Vilification of carbohydrates gone pasta joke

For those hoping to flip a new leaf after today's pancake splurge, there's no shortage of helpful advice from nutritionists.

But the current fad for starch-free food has unleashed a lenten crusade from carbohydrate manufacturers in particular.

If you're giving up anything this year, they recommend you could start with the Atkins diet.

With gyms and health clubs expected to be busier than normal during the next six weeks, a report from Ireland's oat millers defends the much-maligned carbohydrate as an essential source of energy.

Their intervention follows a recent food summit in Rome, in which pasta manufacturers took a similar stand. Subtitled "Pasta Fights Back", the Rome conference was a spaghetti western in which the industry defended its honour against fashionable American diets that have hit export sales, and now threaten to cross the Atlantic.

These are tough times to be a starch in the US. Thanks to the Atkins, South Beach and other diets, carbohydrates are currently seen as the Islamic militants of the food world, the root of all nutritional evil. For the Italians, this indiscriminate vilification of carbohydrates has gone well pasta joke. And now the Irish millers have added their report to the fight.

"Optimal Nutrition in Exercise - the Role of Carbohydrate" offers advice for everyone from the elite athlete to the couch potato trying to reform. Whether you're aiming to win an Olympic medal or lose a spare tyre, its message is that you need to maintain your energy levels while exercising. And in order to maintain energy levels, you need carbohydrate.

An athlete may require up to twice as much of it as somebody not in training, but "a single exercise session can use up a person's carbohydrate store". Even when there is no physical activity, the report adds, carbohydrate is essential for the brain: "After exercising, it is important to replace fuel reserves. If this does not happen, the body may resort to taking reserves from muscle."

Report author nutritionist Nuala Collins says that, especially when training or competing away from home, meals and snacks "should be packed in sports bags in the same way as kit and clothing are", to ensure quick replenishment.

And, like the pasta manufacturers, she is keen to stress there are many kinds of carbohydrate.

Top sports people in particular need to understand the "glycaemic index", which measures how different foods affect the blood glucose levels critical for performance.

Predictably, the report concludes that breakfast is the first step to proper daily nutrition. And, not surprisingly, it recommends that "cereals such as porridge" are a good place to start.

But the bottom line is that, even if you take your porridge with a pinch of salt, the scientific argument for carbohydrates cannot be ignored.

Optimal Nutrition in Exercise - the role of carbohydrate is available at www.oatmillers.ie