Confused about reading how many label break down carb count

#21

Oh my, this is new to me… So not all simple sugars are listed at sugar?
I thought there is fiber, sugar, starches, sweeteners with a carb content and that’s about it…

I am so glad I almost never eat things with labels and when I do, almost the whole carb content is sugar :smiley: That’s simple. I don’t buy things with sweetener either except my mustard. Sweeteners are problematic as they aren’t always on the label. Sometimes there is a “poliols” row but that may or may not help if we are curious about net carbs…

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #22

“Sugar” on nutrition labels usually means sucrose, which is a disaccharide consisting of a molecule of glucose bonded to a molecule of fructose. I don’t know if “sugar” on a nutrition label legally includes other sugars (galactose, lactose, mannose, and so forth), but it does include dextrose, which is a form of glucose.

Starches and other complex carbohydrates are chains of glucose molecules, but they are called “carbohydrate” on nutrition labels. Fibre is also chains of glucose, but arranged in a way that the human body cannot break down. (Some fibres are water-soluble, others insoluble.) Fibre is also included in the “total carbohydrate” amount on U.S. nutrition labels. (But labels in Europe and elsewhere list fibre apart from the “carbohydrate” line.)

Sugar is included in the “total carbohydrate” amount on U.S. nutrition labels and in the “carbohydrate” amount on labels elsewhere, and it is also listed separately. The U.S. has recently started to require “added sugar” to be listed in addition to “sugar.”

#23

What vegetables contain? Because that is included in sugar here. I buy processed meat with only spices in it, no added sugar and the sugar is listed. In cheese and cream, sugar is listed.
And I very often see the same number for total carbs and “sugars”.

Maybe they do it differently in different countries…?

We have a fiber line too sometimes.

I go and check all the labels in the fridge :slight_smile:

EDIT: Nothing there had added sugar. The spiced meat had a smaller sugar than carbs content. The dairy obviously had the same number for both. And the cheeses had too little from both (one had <0.5g for both per 100g, the other 0).

So there is something mysterious. Not fiber, not sugar and it must be in the meat or the spices… Negligible so it doesn’t matter much, I am just curious a bit.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #24

You might want to double-check the Hungarian label laws. In most of the world, the glucose in complex carbohydrate counts as carbohydrate but not as sugar. That term is generally reserved for chemicals with names ending in -ose (glucose, sucrose, fructose, galactose, lactose, dextrose, mannose, and so forth), but most especially for sucrose. It would be interesting to know whether allulose has to be reported as sugar, or simply as carbohydrate.

#25

I never saw allulose in anything here I think… But I remember I was confused about net carbs when other sweeteners were involved, there was no way for me to figure out it from the label…

But I don’t know what kind of sugar(s) vegetables have. Never was that curious, I got my net carb data from a site and that was it. It’s more interesting with fruits like banana as there are starches there converting into sugar…
And animal products have no starch (unless it is added to them). That helps.