The bad news for low-carb diets – The Nacional.com

You may have a bad reputation among many of those interested in weight loss, but it appears that thousands of years ago carbohydrate foods like tubers were the keys for us to make us smarter.

That is at least the conclusion of a study conducted by researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​the University College of London and the University of Sydney, who claim that consumption of plants rich in starch was instrumental in the evolution of our . species

The reason is simple: glucose is one of the main fuel of the brain

And, according to the study, the development of our ability to obtain sugars from carbohydrates -. and in particular almidones- was what sustained the rapid growth of the brain “that began to be felt from the middle Pleistocene.”

“The ability to take roots and tubers with high starch diet early hominids is considered a potentially crucial step in the differentiation of the early Australopithecines from other hominids, “reads the report, published in the latest issue of The Quarterly Review of Technology.

What in simpler language means that a diet rich in carbohydrate foods gave our ancestors an important evolutionary advantage (which some modern fad diets seem to be ignoring today).

In fact, Humans have three times as many copies of the gene that creates -the salivary amylase enzymes that help convert carbohydrates into sugars-than other primates.

And this adaptation, the researchers say, it began to occur ago about a million years.

The importance of the kitchen

For the time humans had already learned to cook.

And the proliferation of salivary amylase have been one of the responses of our body to the possibilities offered by the use of fire, because raw tubers are much more difficult to process and transform into usable sugars.

According the team led by Dr. Karen Hardy, of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​this confirms the importance of the kitchen in human evolution (what comes to be bad news for proponents of crudívoras diets).

But one of his main hypothesis-the idea that without the new carbohydrate diet would not generate the fuel needed for our rapid evolution, has also given new ammunition to critics of the “Paleolithic diet” or “diet paleo “.

This” diet caveman “is based on the idea that the diet of our ancestors was mainly composed of wild plants and animals.

And usually exclude foods rich in starch, which responsible for much of the obesity affecting modern society.

Hardy and his team, however, believe that this is not an adequate portrait true diet of our ancestors.

“Food from plants rich in starch were abundant, reliable and important part of the diet,” they argue in “The importance of carbohydrates in the diet of evolution human “.

And, he argues, these carbohydrates were not only common, but were also definitive for human evolution. But also still needed.

“Modern humans require a reliable source of glycemic carbohydrates to sustain the proper functioning of our brain, renal medulla, red blood cells and reproductive tissues,” they explain.

This does not mean that reducing calorie intake can not be healthy. But certainly it confirms that before starting any diet, an honest consultation with the doctor is a necessary step.