Fiber?

tenzinlodoe40
tenzinlodoe40 Posts: 15 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Should u count fiber towards your calorie. For ex a quest bar only has 4 "net" carbs and the rest is fiber.

Replies

  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    edited May 2016
    My understanding is that fiber content is already accounted for in the calorie counts of foods. For this reason, I wouldn't subtract fiber from the calorie count of a food.

    Some people on low carbohydrate plans subtract fiber from the carbohydrate count of a food. Is this what you're talking about?
  • extra_medium
    extra_medium Posts: 1,525 Member
    Calories or carbs?
  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    My understanding is that fiber content is already accounted for in the calorie counts of foods. For this reason, I wouldn't subtract fiber from the calorie count of a food.

    Agreed.
    Plus, not all fiber is indigestible.
  • itsthehumidity
    itsthehumidity Posts: 351 Member
    This is one of the grey areas of counting calories.

    Dietary fiber is a carbohydrate, but unlike other carbohydrates it doesn't necessarily contribute very many, if any calories. That said, it's much safer to ignore "net carbs" (which subtracts fiber) and calculate your calories based on total carbs. The reason for this is that fiber may actually contribute some calories, and it's safer to assume that it does.

    Plus, it's a lot of extra work to consider fiber and its caloric contribution when doing so wouldn't change your overall total very much.
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    I count everything. Too much work and gets confusing trying to subtract this from that..
  • abatonfan
    abatonfan Posts: 1,120 Member
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought fiber contains no calories, because the body's digestive system doesn't have the enzymes to break it down. Food labels, from what I noticed, don't count fiber as part of the total calories (or only count half towards the calories at the most). If you need to very closely watch your carb intake (for instance, I take insulin based off how many carbs I am consuming for my meal/snack) and live in the US, then you'll need to subtract dietary fiber and sugar alcohols from the total carbs to get net carbs, or the total carbohydrates that are digested and therefore can affect BG levels (or ketosis if you're following keto).

    With the quest bar example, if I'm remembering the macros correctly, a 60g bar is about 190/200kcal, 4g net carbs (18g when sugar alcohols are subtracted, 14g fiber), 9g fat, and 21g protein. If you multiply each of the macros by their associated calories per gram [(4x4) + (9x9) + (21x4)], you get pretty close to the total calories (I got 181kals for this example).

Categories