Track less than 1g?
 

Question:

When a food label says a serving contains "less than 1g" of (for example) sugars, how important is it to track that in a food diary? Or can we (fairly safely) ignore food values reported as "less than 1g"?

Advice appreciated.

What I do is look up a particular item on-line and see what it says if I know an item does have carbs but less than 1 gram. For instance cream in my coffee. Since it will add up with several cups of coffee, I will add up 1/2 a gram of carbs per serving and total it will be 2-3 grams.
This is what you call hidden carbs and it will effect weight loss so the more you find those hidden carbs the faster and easier it will be to loose weight.

Thx, Meme. I think that's a good way to do it, especially for those (like myself) who are insulin resistant and find that those wee bits of otherwise hidden carbs can sabotage a good effort. Thx, again.

Another place where there are hidden carbs is with an item that has fiber. Many products will claim a low carb count but what they are showing is net carbs to entice us into thinking it's lower carb.
Net carb is total carbs minus the fiber = net carb.

I also pay attention to the sugar grams in a product like salad dressing. The total carb count may be in range but if it has straight sugar, I make sure it's very very low.

I didn't find THAT out -- the way some food manufacturers are already adjusting for the fiber in their reduced carb counts -- until I saw it on this website. Strikes me as duplicitous. They should be required to declare that up front so consumers will be able to make informed choices.

I wonder why the FDA is allowing this kind of labelling "sleight of hand"?

Dr. Westman makes it simple, count anything <1 as 1. A T of cream, a packet of sweetener, a piece of SF gum, that's 1g carb toward your total of 20G Total daily.