Carb Count on Australian food labels
 

I'm fairly new to serious low carbing and am curious about the count on labels. On Australian labels does the carbohydrate count include the fibre or not.

For example if a label states
30 g carbohdryate
6 g fibre

do I deduct the 6 from 30 giving a count of 24?

Also I have been looking at sugar free sweets and notice that under carbohydrate it says 0, however it then goes on to list a number of grams under something ending in ose (can't remember the exact word). I thought that words ending in 'ose' were sugar so should they be counted.

Thank you.

Hi Alex,

Don't subtract fibre on Australian or European foods as it is calculated separately.

You are right that most "ose" ending words are sugars and therefore have carbs. The only exception I can think of off hand is "sucralose" which is the technical name for Splenda. Since it is made from cane sugar (sucrose) it still has the "ose" ending, but it has been chemically altered (chlorinated) so the body does not recognise it as a sugar (or any sort of carbohydrate), so the label may be correct.

Check out this thread (and join the Aussie forum);

http://www.empowerfoods.com.au/foru...topic.php?t=412

Cheers,

Malcolm

So you're saying the fiber is already subtracted from the carb total?

uh-oh :(

Dont Agre
 

Sorry but i dont agee about fiber, i have read and been told in other forums that you do subtract the fiber amount off the carb amount, so that would be 30grams carbs - 6 grams fiber = 24 grams digestable carbs!

Never mind ;) - it is a mistake we all make because the books are almost always from the US, and the authors neglect to tell you that in Europe and Australia these things are calculated separately - In America they use the "difference method" where fat, protein and water content are established and the difference (remainder) is deemed to be carbohydrate. This is why the Eades came up with the idea of the effective carbohydrate count (ECC) to give a true reflection of a food's impact on the body - subtracting the fibre content as it is not digested, and therefore has no impact on blood sugar (or insulin). Dr Atkins adopted the idea as "net carbs" (Atkins Nutritionals now also discount sugar alcohols - something which I think is somewhat questionable as these can give varying degrees of insulin response.)

But in Australia and Europe - the work has been done for you on the label.

Cheers,

Malcolm

Sorry but still find it hard to get to grips with, why then do the have the fiber label seperate to carbs? unlike the fats that are seperated into classes but still under the one heading FATS, if you are correct can you amagine how many LCers are deducting fiber off there total carbs and getting an incorrect reading!!!

and what about fitday??

As to why americans do things differently, I really don't know, but from a dietary point of view it makes sense to list fibre separately as we do 'here' (and the Eades and Atkins agree!:)) The only subset of carbohydrate on 'our' labels are sugars - which also makes sense as all sugars are carbs, but not all carbs are sugars ... yet (until you digest them).

As far as Fitday is concerned, that is an american site so the american rules apply (you subtract fibre). The same is true of a site like the USDA food comp site;

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

but if you use one of 'ours' eg. Foodstandards;

http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/npc/npc_calc.cfm

then the Australasian/European rule applies.

Cheers,

Malcolm