If Palmerton were not the Gateway to the Poconos but just miles away from the Pyrenees or the Alps, there’d be a pretty good chance you’d watch way too much pro cycling instead of way too much pro football.

To wit: If you lived anywhere in France and your TV was on during the afternoon of July 27, there’s a 1 in 2 chance you were watching the final stage of the Tour de France, what’s in essence pro cycling’s Super Bowl. In the U.S., however, the odds that you watched any single race stage on any given day are about 1 in 83,000.

Now you know why I don’t write a column about what’s happening in the sport of pro cycling for the Times News. But I will write about the training and eating pro cyclists do if it can help you become a healthier you.

Which is why you’ll now learn about a take-at-home test developed by nutritionists who work with the World Tour, pro cycling’s equivalent to the NFL. The test reveals exactly how many grams of carbohydrates cyclists burn while riding.

The reason why this advancement is so significant in the cycling world is simple. Carbohydrates are the body’s preferred fuel during any type of lengthy moderate-to-intense aerobic exercise.

So if you consume too few during a race of 100 miles (the typical distance of any individual stage of the Tour de France), your brain becomes a bit foggy. Your muscles become a bit achey, and the power you’re able to apply to the pedals lessens as your fuel store diminishes.

As a result, you become more susceptible to what every pro cyclist who rides in the TdF fears: falling behind the peloton and having to race all out and all alone simply to beat that day’s time deadline to remain in the race.

To remain in the race, the human race. That’s why the development of this carb-burning test has significance in your world as well.

In your world, ingesting too many low-quality carbs is worse than a pro cyclist attempting the Tour de France on too few of any kind. It’s been linked to a higher risk of developing a major chronic disease, like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, as well as a higher risk of dying early from any disease at all.

But how many is too many if you’re not racing 2074.6 miles over 23 days, but simply living a typical life?

To help answer that, consider results of the aforementioned carb-burning test Josh Croxton shares in an article he wrote for Cyclingnews.

When Croxton took the test, he burned 89 grams of carbs an hour during the moderate 90-minute stationary bicycle ride that’s done along with the periodic consumption of a special carb drink containing carbon-13 isotopes. Yet Dr. Sam Impey, a former pro cycling team nutritionist, only burned 69 grams of carbs per hour following the same procedure.

Both of these numbers, though, are far lower than the intake of 120 grams of carbs per hour that’s become de rigueur during any pro tour, or any single-day race for that matter. In fact, there are individuals competing on bikes in other ways (gravel bikes races and triathlons) and ingesting even more than that, up to 200 grams of carbs per hour.

Translate carb grams into carb calories and the variance here is more than 500 calories per hour and further proof of something I’ve been writing for 30 years. That we all metabolize food differently; therefore, the diet that works so well for me may not work well — or at all — for you.

Moreover, your metabolic process can be altered by the foods you choose to eat, lifestyle, and aging. So to be really healthy and stay that way, you need to endlessly experiment with your diet.

But that’s not to say you can’t gain insight from the scientific experiments like the study published online May 16 by JAMA Network Open. In it, researchers reviewed a series of health questionnaires filled out by 47,513 women all under 60 years of age when the surveying that ran from 1984 to 2016 started.

The researchers wanted to evaluate the long-term role of dietary carb intake and carb quality in healthy aging — which they defined as “surviving to the age of 70 years while being free from 11 major chronic diseases [such as cancer, type 2 diabetes, congestive heart failure, kidney failure, and stroke], having no impairment in memory or physical function, and being in good mental health.” Their number crunching revealed that consuming low-quality, refined carbs — like white bread, typical pasta, pastries, bagged snacks and sweets, and sugary drinks — led to a 13 percent lower chance of healthy aging.

Consuming high-quality carbs, however — like fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains — increased the odds up to 37 percent. Furthermore, they found that you couldn’t eat too many high-quality carbs, provided they were replacing ones from refined carbs, total fat ingestion, or animal protein.