In the Mayo Clinic Health Letter of February 1999 it was pointed out that the "carbohydrate choices you make are significant, because carbohydrates-especially those from whole-grain sources-can play an important role in healthful eating and disease prevention".

"Carbohydrates are the fuel your bodies need to function. Your brain, for example, primarily uses a carbohydrate as a source of energy".

" Nutrition experts generally agree that 55%-60% of your total daily calories should come from carbohydrates".

• SIMPLE (Sugars)-These are built from single or double sugar units and found in fruits and some vegetables. Avoid added sugars (table sugar) and processed foods.
• COMPLEX (Starches and Fibers)-These consist of combinations of chains of sugar units. In comparison to simple carbohydrates, it takes more steps for your body to break down starches. Fiber is so complex it's not even digested (But needed to help evacuate. There is some evidence that soluble fiber helps prevent coronary heart disease and fiber in general adds to one's overall health). In particular, legumes, whole grains and whole-grain foods appear to offer real health benefits.

Remember high fiber carbohydrates are digested more slowly, and, as a result, your blood sugar level doesn't rise as quickly. By comparison, low-fiber carbohydrates are digested faster, so they raise your blood sugar more rapidly. A mix of simple and complex carbohydrates may create a smoother rise in blood sugar.

Since carbohydrates are responsible, in the main part, for one's energy requirements, when exercising one needs more carbohydrates to supply the necessary "fuel" and to replenish glycogen stores in the liver after exercising. There is also evidence that carbohydrates boost performance by, in part, delaying fatigue by "holding down" levels of fatty acids and tryptophan (Mark Davis, Ph.D;University of South Carolina). As Liz Applegate, Ph.D. pointed out in her article " Skipping meals shortly before a workout or race not only can leave you short on fuel but can lead to brain fatigue.

What happens is that glycogen stores become depleted, so the body compensates by increasing the circulation of fatty acids for fuel. As fatty acid levels go up, so does your level of tryptophan?"

The Zone Diet recommends avoiding high glycemic foods such as brown rice, bananas, mangos, corn, carrots and fruit juice. In fact, most nutritionists recommend high glycemic index foods during a long run or intense exercise. However, these are great foods, in general, because of their high anti-oxidant, nutritional and fiber content

and it does not seem to make common sense to eliminate these wonderful sources of nutrition. Many recent studies have extolled the virtues of these foods.

Weight gain comes, in large part, by eating more calories than you use, irrespective of where the calories come from. Therefore, the high protein diets will not help with weight loss if the total calories consumed are more than those expended. However, because protein is dehydrating, a false weight loss may occur early on because of water loss. Excessive protein can also be potentially harmful to your kidneys and, some think, lead to osteoporosis because of calcium loss. So be careful with excessive protein intake.

From PREVENTION'S healthy line web site comes the following Q & A:

Q: "But some high protein diets curb your appetite. Doesn't that prove, at the very least, that carbohydrates make you hungry?"

A: " No, it proves your body thinks it's starving. The Atkins diet and the Protein Power diet, by restricting carbohydrates to a rock bottom 20 or 30 grams a day (so low a bagel will blow it) put you in a state called ketosis, in which your body incompletely mobilizes some of it's own fat for energy. Dr. Atkins calls ketosis 'one of life's charmed gifts" because one of it's established side effects is suppression of appetite. As a result, you eat fewer calories. But ketosis can also cause bad breath, lightheadedness, dizziness and fainting. Lawrence Cheskin, M.D., Director of the John's Hopkins Weight Management Center says ' A diet that brings on ketosis must be supervised because it can create a potentially dangerous imbalance of sodium and potassium'. " One effect of ketosis is an initial rapid loss of water. So at first it looks like you're losing like crazy, when in fact what you've done is excrete several pounds of salty water. As soon as you switch back to adequate carbohydrates, you'll store the water you need (which gives you the false impression, by the way, that eating carbs made you gain weight).

" The bottom line, says John Foreyt, Ph.D., Professor of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, is calories. Don't let your readers forget that"

" In spite of mega-hype to the contrary, be confident that a high-carb, low-fat diet built around grains (especially whole grains), beans, vegetables and fruit---can be a healthy, effective road to weight loss."

"If a high carb diet really makes you fat, how come the rice eating Japanese are so enviably slim?" asks Jay Kenny, PhD, RD, a nutrtionist at Pritikin Longevity center. Of course, avoid foods that are high in refined sugar or are loaded with saturated fats. But for energy (fuel), stick with a combination of simple and complex carbohydrates. Use a common sense approach. Don't be misled by fads.