Member-only story
Low Carb, High Carb, What’s Better?
It depends…
When I was an undergrad, I knew a guy who ran marathons. He was in amazing shape. He sorta looked like Opie from The Andy Griffith Show — red-haired, wide-eyed, and sweet, but with the body of superman. He was buff.
He didn’t just run, of course. He also did weights. His body was his temple.
What did he eat?
Lots of pasta before a race.
He carbo-loaded, which is what athletes did back then.
This was based on scientific studies by Swedish researcher Gunvar Ahlborg and his team in 1967.
However, historically, as far back as the 14th century in Europe, a medieval peasant would eat several pounds of bread a day. I read that in order to do their hard physical labor, they needed a lot of calories — estimates are that they needed about 4,000–5,000 calories a day.
This is more than the physically active Amish farmer eats today, but one has to take into account that medieval peasants also needed more calories in the winter just to stay warm — they didn’t have well insulated, sturdy houses or wood-burning stoves.
The thing is, for most of human history, very few people had the luxury to be sedentary and carbohydrates were known as the fuel that allowed them to do the work…
