True, but there's also a distinction to be made among kinds of carbohydrates. I think of it in two categories, coal and jet fuel. Coal is stuff like potatoes - it's fuel, but it lasts a long time. Twinkies, white bread, and even white rice are jet fuel - they burn really fast, and then they're gone.
Definitely differences, but I'm not convinced it matters so much, at least in healthy people.
E.g., lots of people eat a whole lot of white rice and seem to do quite well on it. The Hadza, a tribe in africa, at certain times of the year, get about half their calories from honey, and they are very healthy. And fruit would certainly also have to be in the rocket-fuel category, no?
(If you're already unhealthy (e.g. type II diabetic), there seems to be a lot of benefit in going very-low or no-carb.)
"The honey isn’t your store-bought, pristine golden syrup smelling faintly of HFCS. It’s straight up honeycomb, teeming with bees and larvae and pollen and the queenly secretions called royal jelly. In fact, studies tend to emphasize that the Hadza get 15-50% of their calories not from honey, but from “honey and bee larvae.”"
-https://www.marksdailyapple.com/hadza-honey/
They aren't eating the honey that your or I eat. Not to mention, they're probably far more physically active.
That's a good point (especially for anyone considering making store-bought honey a staple of their diet), and an interesting observation, but even so, they would still, at the extreme end of 50% larva, be getting something like overall 25% of their calories from a "rocket fuel" of simple sugar.
So I remain convinced that the main problem with modern processed food is not the amount or makeup of the carbs, but more likely the novel ingredients and quantities of fats.
The Hadza do move a lot, but not a crazy amount: about 2 hours per day of "moderate to vigerous physical activity."
I would predict that 2 hours of exercise a day are not going to save you from a diet of twinkies and oreos; exercise is great, but eating healthy food is critical.
2 hours average of "moderate to vigorous" physical activity is not a trivial amount. I've personally lost a lot of weight (~12kg) doing less than that amount of average exercise consistently, while eating a crap diet (I moved, and started commuting to work and school via bike).
Anyway, at the end of the day calories in/calories out is a hard limit. Sure, they may be getting even 50% of their diet from "rocket fuel". But if they're calorie constrained by a hunter/gatherer lifestyle, why would that matter?
I didn't say it was trivial, just not a crazy amount! :-)
No doubt calories in/calories out must ultimately be obeyed, and you could w/ strictly controlled feeding achieve any weight you want by titrating calories, but I think people often misinterpret this fact to mean that any two isocaloric diets will result in the same weight; that's untrue because the "out" side of the equation is not constant -- different foods have different effects on your metabolism.
(And also appetite, which from a pratical perspective, is also hugely important -- most people don't rigerously eat X calories, they eat until they don't feel like eating anymore.)
What you’re referring to is (and I’m over simplifying here) glucose versus sucrose.
Potatoes have glucose, and aren’t sweet.
Twinkies and the like are full of sugar aka sucrose (which is half fructose) which is the real issue.
Avoiding all food with fructose is a good idea. Not only is it bad because only your liver can process it (none of your other cells can use it, unlike glucose) but fructose is in some emerging studies to prohibit lepton signaling. Leptin is the hormone that tells your brain you’re full and no longer need to eat. Many obese people have impaired signaling.
Food addition is not a good term. Food addictive addiction is better. No one would eat the cookies if it wasn’t for the sugar. Or get addicted to coffee without the caffeine.
Sugar is the same as alcohol - it has calories, sure, so could be considered an energy source. But it has no other nutritional value. Yet it is regarded as a food.
One cigarette is not harmful, yet we know smoking everyday will cause you some ill effects. It’s the same with sugar. An acute dose in itself is not dangerous. But over time it does.
Eat carbs that are coal, not jet fuel.