A healthy, balanced diet provides your body with the carbohydrates it needs to survive. Carbohydrates give your body the energy it needs to breathe, maintain your body temperature, contract muscles and perform other bodily functions. If you're not sure whether your diet contains enough carbohydrates, ask a dietitian or your doctor to help you design an appropriate healthy-eating plan.
Simple Carbohydrates
Experts break carbohydrates down into two basic groups: simple and complex. The category of simple carbohydrates includes single and double sugars. For example, single sugars, also known as monosaccharides, include fructose, glucose and galactose. Double sugars, or disaccharides, consist of two sugars linked together. Table sugar, for instance, is composed of glucose and fructose. Fruits, sugary snacks and beverages have significant amounts of simple carbohydrates.
Complex Carbohydrates
Complex carbohydrates are composed of many sugars linked together. They include starches, glycogen -- which is the form in which your body stores carbohydrates as fat -- and fiber. Complex carbohydrates occur naturally in many foods. For example, whole grains, vegetables and legumes contain complex carbohydrates.
Expert Insight
When health experts describe carbohydrates as being good or bad, they don't mean to say that you must avoid certain types of carbohydrates completely. Rather, they're commenting on a public-health issue. Too many people fill their diets with processed foods that contain significant amounts of simple carbohydrates. For example, sugary desserts and beverages have little nutritive benefit but many calories. The result is that many people have sugar-loaded, high-calorie, low-nutrition diets, which can lead to health problems, including obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Healthy Sources
The most effective approach to proper carbohydrate intake is to minimize your simple-carbohydrate intake and maximize your complex-carbohydrate intake. In other words, eat a healthy, balanced diet that contains mostly fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes. This will supply your body with all the carbohydrates it needs, including fiber, which aids in digestion and helps promote low cholesterol. Also, these healthy food sources contain many other vitamins and minerals your body needs to survive, so they offer significant nutritive benefits.
Foods to Avoid
Many processed foods contain large amounts of sugar, so you should mostly avoid these. If you do buy processed foods, avoid products that contain added sugars, such as sucrose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, maple syrup and fructose. While these sugars aren't necessarily bad for you in small amounts, too much can lead to excessive weight gain and unhealthy blood sugar levels.
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