I saw a new LC chocolate bar at the health food store - white cholcate. Since I looooooooved white choclate pre-low carb, I thought I'd give it a shot. OH MY GAWD! It is delicious!!!

According to the label it is "Imported Blegian Milk Chocolate" Sweetened with Malitol of course.

http://www.lanouba.net

I went to their site and found their nutritional info interesting. I'm a newbie and as such I'm just learning how to read labels and counts. Help me out, please, on deciphering their info. How does Malitol figure into the counts?

Looking at the white chocolate bar:

Total Calories: 205
Fat = 15.2g (x9) = 136.8 calories
Protein = 2.4g (x4) = 9.6 calories
Carbs = 3.5g (x4) = 14 calories

Which brings the total to 160.4 calories.

There are 44.6 leftover calories.

Would this difference then be divided by 4 and then added onto the carb amount? If so, this adds on another 11.5 carbs to the 3.5 that is listed, bringing it to a total of 14.65g? That sounds absurd, so please help me to figure this one out. Thanks.

The Hidden Carbs counter shows the carb count at 17.20g

Am I doing the counts wrong? How could this be so different than what's on the package?

The acutual carb count would be the 17 - that would be including the malitol, which it appears they have pre-subtracted from the carb count, so in essense they are giving the effective carb count on the label and not the total carb count. As some people (Dr. Atkins included) beleive that sugar alcohols (malitol) do not have the same effect on blood sugar and insulin spikes as other carbohydrates.

Ok, thank you. It's taken a while, but I think the malitol picture is getting clearer to me.