How to read labels for low carb foods?

October

Hi,

How can I tell if a food is considered low carb? When reading the nutritional label on food items, can I tell by how many carb per 100g?

Thanks in advance

rubadub

It says it right on the pack. It will usually have
carbohydrate 30g
(of which sugars 10g)
This means 30g carbs overall and 10g is sugar. Now this sugar can be naturally occuring, or added. Check the ingredients list, stuff is listed in order of greatest first, but watch for tricks. If you have a particular food you want checked then post up the ingredients and nutritional info and I or others will have a stab at analyzing it. There are several tricks to watch out for.

A big thing to watch is portion sizes, and sleazy marketing techniques. e.g. you will hear of milk being described as "only" ~4% fat. But the problem is some people could drink a litre a day which is 1000g, while other foods are not eaten in those quantities. Many also do not even realise the sugar content of milk, since it is not particularly sweet, skimmed milk has more sugar than full sugar lilt! albeit natural lactose sugar.

You can find info online so post a link or cut & paste the info. One of my favourites to point out is bran flakes, marketed as healthy right?- but actually muck..
http://www.kelloggs.co.uk/products/branflakes/Cereal/bran_flakes.aspx

Wholewheat, Wheatbran (21%), Sugar, Salt, Barley Malt Flavouring, Honey, Niacin, Iron, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin (B2), Thiamin (B1), Folic Acid, Vitamin D, Vitamin B12.

the ones in bold are sugar, and why the hell is salt the 4th main ingredient!

kJ 1383
- kcal 326
Protein (g) 10
Carbohydrates (g) 67
- sugars (g) 22
- starch (g) 45
Fat (g) 2
- saturates (g) 0.5
Fibre (g) 15
Sodium (g) 0.5

The wheat will have some naturally occurring sugars in it, but you can see 22% is sugars, so about 20% is added sugars. Salt is sodiumx2.5, so there is 1.25% salt in it. Since they are listed in order of greatest this also reveals that there is under 1.25% honey in it. i.e. they might have it on the list so people think there is a lot of some expensive ingredient in it, when really there is very little and it could just be flavourings that make it taste strongly of certain ingredients.

The quoted portion size on cereals is a joke, just weigh a bowl out and see. You really need to weigh all your food for a time to get used to what you really are eating.

Some packs will have listings per portion size only, so you must do the math.

e.g. a portion of 40g.
carbs 10g.
this means you must divide by 40 and mulitply by 100, to get 25g per 100g, or 25%,

The_Conductor

Another thing to note on labels- is the manner in which the labels emblazed with 'Low Fat' almost inevitably have shocking levels of sugar and salt in lieu of the misplaced fats. The larger multiples are particularly adept at this trick.....

ApeXaviour

I'd say as a general rule of thumb, if the protein and fat add up to more than the carbohydrates (in grams), it can be considered reduced or low carb.

Soft drinks might appear low carb, only 20g per 100, about the same as cheese. But that's only because the rest is water. i.e. at least 95% of the calories from 7up or coke or sunny delight would be pure sugar.

Stay away from most things with sugars. Low carb means practically no sugar, berries (not in jam) being the main exception.

October

Thanks for the replies. I found a new breakfast cereal (well, new to me!) - Vogel's Ultra Bran Soya & Linseed. A 30g bowl with a low fat yogurt is only 2 WW points and I find it very filling. Per 100g it is

Energy - 250kcal
Protein - 15.3g
Carbohydrates - 45.3g
- of which sugars 9.9g
Fat 1.8g
- of which saturates 0.3g
- of which Mono-unsaturates 0.3g
- of which Polyunsaturates 1.2g
- of which Cholesterol Nil
Fibre - 33.4g
Sodium - 0.1g

Ingredients - Cereals (84%) (Wheat bran, wheat flour, corn starch (Hi-Maize) (8%)), Linseed meal (Linola) (8%), Fructose, Soya Isoflavone Concentrate (1.4%), Minerals (Tricalcium Phosphate, Zinc Oxide), Salt, Natural Colour (Annatto), Vitamins (Vitamin E, Folic Acid)

The box says it's low fat, low sat fat, low salt and medium sugar.

I have high cholesterol so I know it's better to choose foods that have 1g or less saturated fat per 100g. Is there a similiar guideline figure for low carb content?

Thanks

October

Thanks ApeXaviour. I presume you mean regular Coke and 7Up? I don't drink soft drinks often and if I do, I usually drink Diet Coke.

I've just noticed on the Vogel box that it says "Low GI (41)" - How do they work out the 41 figure?

I've tried Google for the answers but there seems to be a lot of confusing and conflicting information there!!

Thanks

rubadub

October wrote: »

I have high cholesterol so I know it's better to choose foods that have 1g or less saturated fat per 100g. Is there a similiar guideline figure for low carb content?

It all depends on your portion sizes. You cannot really say food with 1g per 100g is "good", since if it was milk you could be eating/drinking 1000g of that food/drink.

The guideline figure might be a % of your overall calorie intake per day. i.e. you can not just say 60g is recommended per day, since a huge man will need more than a small woman. Usually you will see percentages of your foods. e.g. 20/30/50 of carbs/fat/protein (those figures are just made up, somebody else might advise typical low carb ratios).

The cereal is not brilliant. the fat is from the linseed

Wheat bran, wheat flour, corn starch (Hi-Maize) (8%

I never understand this, they have stripped & processed perfectly good grain of its outer layer, the bran, then processed the rest into white flour (wheat flour) then added the wheat flour back to the bran. It is undergoing totally unneccesary processing steps. The corn starch is again refined carbs. These refined carbs are not much better than eating sugar.

Fructose

This is the added sugar, and not a particularly good one. It was probably added since it has relatively low GI to other sugars, but I hear many would prefer other higher GI sugars.

Soya Isoflavone Concentrate, Minerals (Tricalcium Phosphate,

I don't like eating things I cannot pronounce

Salt, Natural Colour (Annatto)

I would prefer to add my own salt & colour if I really thought it needed it.

The box says it's low fat, low sat fat, low salt and medium sugar.

Never trust the front of the box! the truth is on the side

I just eat porridge oats uncooked. All cereals will be considered high carb, but porridge is far less processed than most cereals. Your one is better than a lot of ones out there, but like many others seems to be masquareding as healthy when it is not that great.

Museli is just porridge oats, nuts & dried fruit. You can just chop up fresh fruit and add some buts to oats. It is cheaper and more filling than many cereals, and healthier. You can also blend it to suit your own taste more. I also mix in unflavoured whey protein in my porridge.

Soft drinks might appear low carb, only 20g per 100

most I see are 10-12% like coke or 7-up, the ones hitting near 20 are the energy drinks like lucozade, these use glucose which is less sweet per gram than normal sugar (sucrose) so they can use more and not be sickly tasting. Fruit juices are usually 11-12% too, grape juice is 14-16%. Problem, like with milk is that you can easily drink 400g of soft drinks, while eating 400g of other foods is a big job.

October

Thanks rubadub. Great information there and I am getting a better understanding of this. I have 5 stone to lose and am following WW but I want to make the most of the foods I eat and generally want to eat low fat and low carb. I thought I was on to a winner there with the Vogels!! I had started eating porridge with yogurt and I like it. Will go back to that and start adding dried fruit and nuts.

When I eat pasta or rice, I eat small portions and bulk up my plate with lots of mostly green vegetables and have about 100-150g of meat, mostly chicken and sometimes beef or lentils.

I just had a two WW point snack of ham with mixed lettuce leaves wrapped in the ham - was nearly big enough to consider it a lunch!!

Thanks again for all the information

jdivision

Low fat isn't necessarily good October. you need to eat a lot of protein and a lot of healthy fats to lose weight. just avoid the carbs.

El_Dangeroso

Also, it's worth bearing in mind that the nutritional info can be legally be inaccurate to the tune of 10%.

Also, a lot of the time it is far more inaccurate than that, take pistashios for example, I have seen anything from 7.5g to 25g/100g carbs. And green giant salad crisp sweetcorn has a typo on the nutrition label, it says 1.1g carbs/100g but it's actually 11g. You can figure this out if you tot up the macros (9kcal/g fat, 4kcal/g protein 4kcal/g carb) and compare it with the overall calorie figure.

The easiest way to overcome this labelling minefield is to not eat things that come in packages that's a pretty good basis for a healthy diet.

The_Conductor

neddas wrote: »

Also, it's worth bearing in mind that the nutritional info can be legally be inaccurate to the tune of 10%.

Also, a lot of the time it is far more inaccurate than that, take pistashios for example, I have seen anything from 7.5g to 25g/100g carbs. And green giant salad crisp sweetcorn has a typo on the nutrition label, it says 1.1g carbs/100g but it's actually 11g. You can figure this out if you tot up the macros (9kcal/g fat, 4kcal/g protein 4kcal/g carb) and compare it with the overall calorie figure.

The easiest way to overcome this labelling minefield is to not eat things that come in packages that's a pretty good basis for a healthy diet.

For some ingredients a 10% margin or error is massive..... It really is a case of 1. read the label and 2. understand what you're reading.......