 Carbohydrate means basically hydrated carbon, carbon, dioxide, and water, which is what plants use to make carbs with, and that's all that's left, after we then burn them for energy to power our muscles and brain. But this process of oxidizing carbs to make energy is messy, and generates free radicals, such that if we chug down straight sugar water, the level of oxidation in our bloodstream goes up over the next few hours. Why would our bodies evolve to have a negative reaction to our primary fuel? Because over our millions of years of evolution, there was no such thing as sugar water. All sugars and starches came prepackaged with what? With anti-oxidants. In nature, sugar always comes with phytonutrients. If you drink the same amount of sugar in the form of orange juice, you don't get that spike in oxidation, why? Because the sugar in fruit comes prepackaged with anti-oxidants. Can't we just drink vitamin C-enriched sugar water? No, it wasn't the vitamin C in the OJ, but the citrus phytonutrients, like asperitin and naryngin, that beat back the oxidation. If we don't eat phytonutrient-rich plant foods with every meal, like fruit, then for hours after we eat, our bodies are tipped out of balance into a pro-oxidative state, which can then set us up for oxidant-stressed diseases. The free radicals in our body can oxidize the fats in our blood, for example, and set us up for heart disease. Here's the levels of oxidized fat in our blood, one, two, three hours after sugar water ingestion. And the corresponding drop in vitamin E levels in our blood is our bodies' anti-oxidant stores are used up within hours. If we don't eat phytonutrient foods with our meals, our body has to dip into its backup supply of antioxidants, and you can't get away with that for long. So, while ideally we should stuff our faces with as many phytonutrient-rich foods as we can, in the very least, we should eat enough antioxidants to counter the oxidation of digestion. At the very least, we don't want to slide backwards every day and end up with fewer antioxidants in our bodies than we woke up with. Just to break even, here's about how many antioxidants we need every day, depending on how much we eat, just to counter the oxidation of digestion. This is measured in millimoles of Trollox equivalents. Men in the US average about 2,500 calories a day, and so should be getting at least 11,000 micromoles a day. Women who eat about 1,800 calories on average should get at least 8,000 just to stay solvent. The average American doesn't even get half the minimum. No wonder oxidant stress-related diseases abound. We're getting so few antioxidants in our diet, we can't even keep up with the free radicals created just digesting our meals. We are a nation in chronic oxidative debt. In developed societies, we eat a lot of food, but not enough plants. Which could result in exaggerated and prolonged metabolic oxidative and immune imbalance, presenting opportunity for biological insult that over time could supersede biological defense and repair systems, manifesting incelular dysfunction, disease, and ultimately death.