Did you know that, out of the three big macronutrients (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins), there is one that is completely nonessential? It’s true. You don’t have to include it in your diet and if you don’t, you won’t end up nutritionally deficient. You can survive without this macronutrient for a long time and many cultures have been doing just that for centuries. Want to know which one it is?

Drum roll please.

CARBOHYDRATES

I actually made this into a poll on the Personal Development for Smart People forums and it seems like most people got it. I think it might easily look like the best option, but I know at least one person thought it was a trick question. I was intrigued by several of the responses, especially this one:

I ate minimal carbs for around a dozen years. I based my diet on protein and fat. And mainly eggs, 20 - 30 a day. And as much cream and butter as I could eat. Plus fresh milk (goats milk when I could get it), and yoghurt and cheese, and meat.

The only carbs I ate were a few nuts, and a few greenish bananas and occasionally some potato every few days. Zero fruit and vegetables, zero sugar.

I had all sorts of blood and cholesterol tests. When the doctors used to remark on my awesome health, I would take great delight in telling them what I ate, and to throw their books in the bin. Very entertaining.

I had a humongous training and activity load, and until I ate that way had difficulty retaining muscle and recovering. previously I had tried various natropath’s organic diets, based on carbs. All I got was a bloated guts, sore butt and limits to what I wanted to do physically. I was always considered fairly fit, and played top level basketball, which mean’t I mixed and trained with top athletes from all types of sport. Eating that way was a ridiculously awesome boost, I added heaps of muscle, and had awesome energy and recovery levels and deluxe health. My team mates and associates were always getting mystery viruses, flu’s and injuries. They would continually ask me what I was doing, but couldn’t get their heads around it, despite the fact that I could literally trample opposition players and that my ever improving fitness was a constant talking point. Everyone was waiting for me to die, or I was going to be horrendously afflicted in later life. Both fallacies. The opposite has happened.

I’m not suggesting eating 20 eggs a day or consuming a whole bunch of dairy, but my point here is that even though that’s probably overkill (and I definitely think dairy is a suboptimal food source), it’s a viable diet. You can completely cut out carbs and still get all your nutrients. I find this amazing. You absolutely cannot do the opposite and cut out either protein or fat. You will die. Many cultures have survived on an almost “zero-carb” diet for a long time.

That’s not to say that vegetables and fruits aren’t great. You’d have a hard time convincing me otherwise. And these do have carbs in them. But at the same time, there are many foods, grains in particular, that are relatively low in nutrients, but are heavy in calories. I’m finally left with this question:

Why are we told that a totally nonessential nutrient should form the bulk of our diet?

That’s right. The US government has told us that we have to eat mostly from a food group that we don’t actually need. Don’t you find that a little strange? More and more you see diets that go against this. Low carb diets have been a huge deal recently. And I don’t think it’s necessarily that foods with carbs are bad, but if a food has almost nothing but carbs, why eat it? Most people have the conventional wisdom about nutrition so ingrained in their head. I’m now finding that this conventional wisdom is often wrong. Ask someone you know if carbs are nonessential. See how many people really know the facts.

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