Is dietary carbohydrate essential for human nutrition?

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" However, it appears that during starvation ..., an adequate amount

of substrate for the CNS is provided through gluconeogenesis and

ketogenesis (6). The elimination of dietary carbohydrate did not

diminish the energy supply to the CNS under the conditions of these

experiments.

Second, carbohydrate is recommended to avert symptomatic ketosis.

[but] In the largest published series on carbohydrate restricted

diets, ketosis was not typically symptomatic (7).

The most direct way to determine whether carbohydrate is an essential

nutrient is to eliminate it from the diet in controlled laboratory

studies. In studies involving rats and chicks, the elimination of

dietary carbohydrate caused no obvious problems (8–12). It was only

when carbohydrate restriction was combined with glycerol restriction

(by substituting fatty acids [which are a minor component of dietary

fats] for triacylglycerol [the form in which nearly all dietary fats

occur]) that chicks did not develop normally (13). ...

The usual way to discover the essentiality of nutrients is through the

identification of specific deficiency syndromes (4). I found no

evidence of a carbohydrate deficiency syndrome in humans. ... [T]he

traditional Eskimo diet is very low ( 50 g/d) in carbohydrate (2). ...

" Although there is certainly no evidence from which to conclude that

extreme restriction of dietary carbohydrate is harmless, I was

surprised to find that there is similarly little evidence to conclude

that extreme restriction of carbohydrate is harmful. In fact, the

consequential breakdown of fat as a result of carbohydrate restriction

may be beneficial in the treatment of obesity (7). Perhaps it is time

to carefully examine the issue of whether carbohydrate is an essential

component of human nutrition. "

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/75/5/951-a

hmmm