Carb diets... What?

I attended a nutritional meeting that our Illinois Wesleyan University Athletic Department sponsored for all of the sports teams. Since this meeting was supposed to be geared just to the volleyball players I was VERY hopeful that I would be getting a good amount of useful information. But in reality all I learned was that our school likes to waste money on things.

The old woman was probably very knowledgeable, but her presentation was terrible and A LOT of her facts were flawed. She preached a diet plan that included CARBS, CARBS, CARBS! At first I was excited because bread and pasta are some of my favorite foods in the world, but then she said that carbs should make up 2/3 of your plate.... Thats when I knew she was bat-sh&* crazy. This simply make no sense. She brought out processed and sugary foods ( I mean Mini-wheats... really?!), and said they would be good foods for us to eat.

The only good piece of information we got was when I asked her what she thought of the Paleo Diet and like me she said she disagreed with it. She said that what we shouldn't be completely cutting whole food groups out of our diets. She said that what we should watch for is "bio-engineered" wheat. According to her, scientists found a way to make wheat ready for harvest faster, in order to meet high demands, and in doing so the wheat is shorter and more compacted when its harvest. This is the where the "gluten-free" craze came from, because many people are allergic to that.


Other interesting facts:
She also told us that anything with Nutrition Facts on the back is FDA related but that Supplement Facts are not regulated at all. I found this interesting because I had never noticed a difference before.

She also said that 40% of female athletes at IWU binge drink. (But then countered that statistic just two slides later by saying most females will have at least 4 drinks a week... that is not binge drinking by any means.) Though I have no idea where she got these statistics I still find them interesting.


My conclusion:
Carbs are important for your diet and should be a part of most meals that you eat BUT there are good carbs and bad carbs. For example fruits and veggies are carbs! And you should never eat any bread unless it is whole wheat.
Also the amount of carbs you should eat should directly correlate with how much working out you do. In season we athletes absolutely must eat more carbs but off season we should be more careful.