I was eating a cottage cheese with fruit bits and the nutrition showed:
8 GMS total carbs
5 gms sugars.
I thought that I could calculate net carbs as
8 - 2.5 = 5.5 (total carbs less 1/2 the sugars), but apparently not.
When I scanned the bar code into my carb tracking program (Carb Manager), it showed 8 net carbs.
The only odd thing I noticed about the ingredients was the listing of “Sugars” instead of “sugar alcohol”.
So, wassup and thanks.
You can’t subtract sugar…it’s sugar! What’s odd about it listing sugar? It contains sugar, not sugar alcohols. If it has 8g carbs and no fiber or sugar alcohols than it’s 8g carbs. Nothing to net down to. I eat cottage cheese regularly with fruit in it but I don’t limit to 20g carbs either. If you do, you may want to ditch the cottage cheese since it’ll wipe out almost half your allowance.
Sugar alcohols are artificial sweeteners not sugars. Some are OK, others are evil and to be avoided at all costs.
All sugars have chemical names that end in -ose (sucrose, glucose, fructose, galactose, lactose, maltose, dextrose, etc.); they are carbohydrates and count as such, because they are fully digestible.
Sugar alcohols have names ending in -ol (maltitol, erythritol, mannitol, sorbitol, xylitol, etc.), and, because they are not fully digestible, people sometimes count only half the amount towards their carb target.
You’ll find that the “sugars” content of many items is somewhat smaller than the total carbohydrate content. The other carbohydrates are starches and/or fiber.
Milk, fruit, etc., contain naturally occurring sugars. And of course many products have sugar added.
You can assume they are ordinary sugars, unless the ingredient list includes something ending in -ol.
Not everyone is used to reading labels. Eventually you’ll become a pro at reading both the nutrition info and the ingredient list.
Hope that helps.
Sugar is sugar is sugar. Some foods contain sugar naturally…even vegetables. Its all the same though and can’t be substracted.
Sugar alcohols on the other hand, which are sweeteners like sorbitol or sucralose, are subject to debate.
Unless you have tested your glucose response to a sweetner (usually done by taking a glucose meter reading after eating the sweetener) and confirmed it has no significant impact on your blood glucose and ketone levels, it is recommended to deduct half of the sugar alcohol (rather than all of it) from the total carbs.
This is really good info and I am thankful.
And then my wife asked me if the artificial sweeteners react to yeast like the fructose, ose, types do.
I have no clue.
Nathan Lucchino CCHS Effect of Sugar Substitutes on Yeast 2.pdf (403.7 KB)
So the answer is that yes, yeast can live on non-sugar sweeteners, but not as well as on sucrose.
