Get pasta bad reputation

IN the mid-1990s, people were starting to talk about carb-restriction as the answer to dieters’ prayers — the South Beach Diet, the Atkins’ Diet, and others, evangelised the benefits of replacing potatoes, bread, pasta and rice with red meats and fatty foods that were traditionally no-nos.

We were told the results would be dramatic, and in many cases they were. A new industry emerged, its brave new ‘low-carb’ philosophy challenging the long-held dietary dogma that fats were the ‘baddies’ and the cause of dramatic increases in obesity.

But could avoiding carbs be the solution to all our weighty woes? To answer, we have to understand more about how carbs work in the body, and how our metabolism changes when we cut them out.