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Carb Counting and Label Reading

With your new low-carb way-of life, you will have many opportunities to make small changes that will turn into daily habits. Habits that will become part of your way-of-life and ensure you future success.

One of the rewarding – yet frustrating! – things for those who are new to LC is learning and researching carbohydrate counts of foods. This site has an excellent carb counter under Low Carb Tools in the orange bar at the top of the page. Another portable and excellent resource is Corinne T. Netzer’s Complete Book of Food Counts.

To start, grab your copy of Atkins, Protein Power or whatever plan you are following. Find the list of allowed low-carb vegetables.

Make a list of all the vegetables you like to eat And a few you would be interested in trying. A spreadsheet works very well for this because you can sort it by item or by carb count later on. Beside the item, write in the portion sizes and the carbohydrate count. You can even add foods that may be a little high for you now, but can be used in smaller amounts during the maintenance phase of your plan. Save your list on your computer and print out a copy to carry around with you.

Remember that Protein Power and Atkins both allow the fiber to be subtracted from the total carb count. This gives you room for a lot more variety, especially if you are on induction.

Be aware that coffee, dairy products, eggs, shellfish and organ meats have carbohydrates.

An interesting and illuminating exercise is to use the carb counter under Low-Carb Tools at the top of the page to find out what is lowest in carbs. For example, click vegetables under Food Category, sort by the value of carbohydrates with the lowest first. You will be amazed at the variety.

It’s also a good idea to write down the carb count of eggs, coffee, dairy products, nuts, crustaceans and organ meats if you eat them.


Label Reading

Label reading is also very important. It’s shocking to find out that you have been indulging in foods that are written as 0 on the label when they actually contain carbs.

Here is something Doreen wrote recently on one of our favourite subjects -

“Labels tell Lies!”

Welcome to the real world of "labels tell lies". In the US – but not in Canada - manufacturers are permitted to list a food as zero carbs if the count for a "normal" serving is less than 1, even if it's 0.9! For example, a "normal" serving of heavy cream is considered to be 1 Tbsp (15 ml or ½ fl. oz) they will list it as 0 because the count is less than 1. Truthfully, it's not a big deal if you're ONLY using one single Tbsp, but if you're using several Tbsp, and maybe also using the cream in recipes, those partial grams of carb can add up over the course of a day.

Cheese is another food that often has less than one gram of carb per 1 oz serving, but the label will say zero. If you eat 3 or 4 ounces, that can add up. The same goes for coffee.

This is unfortunate, because a lot of folks think they're only eating 20g carbs ... because they honestly believe these foods contain zero carbs and eat way more than one "normal" serving.

Happy and Successful Low Carbing!

Karen