Adrienne Smith <[log in to unmask]>

>>I do like raw carrots and notice that a medium carrot only contains about 6
gms of carbs (same as a tomato), but yet they are restricted from most ultra
low carb diets because of their high glycemic index.  Any thoughts on this?
Also, does cooking a starchy vegetable like carrots make the carbs more or
less available or does it not matter?  I ask because Peat only mentions raw
carrots for hormone regulation.

Carrots are not a starchy food.  They are a high density carbohydrate
source, but they are also classifided as fibrous carbs.  In the context of a
varied, whole foods diet, I do not see any harm in eating carrots regularly.
If you eat them with some fat and/or protein, that presumably slows down
their entry into your blood stream.  Eating carrots with other foods also
reduces the amount of carrots you are likely to eat in a sitting.  For
example, if you grated some carrots and add them to a green salad, or slice
them and add them to a stir fry with broccoli, onions, mushrooms, celery, or
other vegetables, the amount you are likely to eat is reduced, particularly
if you eat the meal with some protein.

If weight loss or ease of weight maintenace is your goall, a handful of baby
carrots is far less caloric than a handful of nuts.  Thus you are less
likely to overshoot your calorie needs noshing on some carrots while
assembling a meal than if you were to nosh on nuts, as many people from this
list have observed.  As long as you don't eat a carrot-based diet :-))  or
carrot-based meals, I think carrots have a place in a wholesome natural
diet.  I also enjoy them and have found no harm in including them and no
significant benefit from avoiding them, though I have nixed them at times!

I think the problem may arise if you sit down to a pound or two of carrots
in a single sitting and try to make a meal of them (anyone here do that?
:-)) or you drink carrot juice, which concentrates the carbohydrates and
removes the fiber (the speed bump in the meal).  When I first discovered
carrot juice in my early 20s, I recall drinking 1 1/2 to 2 cups of the sweet
nectar and feeling liked I'd been knocked out.  I got a helluva sugar rush.
I later learned not to do that.  Eating whole carrots has never done that; I
just don't eat that many carb grams worth of whole carrots all at once.

When you eat whole, raw carrots, less of the carbs are absorbed.  When you
eat cooked carrots more of the carbs are absorbed because more of the fibers
are broken down.  Thus cooked carrots or cooked and pureed carrots are
higher on the glycemic index than raw, and longer cooked carrots are higher
glycemic than lightly cooked carrots.  FWIU of Ray Peats work, grated raw
carrots are advocated as a roughage source to clean out the intestines and
possibly bind with certain substances, facilitating their removal.  For
example, when one's fiber intake is higher, some of the fat one eats as well
as excess cholesterol and presumably other hormones may bind with the fiber
and pass out of the colon.

I hope this helps.  Sorting the wheat from the chaff (the meat from the
gristle?), can at times be challenging!

Rachel