Don’t Let the Label Fool You! Unraveling the “Net Carb” Gimmick
Don’t Let the Label Fool You! Unraveling the “Net Carb” Gimmick
Many of you have come to me after reading about some miracle product that taste great and CLAIMS to be free of carbohydrates. My tip to all of you….if it sounds too good to be true…it probably is! The reason low carb dieting works is because it prevents your blood glucose from spiking. When your blood sugar rises it makes it difficult to lose weight because it causes your body to produce insulin, which makes you crave food constantly.
When you see the infamous “Net Carb” label, make sure to flip over the package and read the ingredients! Most of the low carb products out there are sweetened with sugar alcohols. Don’t be fooled by manufactures claims that sugar alcohols are not metabolized….they are! Each sugar alcohol can have as many as 1-3 calories. Malitol is considered the worst of these and has proved to have the same impact as regular table sugar while Erythritol comes in with the lowest impact. Manufactures claim that the sugar alcohols and fiber content of the product are not metabolized and can therefore be overlooked. This allows them to manipulate you into buying their product as they make you believe that a product with 30g of carbohydrates only contains 3!
Fiber on the other hand, is not broken down into blood glucose and absorbed in the blood. The “Net Carb” count is usually found by taking the total carb count minus the fiber content. So essentially if you’re going to have carbs, fiber is the best choice. The problem with this ideology is that every person is different. It is extremely difficult to predict how a person’s body will react. One person may be able to process glucose more effectively and eat a larger amount of carbohydrates without experiencing a spike but others may not.
One of the products I was asked about was Dreamfields pasta so on a side note I just wanted to share an example on how people get “tricked” into buying products that are no good. Dreamfields pasta has 50g of carbs for a VERY small serving (chances are that you probably eat about 4-5 servings as your meal). They claim that these 50g of carbs do not impact blood glucose and based this result on a study where they measured the blood glucose levels of individuals 2 hours after eating the pasta. They were correct in the fact that the test subjects did not experience a blood glucose rise after the 2 hours….BUT what they failed to mention is that the pasta digests so slowly that it actually takes 5-6 hours for the individual to experience an insulin spike! Case in point: the carbs that Dreamfields projected as being unmetabolized actually did affect the individuals and hindered their weight loss as the pancreas began to produce insulin.
So just to leave you with a thought for the weekend before you do your grocery shopping for the week….READ THE LABELS and don’t let ignorance get in the way of your fat loss goal!