carb calculation rant

MissDBradford
MissDBradford Posts: 5
in Food and Nutrition
I am new on this site. I joined because I wanted help tracking my foods and the nutritional information. However, although it is only the morning of day 2 I am already frustrated. I am diabetic and have a pretty good understanding of what I can/should eat and what I should avoid. This site does NOT properly calculate a person's actual intake of carbs. I took Diabetes Education Classes and learned how to calculate carbs, etc . . .
Example 1: to calculate your actual carb intake you need to SUBTRACT the total fiber from the total carbs. So, if I eat something that has 23 carbs and 4 fiber, then I actually only consumed 19 g of Carbs.
Example 2: anything under 5 grams of carbs is FREE and DOES NOT count against your intake; this site is counting my vegetables as carb intakes!!!!! 98% of vegetables are FREE carb choices because they are under 5g of carbs!!!
Something needs to be done abut this!

Replies

  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    The site totals up Carbs and Fiber as per nutritional labels, largely the US ones which include Fiber in Carbohydrates (Europeans don't do that). So it isn't really "wrong" it's consistent with labelling practices.

    I know where you're coming from with "net carbs" or "absorbed carbs" or whatever, I do the subtraction on the total at the bottom.

    Your example 2 is frankly silly, if I'm counting carbs I'm not going to ignore an item that is under 5 grams as 6 of them might be my entire carb intake. Count everything and act sensibly on the data. There are no free foods in my world.
  • hottottie11
    hottottie11 Posts: 907 Member
    Not everyone is counting carbs. Just subtract your fiber from you carbs to get your net carbs for the day.
  • cyneliason
    cyneliason Posts: 4
    I found a script that you can add to your browser that will calculate those net carbs. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/124645 Just follow all the instructions to install it - instructions vary according to which browser you use. You need to adjust some settings in your MFP for it to work.

    HOWEVER I don't know in which universe carb counts less than 5 do not "count." If I eat, for example, one nut from the can of mixed nuts, that is well under 1 gram of net carbs. If I do that 50 times it's still under 5 grams. If I eat the whole can, one nut at a time, it's still 20 grams of "net carbs," which is the daily limit during Atkins induction phase. Eating them one at a time does not cancel out this fact.

    I came to the forums looking for information about the carb counts in the database. MFP lists eggs at 1 gram of carbohydrate each, but the Atkins carb counter book says it's 0.6 grams. The difference might seem small but those tenths of a gram do make a difference if you're only allowed to have 20 per day. I wish it would count more accurately.
  • slim104
    slim104 Posts: 160
    How can you have free carbs? Surely a carb is a carb?
  • MMAQueen
    MMAQueen Posts: 279 Member
    just add fiber as a column and do some math.

    as for <5 not counting... i'm going to have to go ahead and disagree.
  • DreamSM85
    DreamSM85 Posts: 38 Member
    You want MFP to calculate NET carbs and it doesn't do that. It does calculate regular carb intake properly...usually based off of nutrition facts on the products. Deep breath. You can just do the math yourself and keep a mental note! Good luck!
  • bcattoes
    bcattoes Posts: 17,299 Member
    No offense, but why should a public site cater to diabetics? If you want net carbs (total carb minus fiber) the site gives you the information for both so you can easily calculate it.

    I like this site.
  • cyneliason
    cyneliason Posts: 4
    Or just add the script I gave a link for, and "net carbs" will show up in your daily counts, with the math all done for you. :smile:
  • Athijade
    Athijade Posts: 3,300 Member
    If you need special counts, then it is up to you to do the math. Simple.
  • tipoo
    tipoo Posts: 11
    Why would the the site ditch the majority of its user base for the minority that might want to count those things like you? Correct me if I'm wrong, but those under-5 carbs aren't "free", you just mean they aren't an issue for diabetics, correct? Most people want under 5 carbs to still be counted, because they aren't worried about diabetes issues like you are, they just want to know the total proportion of carbs.
  • MissDBradford
    MissDBradford Posts: 5
    Feel free to argue with the Dieticians of Canada
  • MissDBradford
    MissDBradford Posts: 5
    Thank you for the link, Cyneliason:)
  • MissDBradford
    MissDBradford Posts: 5
    No offense, but why should a public site cater to diabetics? If you want net carbs (total carb minus fiber) the site gives you the information for both so you can easily calculate it.

    I like this site.

    I am not asking the site to cater to diabetics. i guess, being a diabetic and automatically thinkiing in these terms I found it a bit surprising that net carbs wasn't what popped up, or that there wasn't an option to have such a column there.
    For the most part, I really like this site as well.

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