Too Many Carbs vs. Too Few

Yesterday I talked about a Lancet study that says too many carbs are bad and can kill you—but so can too few carbs. The logical question to ask is: what timeline are we talking about? Is it 10 years or 20 years or more? Based on the results of the study, let’s compare the extremes of carbohydrate intake with the mean intake of carbohydrate for a 50-year-old person.

If you ate fewer than 30% of your calories from carbohydrates, you might live up to 29 more years compared to the 33 years a person might live if they ate 50–55% from carbohydrates, so 79 vs. 83. What are four potential years worth to you? They’re only potential years because these are just hazard ratios; it could be as little as 2.5 years or as much as 5.5 years.

On the other hand, if you ate more than 65% of your calories from carbohydrates, you might live another 32 years compared to  33 years for someone who ate 50-55% from carbohydrates. At 82, do you care about one more year?

Only you can decide what those years are worth to you, and to compound the issue, we don’t know what our health will be like when we’re that age. But there may be a way to put the odds in your favor whether you want to eat more or less food high in carbohydrate. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Reference: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ S2468-2667(18)30135-X.