Help! I'm confused about peanut butter
 

Hi. I'm new here and to low carb. I started yesterday. I've been reading here about no sugar peanut butter and cream cheese but the problem is I can't find any. I even went to Whole Foods where you can grind your own peanuts and the nutritional label had 2g sugar listed! The only thing in there was peanuts! So what's up with this? Also, the cream cheese ( Philidelphia, Lucerine ) that I can find also says 1 gm sugar. So, I am confused because the way I understand it is we can have 0 sugar not even a gm is that right? If so, where do ya'll buy your stuff or what kind is it? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks, MaddieB1 :rolleyes: :confused:

First off - no nuts at all during induction.

Second - most any supermarket has all natural peanut butter which if you check the ingredients won't have anything but peanuts.

Third - peanuts are a pretty high carb snack so when you have the opportunity try almond butter. Or for snacks when you are out of induction try macadamian, pecans, almonds, walnuts or almonds. Way less carbs and more fiber.

Re: cream cheese... Philadelphia is the lowest carb cream cheese I have found. Just make sure you count each serving as 1 of your 4 oz of cheese daily.

That darn sugar...
 

Peanuts have sugar naturally. A lot of veggies and legumes do. For example, a cup of romaine lettuce has two grams of sugar, carrots have 5 in a standard serving (that's why carrots don't get a thumbs up on most LC programs). Macadamia nuts have a gram of sugar. This isn't the type of sugar that we fear - it isn't quite the same as highly refined white sugar, but we still do try to limit our intake of any kind of sugar.

Your "grind your own" natural peanut butter is fine as long as your program says it is fine. My 100% natural almond butter has 3g of carbs - so does my 100% natural peanut butter (for 2TBSP). But almond butter is $1.75 more a jar. That may make a difference to you. One thing I do look at is grams of protein when I buy peanut butter. I look for "no sugar added" and then I compare who has the most protein and I buy that brand. If you are going to eat peanut butter you might as well get as much as you can nutritionally from it.

The same rule applies to cream cheese. Milk (and by default, a milk product like cream cheese) has sugar in it. It's called lactose. Again, in limited quantities it isn't an issue. But, the lactose, or milk sugar, is why we don't drink milk on LC. One cup of whole milk has about 11g of sugar, where heavy cream has <1g. Cream cheese is fine, as long as you limit it to 3-4oz. if you are on Induction.

If you have questions, check your plan's guidelines in your copy of the book. It says in your profile that you haven't read any LC books, but I assume you have a copy of Dr. Atkins' book(s). Since you are doing Atkins, simply look at the Induction list and eat from it. One thing about LC is it does become essential that you become well-versed with your particular program. Beyond reading the book, the other methods you employ to learn as much as you can are up to you.

Hope this helps.