried the frsh will be a lot lower in crabs than the dried. Green beans are low carb but almost all dried beans are high carb (soy being the lowest among the dried beans). That has far more to do with the fact that green beans still have the shell, while dried beans do not. Green beans are simply a bean variety with a shell that's enjoyable to eat; most bean varieties have a stringy shell that's barely edible. If you shell out green beans (we do this often when they get ahead of us and start getting leathery on the vine) and dry them, they'll be similar in content to other dried beans. Likewise, edible-podded peas are lower in carbs than shelled peas because you eat the shell, not because the peas inside are any different. Let the edible-podded ones mature and shell them out, and there will be no difference. For fruits the easy approximations are tart is lower, sweet is higher followed by grown in temperate climates is lower, grown in the tropics is higher. So berries are tart so they are lower carb. And sure enough most berries are grown in northern climates. Pinapples and dates are not only sweet but they are grown in the tropics. I'd disagree with the first test, since berries and melon seem *much* sweeter to me than citrus fruits. Anyway, even though there are a lot of exceptions, it's still an interesting thing to study and discuss. Maybe someday vegetables will be hybridized for lower carb totals (turning more of it into fiber, maybe), the way they've been hybridized for the past century to *increase* the sugar content. I know I'm going to be growing more heirloom varieties of things this year, rather than the newer super-sweet varieties that are most common these days. -- Aaron -- 285/254/200 -- aaron.baugher.biz |
#14
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High and Low Carb Foods?
Aaron Baugher wrote:
Doug Freyburger writes: It is easy to guess at the carb level of veggies based on what they are and how they grow - Maybe so (with a bunch of exceptions), but how many people know that information? How many know that sweet corn is really a grass, that I've never understood how folks end up not knowing where their food comes from so I can't address that. peanuts are a legume, A glance at a peanut says it has a hard hairy shell therefore it grew underground. Squeeze a peanut and it is clearly dried. Those two add together for a guess of high carb even without knowing that the "pea" part of the word is more important than the "nut" part of the word. that horse apples aren't a tasty snack? Not knowing what a horse apple is, I gotta admit I pictured rocky mountain oysters when I first read the term. ;^) Anyway, even though there are a lot of exceptions, it's still an interesting thing to study and discuss. If I learn a few exceptions and it gets me to 90% of the items in the store, then it's a pretty good guess setting mechanism for me. |
#15
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High and Low Carb Foods?
Doug Freyburger writes:
Aaron Baugher wrote: Doug Freyburger writes: It is easy to guess at the carb level of veggies based on what they are and how they grow - Maybe so (with a bunch of exceptions), but how many people know that information? How many know that sweet corn is really a grass, that I've never understood how folks end up not knowing where their food comes from so I can't address that. It's hard for me to imagine, since I grew up on a farm with a big garden and livestock. But I guess I can understand it: they're born and raised in cities, and never really leave them except to visit fun outdoor locations like beaches and parks, so they'd have to learn about food production like a foreign language or any other new topic. A generation ago, most people at least had a grandparent or uncle who lived in the country, so they had some contact with it. Nowadays farm tourism is a big business, because for so many people, rural life is as exotic as the zoo. People pay *actual money* to pick their own pumpkins, walk through cornfield mazes, and bottle-feed calves--things we called "chores" when I was growing up. Why people don't get curious about their food and learn about it anyway--that's harder to figure. I mean, I've never been to prison, but I still read about making prison wine one time. You could ask that question about a lot more things than food, though. that horse apples aren't a tasty snack? Not knowing what a horse apple is, I gotta admit I pictured rocky mountain oysters when I first read the term. ;^) Heh. Around here, horse apples are what the horse leaves behind on the trail. I'm not sure whether I'd prefer to eat one of them or a rocky mountain oyster. Some places, people also use "horse apples" to refer to what we call "hedge balls" or "hedge apples." They're the fruit (I guess a fruit) of the hedge tree, also known as Osage Orange. They look like a light-green brain a bit bigger than a softball. Nothing eats them, and people put them around their house foundation to keep out bugs, so I suspect they're poisonous or really nasty. -- Aaron -- 285/254/200 -- aaron.baugher.biz |
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