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Hidden calories in Vegetables

by Aine
(Dublin)

I was always told eat as much fruit and vegetables as you want really, as they have very low gi and calories.

Is this a mitt? I am beginning to understand that there are complex carbs in vegetables and more than you would think.

One carrot is 45 calories

Any thoughts

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Hidden calories in Vegetables

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starstarstarstarstar 		Eating green...
by: Anonymous

...keeps you lean
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starstarstarstarstar 		Interesting
by: Greg

This is actually fairly interesting in a number of ways.

I think the first distinction to make is that you can divide vegetables into two groups.

Starchy and Non Starchy

Starchy is stuff like potatoes and non starchy would be spinach.

The starches would have a lot higher calorie load then the non starches.

Personally i would say carrots fall into the non starchy.

45 calories for one carrot, that's a very big carrot. i would say a large one would be around 30 calories.

Now its interesting that you mention carrots because they were the vegetable that caused the controversy with Glycemic Index.

Carrots have a high GI, which should mean that you should avoid them. But they are carrots? they should be fine.

GI didn't look at a specific component of the food, namely the carbohydrate load.

To cater for this Glycemic load was created, a figure combining Glycemic index and the carbohydrates.

For me its probably a good figure to rely on.

But whats almost more interesting is the realization that a calorie is not a calorie.

Your body gathers different energy amounts per calorie from different foods.

So a calorie, which is our universal measurement for energy in a food, varies.

If anyone knows more on this, i would love to hear cause there isn't a lot of information out there.

But to get back to answering your question: as a rule of thumb you can eat as much non starchy vegetable as you wish. Limit the volume of starchy vegetables, do the same with fruit.(don't avoid eating, just limit the volume)

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