ABSTRACT
Carbohydrates have traditionally supplied the bulk of the energy in most human diets. They still provide the bulk of the energy intake for most of the world population, whose diets are based on cereals or starchy roots. Dietary carbohydrates are almost exclusively derived from the vegetable kingdom and the carbohydrate content of most foods of animal origin is dietetically insignificant. The only major exception is lactose or milk sugar, which provides around 40 per cent of the energy in human milk and 30 per cent of the energy in cow milk. It is usually only in populations consuming large amounts of meat, oily fish and dairy produce that fat challenges carbohydrates as the principal source of dietary energy. Some affluent vegetarian populations may derive a high proportion of their dietary energy from fat in the form of extracted vegetable oils and margarine.
