In College, I had to take a Thematic Cluster. This was a set of 3 upper level classes at the 300/400 level which was outside of my major (electrical engineering), but that were related to each other. I decided that my Thematic Cluster would be in Biology.
I thought it would be cool if I were able to eventually find a career that combined electrical engineering with human biology. Perhaps the electrical signals in the nervous system would come into play somehow. But nothing ever came of that. Still, I enjoyed the classes (and that was the end of any formal training I had on the subject- read the disclaimer).
However, there were a few things from the Human Nutrition class that did not quite make sense to me at the time. I figured that the details for understanding these issues were outside the scope of the class and that somewhere, some experts really understood these issues.
First, there was fat, which is the energy storage mechanism in the human body. Everything we eat, if not used immediately, is turned into fat and stored for later use. That made sense to me. Our bodies make fat from the things we eat- everything we eat. It is not that we can only get fat from eating fat. But that did not seem to reconcile with what was the prevailing philosophy about healthy eating. Food was promoted as being “Low Fat” and “No Fat”, as if eating less fat was healthy for you. It seemed that everyone believed that eating fat was unhealthy. That did not seem logical to me. But I figured that someday I would learn the details.
Then there was carbohydrates. Carbs seemed to be considered ‘good’ food. But I was confused when I learned about the molecular structure of carbohydrates. There are 3 types of carbs. Those are Dietary Fibers, Starches, & Sugars.
Dietary Fibers are not digestible by human. The pass through your system without being absorbed. That was simple enough.
Sugars: It is generally accepted that too much sugar is bad for us. Simple Sugars (Monosaccharides) are Fructose, Sucrose, & Glucose. These sugars can bond together as Polysaccharides forming long chains to become Complex Carbohydrates. These long chains are starches. So a starch is multiple units of a Simple Sugars all bonded together. In the digestive system, these Complex Carbohydrates are broken down into Simple Sugars and processed just like all the other sugar that we eat.
I was confused about how Complex Carbohydrates can be good for us since they end up as Simple Sugars in our digestive system. Why are ‘Carbs’ generally considered good and ‘Sugars’ were bad. Again, I was hoping that some experts, somewhere out there knew how this made sense.
And back to those Dietary Fibers. They are long chains of Simple Sugars. However, they have bonds the human digestive system cannot break down. So fiber passes through the digestive system without being broken down into sugars.
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