Paldo Sugar Free Aloe Drink confusion

Hi everyone! My boyfriend, as a treat for me, bought me a bottle of Paldo Sugar Free Aloe Drink which is super tasty. It's a sweet-tasting drink from Korea that has little chunks of aloe vera in it. However, when I went to log it, I looked at the nutritional information, and for a 180ml serving, it says there are 5 calories and 16g of carbohydrates. Now, at 4 cal./g for carbs, this means that there should instead be 64 calories per serving. The label has the fibre content at zero, so I'm very confused as to how there are only 5 calories for this many carbs. Does anyone have an idea what's going on?

I have two theories:

1) They're lying about the caloric content of this delicious drink.

2) There is some ingredient which counts as a carbohydrate, but that our body can't use for energy somehow. If it helps, this is the ingredients list:
Refined water, Aloe vera gel powder, Aloe vera crush, Polydextrose (0.5%), Citric acid, Sodium citrates, Aloe flavour, Calcium lactate, Ascorbic acid, White grape flavour, Gellan gum, Sucralose.

Thoughts?

Replies

  • the_green_midget
    the_green_midget Posts: 80 Member
    Anyone?
  • Pandasarecool
    Pandasarecool Posts: 508 Member
    Don't know, but this would be deadly for me as I am EXTREMELY allergic to aloe!:sick: :laugh: Never even heard of it!
  • I looked it up....it has polydextrose which is included in the carb count but is not 4 calories per gram. According to Wikipedia it has 1 calorie per gram. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydextrose
  • I don't think 60 calories are going to break anyone's diet. If you are having ten a day... nothing is healthy in extreme.
  • the_green_midget
    the_green_midget Posts: 80 Member
    Don't know, but this would be deadly for me as I am EXTREMELY allergic to aloe!:sick: :laugh: Never even heard of it!

    Eep! I do not envy you.
  • the_green_midget
    the_green_midget Posts: 80 Member
    I looked it up....it has polydextrose which is included in the carb count but is not 4 calories per gram. According to Wikipedia it has 1 calorie per gram. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydextrose

    Thanks for checking that out! I had no idea what polydextrose is. Still, even with 1 cal/g, that would make 16 calories per serving. Maybe part of the carb content is the Sucralose or one of the other ingredients. I looked up all the ingredients on wikipedia, and I didn't see any caloric content information about the other ones.
  • the_green_midget
    the_green_midget Posts: 80 Member
    I don't think 60 calories are going to break anyone's diet. If you are having ten a day... nothing is healthy in extreme.

    I know it wouldn't make all that much difference in the long run, but for me, it's about the math working out. I'm an astronomy student, so when numbers don't add up, it's a source of infinite frustration. It's also about companies being honest about their nutritional information. Someone (not me) might chug the entire bottle of aloe juice, thinking they'd only be getting 40 calories (there are 8 servings per bottle), when they might be getting 512. That would definitely make a difference.