What Net Carbs Really Mean on Food Labels
Many low-carb foods are marketed as having “zero net carbs,” but a closer look at the label reveals that most of the “canceled” carbs come from dietary fiber or sugar alcohols . What does this magic mean for calorie and carbohydrate counters? Not as much as you would like the marketing to believe.
Fast primer for fiber and sugar alcohols
Most foods, especially in America, combine all carbohydrates – sugar, sugar alcohol, and fiber – into total carbohydrates. So how do they differ from each other?
Fiber has a number of health benefits , including, but not limited to,improving blood sugar control , helping with excretion of feces , facilitating weight loss due to impaired absorption of carbohydrates, proteins and fats in nutrients , and lowering blood cholesterol. On the other hand, sugar alcohols are sugar molecules chemically treated with hydrogen molecules. While they are an excellent sugar substitute, mostly for diabetics, eating too many of them (over 10 grams) can make your teeth angry or worse, diarrhea.
In case you’re wondering, sugar alcohols do occur naturally, but not in the huge amounts you would find in sugar-free foods; you’ve probably heard of a few such as xylitol, sorbitol, erythritol and many other names ending in -tol. They mimic the sweetness of table sugar, but are usually lower in calories than real sugar.
Despite much controversy on the Internet, there are calories in fiber, depending on the fiber classification. Most sources would say fiber contains “negative calories” because the body lacks enough digestive enzymes to break them down into usable energy, but bacteria in the colon can convert some fiber into available energy (in the form of short-chain fatty acids ). By putting the calories anywhere between 1.5-2.5 calories per gram, depending on the type, there is simply no consensus on this. Meanwhile, the calorie content of sugar alcohol ranges from 1.5 to 3 calories per gram, also depending on the type of sugar alcohol.
So, neither fiber nor sugar alcohol are really high-calorie foods. However, in daily real amounts, the calories from any of them are so low that they are not worth worrying about. We’ve already written about “free food” that you can eat in reasonable amounts without requiring close monitoring of your food intake if you do. But you shouldn’t completely ignore them, thinking that calories just disappear into the ether (although some of them may well disappear in your feces if you eat a lot of fiber).
So what is net carbohydrate?
Net carbs are determined from total carbs minus dietary fiber and sugar alcohols. Net carbohydrates are also known by other names: “effective” carbohydrates or “effective” carbohydrates. Currently, the FDA has not yet developed any firm guidelines for low-carb foods so that a manufacturer can legally declare their foods are indeed low-carb.
In other words, manufacturers can say whatever they want, except that they explicitly state that the product is low-carb.
This labeling of effective carbohydrates makes some sense for diabetics, as they must control their carbohydrate intake – particularly refined sugar, which rapidly raises blood sugar – for health reasons. Typically, diabetics must differentiate between the types of carbohydrates in their food to determine how much total carbohydrates will actually affect their blood sugar levels.
Fiber and sugar alcohols interact differently in the body. In particular, most sugar alcohols are not (completely) digested or absorbed in the same way as sugar or starchy carbohydrates, and therefore have comparatively less – but still present – effects on blood sugar levels.
Fiber is special because it has a positive effect on blood glucose through a combination of several things: First, it blocks the absorption of carbohydrates (and other nutrients, including protein and fat) to some extent, which ultimately lowers total calories. absorbed by the body if fiber is eaten in large quantities; second, it delays gastric emptying, which is a fancy way of saying that food leaves your stomach more slowly. When this happens, you avoid the spikes in blood glucose levels that usually occur when you eat something that you digest quickly, like Kit-Kat.
Marketing trap
In the midst of this low-carb weight loss craze, you will see a variety of foods, usually high in carbohydrates, such as breads or tortillas, which contain “only such and such net carbs.” The mention of net carbs is the fact that food manufacturers don’t actually treat fiber and sugar alcohols as true carbs due to their aforementioned less significant effects on blood sugar. Hence, in some cases, you may even see “zero net carbs”.
It has a very sour brine. For diabetics, labeling can be misleading because they should not completely exclude all sugar alcohols from the total carbohydrate intake. Nutritionists recommend that sugar alcohol be considered half of the total carbohydrate content of food. For example, if your food contains 18 grams of sugar alcohols, it is recommended that you count 9 grams as effective carbohydrates.
Another problem here is similar to the phenomenon we saw during the low fat and low fat craze back in the 90s : people might think they could completely ignore other carbs and overeat because of the halo effect of those foods – if they seem healthier. , there is more – that’s okay!
