When It Comes to Carbs, Quality Matters
You probably guessed right after reading Tuesday’s Memo that there are benefits from the quality of carbohydrates a person eats on a low-carb diet. In fact, one might say that because the carb intake is very low, every decision matters. Before getting into the results, let’s use the definition to identify the carbohydrate quality used in the study.
Good Carbs, Bad Carbs
High-quality carbohydrate diets are characterized by higher intakes of whole grains, non-starchy vegetables, whole fruits, nuts, and legumes, with correspondingly higher dietary fiber.
Lower quality carbohydrate diets are characterized by higher intakes of refined grains, sugar-sweetened beverages, baked desserts, and other sweet snacks.
The Results
While there were numerous statistical applications used, when comparing the lowest quintile of high-quality carbohydrates with the highest, as the percentage of high-quality carbohydrates increased, the markers of inflammation decreased.
When comparing the lowest quintile of low-quality carbohydrates with the highest quintile, the markers of inflammation increased as the percentage intake increased.
Understand that the high-quality carb eaters ate low-quality carbs as well, just not as much as the low-quality carb eaters. That means you don’t have to eat only one way. I’ve been developing a carb theory, one that goes along with the 80/20 rule: if you can eat well 80% of the time, you can loosen up 20% of the time, at least when it comes to carbohydrate quality.
The Bottom Line
This was not the be-all, end-all study; they used food frequency questionnaires, and I’ve talked ad nauseum about why I think they’re not much better than no info at all. But it was a practical approach to establishing that eating better most of the time can have benefits and may even reduce the risk of disease. We’ll see if there are future papers that track morbidity and mortality in the same group of subjects. Until then, eat less, eat better, and move more.
What are you prepared to do today?
Dr. Chet
Reference: Current Developments in Nutrition. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cdnut.2025.107479
