Pasta. Potatoes. Bread. Rice.

In other words, all the good things you have to drop off the menu as you grow older.

Although you might know just how many carbs you need to eat to keep your body in tip top form, have you ever considered factoring in when you eat them?

In other words, what time of the day is best suited for your body?

If this has been baffling you, a small study might have finally found the answer.

A common belief is that “eating carbs in the evening is worse for you than having them for breakfast,” reports BBC – but that’s not necessarily the case.

Trust Me I’m a Doctor conducted the study, and were actually surprised at the result.

First off, a small group of people all ate a carb-loaded breakfast. They then consumed a small amount of carbs throughout the rest of the day. The result? The average blood glucose response was 15,9 units.

After five days of following a balanced diet, the same group of people were subjected to five days of low-carb breakfasts and high-carb dinners. This resulted an average glucose response sitting at 10,4 units.

Interesting, isn’t it? But why so important? Well, diabetes:

[E]ating lots of carbohydrates, particularly in the form of sugary treats such as white bread, rice or pasta, is bad for your waist and for your blood-sugar control.

The reasoning is that if you eat lots of carbohydrates and sugars, particularly the sort without fibre that get quickly absorbed, they will rapidly push up your blood glucose (sugar) levels.

Unless you burn this glucose off by doing exercise, your pancreas will pump out lots of the hormone insulin to bring these levels back down to normal.

It does this by storing the excess sugar from the carbs as fat. Too much stored fat, particularly visceral fat (inside the abdomen) can lead to serious health problems such as type-2 diabetes.

You can read the full breakdown of the study here, but the overall suggestion is to just balance your meal out and break away from the white carbs.

If you eat a heavy carb meal in the morning, then go easy for the rest of the day, and vice versa, okay? Cool.

Else you might end up with type 2 diabetes and that’s not pretty.

[source:bbc]