What the Heck Am I Supposed to Eat?

©All articles are copyright of Dr. Susan Mitchell and Practicalories, Inc. and cannot be reprinted or used without permission. To obtain permission, please contact Dr. Mitchell.

It seems that next to terrorism, carbohydrates have become this country's greatest fear! Net carbs, net impact carbs, net effective carbs and low carbs...what do they all mean?  Currently, the FDA has not approved any low carb terms. All the terms that you see on food products are ones that the manufacturers have decided on their own to use. The FDA has been petitioned to come up with low carb standards and is to issue some initial guidelines late 2004 or early 2005.  

In the mean time, net carbs, net impact carbs and net effective carbs all mean the same thing. Typically, it is the grams of carbs remaining when you subtract the grams of fiber and the grams of sugar alcohols from the total grams of carbs.

Here's the caveat. Low carb foods are not necessarily low in calories or fat. Many times, when the sugar, corn syrup or other carb is removed from a product, it is replaced with fat. Therefore, the calories may not be reduced. What's more, the type of fat being used by many manufacturers is saturated or hydrogenated, the two types of fat that we nutritionists want people to avoid because of their deleterious affect on the cardiovascular system. So be an avid label reader.