Help me understand "carbs"

[Kelsie]

When counting carbs, what do you count, total carbs or carbs from sugar?

I'm not through reading the book yet and not sure if I understand. For example, if you have a Carbolite bar that say's 0 carbs from sugar but 15 total carbs, what am I suppose to count?

 

[nativetxn]

Kels, the carbolite bar will have a little yellow square that will tell you how many "impact" carbs each bar contains.

Impact carbs are figured by taking the total carbohydrate count and subtracting the grams from fiber and the grams from sugar <i>alcohols</i>. The highest carb count in a Carbolite bar that I have found is the Chocolate truffle 1 ounce bar. I think the impact carbs are 1.2.

Impact carbs are carbohydrates that affect your blood sugar level. Some people are sensitive to sugar alcohols and get knocked out of ketosis by them. I'm one of the lucky ones they have no effect on me.

 

[glo]

Kels...Like Kath said look for the total impact carbs.


Totl carbs are all the carbs that something has. Under that you will find carbs that come from fiber and you can subtract those from the total carbs, because they are digested differently and do not get converted to fat. The same goes to any sugar alcohol carbs, that are sometimes listed.


If you see "sugar" under the carb section, then those are not good and NOT subtracted. We try to avoid those.


Does that make sense.

Have you done fitday.com ?
You put in what you eat, and it will tell you how many carbs and how much fiber and stuff. I can give you my password if you want to see what my stuff looks like.


Hugs

 

[dizneegirl]

It all gets rather confusing, doesn't it?

If you want to be safe, count ALL carbs.

If you want to use Atkins "net carb" system, you need to do a little math. He says you don't have to count fiber carbs, as they aren't digested, therefore, don't raise your blood sugar level.

For example... my bag of peanuts in the shell says:
Total carbohydrates - 7g
Dietary Fiber - 3g
Sugars - less than 1 g

Net carbs would be 4g per serving.

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Sugar alcohols are a whole 'nother ballgame.

If you're going to eat sugar-free candy, bars, etc., you're probably going to run into sugar alcohols. They have names like malitol, mannitol, isomalt, sorbitol, xylitol, lactitol, erythritol, hydrogenated starch hydrolysate...

Atkins says they have no effect on blood sugar. Quite a few low-carbers would disagree with that.

Anyway... safest way to go is to count them as carbs. Some people count half of them as carbs (still on the safe side). Atkins says you can subtract them just like fiber... they don't get digested, therefore, don't raise your blood sugar. (Side note: if you have a lot of problems with the sugar alcohols causing a laxative effect, you probably aren't digesting them, and don't need to count them as carbs...)

On the Russell Stover Coconut Minatures, the label says:

Total carbohydrates - 21g
Dietary Fiber - 2g
Maltitol - 18g

If you're going by Atkins Net Carbs, you'd have an effective carb count of 1g per serving.

If you're playing it safe and counting half for sugar alcohols, you'd have 10g per serving.

If you have to count sugar alcohols as sugar (i.e. - they cause you to have sugar spikes like regular candy used to, they knock you out of ketosis, they cause you to have cravings, etc.), you'd just subtract the fiber, and have 19g of carbs.

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It's really very easy to get the hang of, once you start really looking at labels.

If you stay away from the sugar-free bars and candies, it's so simple... you only need to worry about Total Carbs and Fiber.