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Carbs and food labels. It’s important information if you’re trying to reduce and amount of carbohydrates you’re eating. But it can be confusing!!
Carbs and food labels. It’s important information if you’re trying to reduce and amount of carbohydrates you’re eating. But it can be confusing!!
Total carbs. Net carbs. Fibre. Sugar. Sugar alcohol. Polyols. WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN?
When you start eating low carb, it’s REALLY IMPORTANT to understand how to read food labels so that you can figure out exactly how many carbs you’re eating.
What you’ll see on a food label
Food labels show:
CARBOHYDRATES, which is the total amount of carbs in that food
FIBRE, which your body doesn’t absorb
SUGAR, which could be added sugar or naturally occurring sugar
SUGAR ALCOHOLS or POLYOLS which are category of carbohydrates (examples include stevia, maltitol, erythritol)- this category isn’t always included in the nutrition information
Once you subtract fibre, you’re left with the NET CARBS, and this is what your body metabolizes or uses/stores. In most cases, this is the number that’s important when you’re trying to figure out your carb intake for the day. Technically you can also subtract at least some of the sugar alcohol carbs but unless you know exactly what kind of sugar alcohol is used and how much of that particular kind is absorbed, you can’t know exactly how much to subtract.
Fibre is your friend in more ways than one
Your body doesn’t metabolize all of the carbs that are present in food. Fibre is a category of carbs that basically goes right through your digestive tract. For this reason you can subtract this from the total carbohydrate content of a food or meal. The same goes for sugar alcohols or polyols. Most of that goes through your digestive system unabsorbed.
For example, in this nutrition label for lupini beans, the total carb is 14g for a serving. The fibre content is 13g and there is no sugar. This means that the NET CARBS for lupini beans is only 1 g of net carbs per serving. And you get 22 g of protein, some calcium and some iron too! Seems pretty good to me!
Polyols…strange word, sweet taste
In this other label, this chocolate bar is sweetened with Monk Fruit Sugar Extract which is a sugar alcohol (more about sugar alcohols in another post) so it contains the category of POLYOLS(some labels which actually say SUGAR ALCOHOLS here). There are 6 g of polyols and 5 g of fibre. So, you subtract the fibre and polyols from the carbohydrate content (12 g) and are left with NET CARBS of only 1g!
By the way, this is a low carb chocolate bar from Habitual Chocolate in Woodstock, Ontario.
This is important when you’re reading your nutrition information in a food diary app like MY FITNESS PAL. Most apps don’t account for net carbs. When you see your carb intake for the day, it’s total carbs, so you can simply subtract the fibre and sugar alcohol content to get your true carb intake. (Some apps don’t show the total sugar alcohol content either.)
Hopefully this will help you choose your carbs wisely 🙂
See also: Counting Calories is Not the Answer