Low-carb bread claims don't pan out in lab test, grocers say


04/11/04


BOULE L4 Boule: Mislabeling could be bad for diabetics. This column has zero carbs.

Which is more than can be said of some commercial "low-carb" products. In a country filled with people who've recently taken up carb unloading, it's only natural that grocery stores have begun to fill shelves with products that claim to have fewer carbohydrates.

But do they? Can carb counts on packages be trusted?

Not always.

Oregonians Lois Kaplan and Bo Bodenschatz, who own LoBo's Low Carb World in Salem, have proof.

Lois and Bo, who are married retirees, opened their grocery store last year after a lot of research and preparation. From the start, they saw the store as a way to help people improve their health through low-carb eating. Lois lowered her cholesterol from a dangerous to a healthy level eating low-carb foods. And Bo, who was diagnosed with diabetes 11 years ago, was able to stop twice-daily insulin injections after a few months of eating a low-carb diet.

At their store the two spend a lot of time explaining low-carb programs. "We know many of our customers by name," Lois says. "We'll walk through the store with them."

Breads, in particular, are hard items for some people on low-carb diets to give up. So Bo and Lois have spent much of their nine months of operation looking for palatable breads with reduced carbohydrate counts. About six months ago, a distributor recommended breads with the Low Carb Emporium label.

"They tasted very good, especially for low-carb," Lois says. The label said the bread had 1 net gram of carbohydrate per slice, a very low amount. Customers of LoBo's snapped up the Low Carb Emporium bread, bagels and other bakery products.

And some stopped losing weight. "That made us suspicious," Lois says. Bo adds, "It just tasted too good to be low-carb. That was a red flag."

So the couple contacted Low Carb Emporium and asked for laboratory proof that the claims on the label were correct. They waited. They called. They e-mailed. They faxed. They got promises, but no report.

Bo and Lois had heard rumors that the Low Carb Emporium bread was much higher in carbohydrates than the label claims. "We read an article on the Internet that said the carb count was more like 14 or 15 net grams of carbs per ounce," Lois says. "That was horrifying to us. It's a huge difference, especially if you're a diabetic."

After weeks of requests, they still hadn't received any lab reports from Low Carb Emporium. So they pulled all the bread from their shelves and pursued their question with their distributor in Nevada, where Low Carb Emporium is headquartered. "I said if we didn't get answers from him, I didn't know what else to do other than to contact the FDA," Lois says.

That got an immediate response from Carol Shaw at Low Carb Emporium, Lois says. "She was very hostile. . . . She said to quit badgering . . ., that they did not like the threat. I told her it was not a threat, we were just trying to get answers."

Soon after, Low Carb Emporium announced it had changed its formula and its carbohydrate claims. Sure enough, new loaves were wrapped in labels that said the bread had a net carbohydrate count of four grams per ounce of bread mix. What did that mean, the couple wondered? How much bread mix was in a slice of bread?

"It became obvious the only way we could . . . tell our customers it was really low-carb and OK to eat, was to have our own analysis done," Lois says.

So a few weeks ago Bo took one of the new loaves of Low Carb Emporium bread to the Food Products Laboratory in Portland. Two weeks later they had their results: the bread had nearly 15 net grams of carbs per slice, more than triple what the package claimed.

"If you're diabetic and you're eating this bread and you don't realize the carb count is three times what the label says it is," Lois says, "you're asking for a real health problem."

In a phone interview from Nevada last week, Lori Smith, owner of Low Carb Emporium, dismissed the lab results Lois and Bo got. "This was politics," she said. "These results came from a competitor." But LoBo's is a store, not a competitor.

"We don't manufacture the bread," Lori then said. "We just put our labels on them and distribute them."

Lori would not give the name or phone number of the company that makes the bread and provides the carbohydrate claims on the labels. "I promised them I would not do that. They're being bothered a lot about this," Lori said.

Lori Smith, Bo and Lois, grocery consortiums and consumer groups all agree: The FDA should establish regulations for carbohydrate content claims. The FDA has rules for claims about fat content, fiber content, calcium content. But not carbohydrates.

It is against the law, however, to make false claims on packaging.

In January, a former health food executive from Kentucky was sent to federal prison with a 15-month sentence for sticking low-fat labels on high-fat doughnuts and shipping them to health food stores across the nation.

Lois and Bo say they aren't interested in a lawsuit or in getting anyone in trouble with the law.

They just want accurate information on food labels. "We believe the bread is mislabeled," Lois says. "If it is, we're concerned people will eat the bread and before long they could have a serious health problem."

Last week Bo and Lois sent a letter and a copy of their lab results to the other low-carb stores in the area, "so we can help them protect their customers," Bo says.

So far their investigation into Low Carb Emporium products has cost Lois and Bo over $1,500 in lab costs and wasted merchandise they pulled from their shelves. Bo doesn't mind. "I think anyone with a business that can affect people's health should have as much concern for the public's health as they do for their own business interests," Bo says.

Investigations across the nation have uncovered other cases of false carbohydrate claims on store merchandise and in restaurant food. So people following a low carbohydrate diet would be wise to remember the advice dispensed by their grandmothers -- the same grandmothers who used to bake cookies and make cinnamon toast for their visiting grandchildren: If something seems to be too good to be true, it probably is.

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