The default of carbohydrate intake goal seems high for weight loss.

CyberTone

SueInAz wrote: »

Cashgrinder wrote: »

One of the main reason I avoid simple carbs is because the volume of food. Simple carbs are high calorie for a little food. A 1.5 ounce snickers bar has 215 calories while 1 cup (about 4 ounces) of apple slices has 95 calories. The apple will keep you satisfied longer due to the volume. The fiber content in the apple will slowdown the absorption of the sugers preventing a spike on insulin. The snickers will cause a spike making you hungry again.

Your example really has nothing to do with simple carbs vs. complex carbs especially if we're simply talking calories. A Snickers bar has 11 grams of fat and an apple has less than a half gram which accounts for most of the calorie difference; fat has more than twice the calories of sugar (9 grams vs. 4 grams). I'm not sure the rest of your conclusion is entirely valid.

For starters, a 1.56 ounce (44 grams) Snickers bar has that 11 grams of fat plus 3 grams of protein and 28 total grams of carbohydrates, of which 20 grams is sugar and .8 grams is fiber.

By comparison, a cup of apple slices has 0.2 grams of fat and .3 grams of protein. There are 15 grams of carbohydrates of which 11 grams is fructose (a simple sugar) and 3 grams are fiber. In fact, if you subtract the grams of everything else from the total 165 grams in that cup of apple slices, you'll see that it is mostly water.

While the larger volume of the apple will certainly fill you up more than the Snickers bar at first, the protein and fat in the Snickers bar will take longer to process than the fructose, water and small amount of fiber in the apple slices. I'm betting that whichever keeps you feeling full longer may very well come down to a wash or simple first-person perception.

^^ This. So much this. The original snickers to apple comparison lacked any acknowledgment of the difference in water content.

I had drafted a similar response, but did not bother posting it a while back. I'm glad I didn't post it, because mine would not have been half as thoroughly and eloquently stated as @SueInAz has provided in this post.

If I ate a 16g mini snickers bar (80 Cals) and drank 4.5 ounces of water to quiet a bit of hunger, I would feel just as satiated, and most likely for just as long a time, as eating a 149g small apple (which contains 4.5 ounces of water and 77 Cals).

Satiety is different for different people.