What's for Breakfast: Carbs, anyone?

A quick jolt of insulin waiting to happen.

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

When we eat carbs, they turn into glucose, a form of sugar, and the body responds by producing insulin. Insulin is a powerful hormone that delivers the glucose to muscle cells to be burned, or to fat cells to be stored as fat.

Too much insulin over a period of time--meaning too much consumption of carbohydrates, especially highly refined carbs such as white bread, rice, pasta, sugar--and eventually to receptor cells on the muscles wear out. The body produces more and more insulin to get the receptor cells to respond. When they don't, you've got diabetes.

Maybe we should be having a national conversation on insulin, and not just obesity.

The meals in D.C. schools, loaded with sugar and cheap, refined carbohydrates, are a perfect recipe for obesity and diabetes down the road. But guess what? There are no limits on carbohydrates--and especially sugar--in any of the prevailing regulations that govern school meal programs.