Understanding Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates

To better visualize what carbohydrates are let’s picture a series of six carbon atoms:

-C-C-C-C-C-C-    Each C (or carbon atom) has 4 “arms” around it to connect to other atoms; This would be a simple sugar like sucrose (table sugar);

If we were to attach another series of carbon atoms, it would look like this:

-C-C-C-C-C-C-
-C-C-C-C-C-C-

This would become a disaccharide, or a starch;

We could string together several of these carbon atom chains which could be conceptualized Like this:

-C-C-C-C-C-C-
-C-C-C-C-C-C-
-C-C-C-C-C-C-
-C-C-C-C-C-C-
-C-C-C-C-C-C-

which would be called a polysaccharide, which is just a bigger, bulkier starch.

When you have so many polysaccharides that your liver runs out of space to hold them (like overeating), the liver decides to turn them into fat by specific enzymes. You know what fat looks like: yellowish globules. This is a very easy job for the liver to do, like rolling a ball down a hill, you don’t have to do much except position the ball at the top of the hill. The fats are then sent out into the blood stream where they accumulate, usually where we don’t want them to. Fats can be converted back to sugars again, but this process requires a lot of energy, like pushing the ball back up to the top of the hill. That’s why losing weight can be difficult and requires not only a reduction in calories, but an expenditure of energy through exercise as well.