This is something of a continuation of my “What’s in a calorie?”  article.  Where I dumied down good/bad carbs and fats and looked into why protein is the best thing since sliced bread (which is actually horrible for you).  So I want to continue my oversimplification to carbs vs fats.  There are many many more factors, but I’m trying to pieces things together so with nothing more then a nutrition facts label I can get an educated guess on exactly how good or bad that food is.

After a touch of research, here is my “ranking” of specific macro nutrients:

1. Protein
2. Good Fats
3. Complex Carbs
4. Saturated Fats
5. Simple Carbs
6. Trans Fats

Pretty much every article I looked at described Trans Fat as “the devil” so I think that’s pretty good on the bottom.  Current diet trends are all about Fats > Carbs so I have complex carbs under good fats.  Though, complex carbs/saturated fats seem like a grey area and could easily go the other way.  I’d really like to find something that compares the two in more depth.

This is still a work in progress, but I’m getting the ball rolling.

This time around I got introduced to the glycemic index which is another way to rank carbs. And I already know that not all sugars are created equal, but it seems like the only way to tell the difference is to memorize ingredients.  I don’t have time in my life to give everything such a thorough inspection, but I do have thoughts about putting together a program to assign points to foods based on their nutrition facts to make the process much more approachable.  Pretty much just like fooducate – but with an automatic instantaneous result.

Sources:

http://www.acaloriecounter.com/diet/saturated-fat-trans-fat/
Trans fat is the worst, sat fat not as bad

http://www.olsonnd.com/which-is-worse-fat-or-sugar/
Sugars/simple carbs are worse then sat fat, but better then trans fat

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/health/low-carb-vs-low-fat-diet.html
Good carbs are worse then good fats