Label Confusion

cjthurman

I'm just starting my low-carb lifestyle. I actually cut out sugar, flour and other carbs years ago but have never been serious (or strict) about counting to make sure I'm not going over my carb goal. I have a lot of weight to lose - over 150lbs - and I'm hoping that by adopting a truly low carb lifestyle will help me get there.

I was starting to look at labels on foods in the store and at home and I'm a little confused. For example, heavy whipping cream's label says zero carbs. But in the Atkins book it says there are .8 carbs in 2 tbs. That's quite a difference of course - if I have a recipe that calls for 1 c. cream, that's equal to almost 7 carbs when the label says zero.

My question is: Is there a minimum carb total that would allow manufacturers not to include the carbs on the label? Say, under 1 carb per serving?

wfte

Its exactly that, anything under 1g can be labelled as 0g. Prob best to use the details from bigger quantities when possible. ie. 100 ml, these will hopefully display correct figures.

cjthurman

That's what I thought. Darn!

praxisproject

In Australia all of our labels have to label for 100g or 100ml in addition to serving sizes, for exactly this reason

<1 carb is great, but if it's 0.9 carbs and you have 20 of them, far from zero carb

Try and calculate the value of the whole container, this will often give away understated serving sizes and give a different perspective. Unrealistically small serves are designed to make crappy items look healthier.

Always read the ingredients too, if it seems too good to be true based on the ingredients, it probably is.

My favourite silly serving measurements are 1/3 of a personal bottle of a drink is a serve and 1/2 a personal yoghurt. Funny how you never see people in the ad only drink a third or eat half, and put the rest in the fridge