That "Hidden Carb" tool !!
 

That "Hidden Carb Calculator" tool is neat BUT :confused: why is the result so often vastly different from what the package says? A good example is Flax-0-Meal, (the very product that sponsors the calculator): My bag of butter pecan proclams that each serving has 2 effective grams of carbohydrate; OK, but when I run the numbers through the Hidden Carb Calculator it tells me that each serving has 12.8 grams of carbohydrate!!! That's not double, or even three times, but 640% more than what the company says.

So when I have my delicious half cup of Flax-O-Meal this morning, what do I put on my daily log of carbos: 2? or 12.8?
Hmmmm? Big, big difference there. :help: I know that this is a fine and reputable company, just as Keto and Atkins, yet all of their products never pass the "Hidden Carb Counter" test, all showing vastly more carbohydrates than claimed on the labels.
I cannot believe that they are trying to deceive us. Yet the other conclusion, that the "Hidden Carb Counter" is wrong, is equally distasteful.

I would very much like to know what others do in this case. When you make a "2 g" Keto Chocolate shake, do you count it as 2 grams or as the 13.7 that the "Hidden Carb Counter" shows it really has?????? etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. phil

I have never used this but just ran my jar of peanut butter through it and it's telling me that there is double the amount of carbohydrates then the label on the jar specifies..... :confused:

Does it subtract the 10 grams of fiber? Just curious. Also, where do you find this "hidden carb counter?" I'd like to take a look at it...


Shelly

The hidden carbs tooll gives different numbers simply because it's more accurate.

Manufacturers can round numbers, subtract what they think isn't digestible, not just fiber, and they can also make mistakes.

Even with peanut butter, take identical sizes of different brands, they each will give different numbers on the label.

Here's the link:

http://www.lowcarb.ca/low-carb-tools/hidden_carbs.html

Wa'il

I for one, don't think that hidden carb counter is very accurate. I have here Laura Scudder's peanut butter, all natural - just peanuts and salt.

Here is the breakdown:

200 calories a serving (2 Tbsp.)
16g fat (16 x 9=144)
8g Protein (8 x 4 =32)
6g carb (6 x 4 = 24)
Dietary Fiber 2g
144+32+24 = 200

Now, if I don't subtract the fiber, the "hidden carb counter" tells me there are 9.38g of carbs and if I do subtract, there are 7.38 of carbs. Sorry, does not compute if the calorie/fat grams/protein grams count are correct...

And as for my Flax O Meal? Don't even get me started on what the carb counter told me, but, Phil, it never came out at 12-13 grams like your's did. Instead it was like -1.38.

Whatever... :rolleyes:

-Shelly

If it's not accurate, then let's fix it. It's quite easy for me to update it, but we need to be really sure it's not accurate. Let's take a look:


First: these counts are too rounded. Exactly 16g fat? Not 16.4, or 15.5? It is unnatural to have perfectly rounded numbers like those, just doesn't happen that often. Manufacturers in the U.S. are allowed to round the numbers like that. Same in Canada, but 0.1 increments.

Second: This count assumes fat has exactly 9 calories (false), carbs and protein at 4 calories (also false). For nuts, Fat has 8.37 calories, carbs 4.06 calories, protein 3.47286 calories.

The above numbers are obtained from the USDA from lab tests, not manufacturer's claims

Wa'il

Rightly so, but it is not going to make an almost 4 grams of carbs difference, not with peanut butter that has no added anything. And what about Phil's Flax O Meal carb count? Here are the stats for my cinnamon and spice Flax O Meal:

Per 1/2 cup per serving:

Calories 127

Total Fat 5.5 grams (45 calories)
Protein 11 grams (APPROX 44 calories)
Carbs 11 grams (APPROX 44 calories)
10 grams Fiber

When I put this into the hidden carb counter, it comes back with .41 grams of effective carbs, not too far off. Wonder what Phil inputted to get that number?

Shelly

I get a difference of 1.43 carbs, when fiber is subtracted:

http://www.lowcarb.ca/low-carb-tool....x=9&search.y=6

Rounding of 0.5 grams of fat cause a difference of about 4 calories. Rounding 0.9, yields about 8 calories deficit (or 2 grams carbs). Plus the possibility of errors (on the label).

Wa'il

Hi All !
This is what I put into the Hidden Carb Inspector for FlaxOmeal Butter Pecan:
calories 149
fat 7g
protein 11g
carbohydrates 12g
fiber 10g

I use the "nuts and seeds" setting since flax is a seed, right?
Also I did not check the box indicating that the fiber was already subtracted since it is not.

OK, I just did it again and got "Actual Carb Count 12.85"

How did you guys get those tiny results? I very much want you to be right and for me to be doing something wrong since flaxOmeal and those KEto shakes are a bright spot in my day.

Dear ShellyF34,
You got a Negative number? Wow, now that is the kind of product I want in MY diet! Would you mind telling me how you got that result for my dearly beloved flaxOmeal?

I would have sent you a private email but I'm not allowed to do that yet. Thanks again to everyone for taking time to respond to my concern.

Your LoCarb buddy. phil C

Hi Phil,

It appears the Flaxo label you have is different than the one Shelly has, maybe they are different flavours?

They way you entered it is correct and I got 12.85 as well. This is only a difference of 0.85 from the label. Not bad at all, considering the rounded number.

Wa'il

Ah HA!

I think I see a pattern here. Apparently the reason I am getting such high "Actual Carb" counts is that I do not check off the little box to the left of the fiber line.

The instructions say"
Only fill this out, if the manufacturer stated that the fiber was subtracted before calculating the calorie/energy value of the food, and is not included in the carbs listed

Since it appeared that FlaxOmeal DID include the fiber in the total calorie count, I've been leaving the box empty and putting in the amount of fiber. How 'bout it moderator, have I been doing it wrong? :daze: phil C

Tamarian,
Ah Ha! again. I think you have helped me finally solve the problem. I was assuming that the Hidden Carb Inspector subtracted out the fiber before giving out an Actual CArb Count. The one we should use in our carb count for the day. From your answer, it obvously does not, it just gives a very good estimate of the true number of carbs in a product. It is up to us to subtract out the fiber if we want to to reach a final count.

As a side note, from reading some of the previous posts, it might appear that some people are indeed putting an X in that little box and therefore gettting those small or negative results.
Thanks again. I can now eat my FlaxOmeal with a calm heart.
phil c

Very likely. That's why I added the tiny print to only click the fiber field if you know the manufacturer already subtracted the fiber for you.

If there's a better way to word it, and make it easier to figure out, I'm open for suggestions. :)

Wa'il

You can also get negative amounts due to rounding in the label.

For instance, let's use a hypothetical class of food that actually follows the 9-4-4 rule. If the product actually has 10.5 grams of fat and 7.5 grams of protein the total calories would be 124.5. So the manufacturer might label this as 11g of fat and 8g of protein and 120 calories. Using those numbers the carb calculator would come up with a carb count of -2.75g.

Because of the rounding in the label data, I think the carb calculator is really only useful in identifying foods that truly have hidden carbs - ingredients that the manufacurer is intentionally leaving out of the carb count. If the calculator says that the food has a couple more or a couple fewer carbs than the label, assume the label is correct or take the count from which ever one is higher. The impact will be minimal either way. But if the carb calculator is saying that the food has tens of carbs more than the label says, then you know that it has truly hidden carbs in it and must consider whether to eat it much more carefully.

Tamarian :thup:

You seem to be the one to thank for putting that wonderful tool on the site, so :wave: thanks for giving us that cool Hidden Carb Investigator. I use it a lot. I do have a question though concerning the settings that can be used to refine the process, such as dairy products, beverages , etc.

It seems to give a rather large range of results depending on which of these is selected. Is this supposed to happen? For example I ran a Keto shake through using the default setting and got 2.35 grams; using the beverage setting it gave me 8.85 or thereabouts; the snack setting was about 5.5.

Calories: 200
Fat 10g
protein 24
carbs 3
(I ignored the fiber box; I'm so proud of myself!)
Since the ingredients were exactly the same each time, just the 'setting' being different, why would the resulting carbs have such a large range? What setting would you use? Is it safe to ignore that as someone advised me?

Just curious. Cajun Boy who misses my Gumbo!!!

My parmesan/romano grated cheese label says one thing, but Carboydrate counter shows something way different.

Mine (per 2 tsp) shows 0 carbs, but after I put it through the hiddern carbs tool it came up with .83

The parmesan listed when using the carb counter tool is 3.74 carbs .73. (per cup).

Got any ideas?

The reason you see such a difference is that energy factors are different depending on the food item. Carbs in nuts and seeds yields different energy values that carbs in dairy etc. Same for fat and protein.

For best result, select the category that matches the first ingredient in the ingredients list.

Wa'il

In both cases when looking for carb count for parmesan (from the label - and from the generic "parmesan" which appears in the database files, I used Dairy for the carb count. They should have come up closer. But it was like comparing apples to oranges.

Maybe I made it more confusing that it should have been.

1) I have a bottle of parmesan. According to the label it has 0 carbs per 2 tsp. According to the hidden carb finder thingy, it has .8 per 2 tsp.

2) I looked up parmesan using the carb finder. It says it has 3.74 carbs per Cup. According to the hidden carb finder, it has .73 g per Cup.

We are talking about a huge difference. Looking at the carb counter shows .8/tsp vs .73/C

Which is right, the carb counter, the database, the label? Or do I give up the whole thing and stick to something other than parmesan cheese.

Some labelling laws permit you to truncate values, so you can report 0g as long as it is less than 1g. Some manufacturers do this and some don't.



The carb counter shows 3.74g of carbs per 100g of cheese. Not per cup (assuming we are using the same carb counter - the one on this site).

What data are you putting into the hidden carb counter? Are you sure that the 0.73g isn't the HIDDEN carbs as opposed to the total carbs.

Round 3
 

If you click on Parmesan, you will see the breakdown. Although the screen says 100g you will see at the top of the page is says cup. If you click on cup to recalculate (which is very misleading because it should default to 100g) you will still find it comes up the same (perhaps their are 100g to a cup? I dunno.

So, with that confusion I clicked on tablespoon. That came up with .19. The carb finder actually lowers it to .17 (If I am reading this correctly.)

So, there are three teaspoons to a tablespoon. My bottle uses tablespoons as the measure. To be exact, 2.

Now let's compare


Database Db Carb Finder Bottle Db Carb Finder
.19 Tbsp .17 Tbsp 0 tsp .83 tsp

Knowing the problem with the 0, lets only compare the carb finder information.

.17 Tbsp vs .83 tsp. Since there are three tsp to one tablespoon, it appears that my parmesan may have .17 grams of carbs......or .83 x 3 which equals 24.9!

Do you see my delema. I don't think the database is wrong, but I have to bring this to someone's attention because the discrepency is sooooooo big. I looked on the contents on bottle and it says it has:

Parm cheese (part cultured skim milk), salt, enzymes...and more. Do you think the part cultured skim milk could create this problem? I would think all parmesan cheese would say this. I only have one bottle, but I will check in the store.

As Kelly Bundy would say..."I'm at the horns of an enema."

Everyone seems so concerned about Carb intake/hidden carbs. I use a carb/sugar inhibitor from fitamerica.com and it turns a 30% portion of your empty starches into dietary fiber and curbs your cravings, too. My advice is dont wear the small stuff. Just enjoy in modration, exercise, and check out what I'm talking about. Its made from kidney bean..soo..all natural.

Yes, well, the packages say they work, of course, but how do we know for sure? If they said, "We think this helps with reducing your starch absorbtion," nobody would buy them! ;)

I for one, am leary, although I do have a product that is similar with Fenugreek extract, gymnema sylvestre extract, absorbative vegetable fiber (northern white kidney bean extract) glucosol, and Super-CitriMax. BUT, do I take one of these and go, "I can eat whatever I want tonight." No way. I take one occasionally if I am going out to a restaurant (like Mexican) and think, "If I do cheat, than hopefully this will help a bit." I wouldn't bet my bottom dollar that these pills do everything they say they do...


-Shelly

I would actually be willing to bet a fair amount of money that they do absolutely nothing or, at most, an insignificant something.

If I came up with a pill that made a person lose 3 pounds a month without changing how they eat or exercise that product would be bigger than Viagra - a LOT bigger.

So take a person eating the USDA recommended 300g of carbs per day. That's roughly 1200 calories from carbs. Now I somehow magically turn 30% of them into dietary fiber (sounds like snake oil to me). That's 360 calories a day gone - poof. That's three pounds a month.

Proving their claim is trivially easy - a very simple double-blind study could be conducted on something like this very easily and inexpensively. So why haven't they done it?

Parmesan Cheese
 

These are the numbers from the Carbohydrate Counter on this site:

Parmesan Cheese
1 Tbsp => 0.19g carbs (22.79cal/1.5g fat/2.08g protein)
100g => 3.74g carbs (455.81cal/30.02g fat/41.56g protein)
1 cup => 3.74g carbs (same as above)

The first question is whether there is an obvious error above or if there really are 100g of parmesan cheese in a cup. Well, there are 2 Tbsp in an ounce (volume measure) and eight ounces in a cup, so there are 16 Tbsp in a cup. So 16*0.19g = 3.04g. So this is reasonably close.

If I look in Netzer's book it shows:

Parmesan Cheese
1 Tbsp => 0.2g carbs
1 oz => 1.1g carbs

The first line: 3.2g of carbs per 1 cup of cheese.

The second line: This is a dry ounce. There are 28.4g in a dry ounce so 100g would have (100g)*(1.1g/oz)*(1oz/28.4)=3.87g per 100g of cheese.

So 100g is roughly 1 cup. There may be an error in how many grams are in a cup for grated parmesan cheese in the database, but if there is it isn't having a huge effect.

Using the Hidden Carb Tool and the 1 Tbsp data I get a total of 0.17g of carbs (the same that you did) which is well within the uncertainty level for the data.

Using the Hidden Carb Tool and the 1 Cup data I get a total of 3.33g of carbs which is well in general agreement with the 3.04g and the 3.74g above. Keep in mind that the worst case difference here - 0.7g of carbs - is in a whole cup of cheese. So 2.7cal out of a total of 456 calories. That's one half of one percent. The basic data itself simply isn't consistent or accurate enough to worry about things on that level.

Before I can go any further, I need to know exactly what data you put in to get the 0.83g of carbs per teaspoon. But I think you will find that the descrepancy is based almost completely in the rounding of the labelled values. The fact that calorie values are almost always rounded to 10g (or 5g on low calorie servings) is enough to throw off the carb results by a full gram. The fact that fat content is almost always rounded to a whole gram is enough to through off the carb results by a couple of grams.

Yes, according to the USDA:

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/cgi-bi...%2c%20gratedxyz

A cup of grated parmesan weighs 100 grams.

Thanks for crunching the numbers Bill! :)

Wa'il

Re: Round 3
 

Yes, this is a software bug :( This will happen with any food selection where a cup weighs 100 grams.

It has now been corrected. :)

Wa'il

Thanks for you indepth response.

The bottle says:
Serving Size 2 tsp (5g)
Calories: 25
Fat: 1.5g
Carb: 0g
Protein: 2

I looked over all the bottles in the store for parmesan and they all had the same numbers.

This comes up with .83 for 2 tsp (5g), so if you can figure this out, please help. A sprinkle of parmesan is no big deal, but I have a recipe which I use 1/2 cup of parmesan. That either is less than 2 carbs (according to most references), or 8 plus (according to the bottle). I could sure use someones help.

Use the numbers from the database in this instance. The basic problem is that you are working with numbers for a small quantity that have been rounded. Any residual error from that rounding is magnified by a factor of 24 when you go from 2 tsp to 1/2 cup.

Let's change those numbers a bit and see the impact they have.

Suppose the thing had 23 calories but they rounded it to 25.

Suppose the thing has 1.7g of fat but they rounded it to 1.5g.

Suppose the thing has 2.4g of protein but they rounded it to 2.0g

Now run the Hidden Carb Tool and you get that it has -0.6g of carbs in it.

The problem is in the data on the package label - not in the carb calculator. It's a classic case of garbage in - garbage out.

Thanks so much for clearing this up. I didn't really think the carb counter was off, but there was a flaw in the way I was using it. The flaw is not the fault of the carb finder, but in the rounding. I see that now. So I will keep in mind that any portion which is small could be greatly skewed when we increase the quantities.

I can breath easier now. Thanks again for your patience on this.