Frustrated with carb counts
 

I've been going over some of my favorite recipes to make sure I didn't goof on the carb counts & serving sizes. In double checking various products I'm getting totally frustrated - the total carb counts can vary wildly!

4-oz canned mushrooms, for instance, run from 3- 6g total carbs. Hemp hearts go from 1g to 4g for a 3-tablespoon serving.

Who does one believe? And why are different companies allowed to come up with such different counts?

Thank you for letting me vent! :mad:

It's frustrating, but I think that's mother nature for you. :/ It's not like the carb content is controlled by them, like the number of mg of a drug in a capsule. It's whatever mother nature doled out. The mushrooms one year, from one specific farm, might have different growing conditions and therefore nutrition profile from another year or another farm.

Ever notice the difference in flavours of produce? I guarantee the nutrition stats vary more than one might think. One tomato can taste watery and bland, and another will be almost ketchuppy-sweet. I bought blueberries a few weeks ago that were weird - they were incredibly tart, like a granny smith apple. They didn't even taste like blueberries.

Meats, same: you can pick up two packs of bacon, and one is obviously fattier than the other. Steaks of the same cut: some are clearly more marbled with fat than others.

The nutrition stats (ie carb counts) are just averages.

This is one of the failures of food tracking. I rarely bother. It's not that I think it's useless, but it's more for forcing portion control and measuring, helping you see errors when you're eyeballing, and for helping you see your patterns and behaviours.

Good observation. I try to embrace simple, as once one has a good handle on macro ratios and understands where carbs are coming from, even in small amounts, it's far easier to establish general guidelines for healthy food types (and there are many) and stay consistent within a WOE. That doesn't mean we shouldn't read labels, but for produce and fruit, once an awareness is established, it's far easier to generally identify a food as "in" or "out" based on typical carb contribution to avoid the detailed analysis.

Sigh. I pretty much knew this but tend to be a bit obsessive. I still remember the first time I noticed the way I think about food as I sat in church wondering how many carbs were in a communion wafer. :D

Those of us who tend to obsessiveness really need to learn to relax. :)