Hi folks,

We'll implementing a new change on how PECC (possible Effective Carb Count) values are handled.

1. For custom items, you can enter your own PECC value. This should help resolve issued where members want to use their own determined ECC, or manufactuerer's claimed ECC/net carb, etc.

2. PECC for USDA entries
The USDA database contains a mixture of data entries. Some are based on a manufacturer's label, and some are based on analytical data, and some from a mixture of both.

The documentation of the USDA-SR17 data makes the following points:

1. Carbs by difference includes dietary fiber. Howeber, this only applies to data from analysis. Manufacturer's labels my subtract the fiber from the carb count

2. Data from manufacturer can follow any of the follwoing 9-4-4 formuals:

A Calories = (Carbs x 4) + (Protein x 4) + (Fat x 9)

B. Calories = (Carbs-Fiber x 4) + (Protein x 4) + (Fat x 9)

No indication is given as to which method was used to arrive at the data provided in the database.

For the above reasons, My P.L.A.N. will only subtract the fiber if it's known for sure that the fiber has not yet been subtracted.

The method that will be implemented shortly is as follows:

If the food item was based on analytical data, and has provided the nitorgen and CHO factors required to calculate the calories, then, and only then, the PECC value will subtract the fiber from the carb count.

This implementation will miss items that may have not subtracted the fiber from the carb count. However, since we have no way of knowing this, it will be misleading to members to subtract the fiber, when there is no indication that it has not yet been subtracted.

This will provided the safest guess, as opposed to always subtracting. There are several items that may result in zero, or even negative carb count, if we just subtract without considering all the possibilities.

But for those of you who don't want to deal with ECC/PECC/Net carbs etc, the default option is to just show fiber. But you need to know that many items have the fiber subtracted, and you should not assume that you can always subtract them.

Finally, we will still investigate if there is any way to further refine the process, and narrow down which is which, and we'll contact the USDA to find out if there are any other indicatos to use to find out when fiber was, or was not, subtracted. Will keep you updated.

You will see that new PECC values later today, if your settings indicate that you want to see PECC values instead of fiber.

Wa'il