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Comment by alextgordon | Hacker News Reader

OK but when people talk about "carbs" they aren't talking about chemicals, they're talking about foods.

Nobody is ever going to know what the chemical composition of a potato is, it's just a potato. Fibre, water, protein content is "carbs" when it's in a potato.

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Fixing notation would definitely help talking about nutrition. Scientific terms should be used precisely, or not used at all. Dear diet industry: invent your own words, or capture the generic ones. Start with 'magic'.

I'm not really sure what you are saying, sorry.

a carbohydrate refers to a molecule made up of a chain of carbon atoms bonded with hydrogen atoms (if I remember correctly from Organic Chemistry).

There are plenty of different molecules, such as Sucrose, Glucose, etc, which are all forms of carbohydrate molecules.

But when people refer to "carbs", they're not referring to the chemical molecule, but most likely processed carbohydrates such as bread.

Hopefully that's more clear

But a potato isn't processed, and people call it carbs.

I imagine the "carbs" label extends to both processed/unprocessed/simple/complex carbohydrates, which I think potato belongs to "simple" and "unprocessed" (according to this[1] website).

[1] http://www.ehow.com/about_4613535_chemical-makeup-potato.htm...

No, potatoes have some simple carbs but they are predominantly starches, which are complex carbs.

awesome, thanks for the correction, I appreciate it.

Now I'm lost. Isn't that all categories of carbohydrate, meaning they're correct?

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