Wheat flour and Keto bread?

(Heather Meyer) #1

So Im late to the new Keto options on the market(joys of small town living in Canada) and I notice that are grocery store carries “Keto Friendly bagels, bread and buns.” Curious me… i picked up a pack of the bagels and noticed that out of 8 ingredients in it… Wheat flour, wheat fibre, oat fibre and malted barley flour made up these soft bagels. The total grams of carbs were 17 and the fibre is 16 grams…therefore the NET carb count is 1 gram per bagel.

This is my question…

Is this technically Keto? Are these ingredients okay to eat barring any auto-immune issues? Is it really 1 net carb or do they just bulk the product with so much fibre it makes it look like its low carb? Just curious because I have heard some say “yes IIFYM” or “No because wheat is the Devil” or somthing alomg those lines…

Thoughts?

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #2

Let’s say you have a product that has 25 grams of carbs from sugar and 25 grams of carbs from oat fiber. The ‘net’ is not 0 carbs. You’re still eating 25 grams of carbs from the sugar. In addition, you’re also eating 25 grams of indigestible fiber from the oats.

For purposes of nutrition, the net must be from the same food. In other words, if food x contains 25 grams of carbs of which 24 are fiber, then the net for food x is 1 gram of digestible carbs.

One of the problems with so-called ‘keto friendly’ processed foods is that the producer uses the trick of adding separate fiber to offset the carbs in the product. It’s just a math trick. The digestible carbs are still there and you’re still eating them.

(Heather Meyer) #3

This particular bread contains 0 sugar grams.
So i am assuming that the carbs come from the:

Flaxseed
Oat fibre
Wheat flour
Malted barley flour
Fermented wheat flour

#4

Since wheat flour is the first ingredient, I would wonder if the label is a non-FDA label. If so, the 17 grams of carbs are the digestible carbs (i.e. “net carbs”), because the fiber has already been subtracted out.

Can you point us to the product/label?

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #5

I used ‘sugar’ simply as an obvious example of how numbers can be fudged.

To do a real example, like your bread: look up each ingredient in the USDA Nutrient database. The database will give you total carbs and fiber per 100 grams for each ingredient. You can figure out the net for each ingredient. I doubt the list of ingredients on your bread tells you how much of each ingredient is in the bread, so you can only guestimate based on the order of ingredients in the list of ingredients. By law, manufacturers must list in order of amount from greatest to least, even though they do not have to list the actual gram amounts of each.

All that only enables you to determine whether or not the product actually contains more net carbs than claimed. If you have issues with any individual ingredient, then, I recommend not eating it whether or not the net carbs are acceptable.

For example: here’s Barley Malt Flour. It’s 70% total carbs of which 7% is fiber. That means 63% of however much barley malt is in this bread is digestible carbs.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #6

@OgreZed Exellent point. Lots of products in Canada originate in Europe.

#7

I eat breads from Schmidt called 647, they do breads, hamburger rolls, hotdog buns everything and they’re basically the same thing. I’ve had no issue with them at all. There are other keto “breads” but they taste like crap and shouldn’t even be called bread, this stuff is the real thing.

I’d say if you like it, it causes no issues for you and you’re not overdoing it then it’s fine.

#8

If it’s really 1g net carbs per bagel (as it’s possible it’s 17 carbs PLUS the fiber, it depends on the package. I live in Europe and I can’t even follow those labels anymore as my last item with a label simply refused to tell me the net carb content… it’s good I rarely eat things with nutrition labels) and it’s good, I personally wouldn’t mind the flour.
Whenever I make “kind of keto” bread (it’s extremely rare as it isn’t worth it but sometimes I want a bread like texture to put my lard on before I grab the carby bread I bake and don’t even like as it hasn’t even eggs and too much starches even taste wise), I put wheat flour into it (actually, a piece of my last wheat bread, it’s way better than just flour) - it’s still not good but better and edible at least. Keto bread isn’t nice to me.
So I stick to my eggs, tasty, simple, low-carb enough but I don’t care my egg and liver carbs anyway, they never do any bad to me.

If the bagel has a significant amount of wheat flour, so it matters to the texture and taste… I can’t imagine it can end up with 1g net carbs per bagel. My tiny addition in my bread surely matters more and I barely taste it, it’s still the good old bad tasting gluten-fiber-flax bed… If I make it tasty, that will be carby just less than my normal wheat bread.

So I have my doubts about tasty very low-carb breads but tastes differ as we know. But be careful with labels, they are often quite tricky.
Flexseed has close to no net carbs, by the way. Most of the carbs should come from the flour and they are super carby ingredients. So keto bread with flour is a strange, suspicious thing to me.

(UsedToBeT2D) #9

Wheat. Bad.

(Vic) #10

Net carbs, deceptive BS, commercial trickery to make you buy junkfood.

Quote " Wheat Bad"
Words of wisdom :orange_heart: :+1:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #11

I"m confused. I thought Canada’s labelling laws were similar to those of the U.S., so the number listed as “carbohydrate” would be total carbohydrate, not net. So in the example you give, the label should read “50 g,” no?

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #12

@PortHardy If we can agree that the 17 g figure on the label is total carbs and not net, then in theory yes, you could safely eat one of these bagels and it wouldn’t affect your diet. But this also assumes, of course, that you have no problems with wheat. But if the 17 g figure you quote for those bagels turns out to be net carbs, that paints a whole different picture, naturally.

The way to tell whether you are dealing with a North American label or a British/European label is by the presence or absence of a column in the nutrition panel giving amounts per 100 g. If there is no such column, the label is North American, and the “carbohydrate” figure is therefore total carbohydrate. (In this case, you have to beware the serving size, which manufacturers are allowed to make unrealistically small.) If there is a column of contents per 100 g (and there may or may not be a similar column with amounts per serving), then the label is British/European and thus the “carbohydrate” figure is net carbs, with the fibre amount already subtracted.

Wheat doesn’t affect every one the same way. The biggest problem, which affects the most people, is that refined grains lack any fibre, so white wheat flour is pure digestible carbohydrate. But then there are people who cannot tolerate wheat gluten, which is one of the main reasons for using wheat flour in the first place. Bread without gluten is tricky to make. Then there is coeliac disease, which possibly affects more people than we are aware of. And then there are possible other sensitivities, which may or may not turn out to be real.

I would say, speaking for myself only, to avoid jumping on the anti-wheat bandwagon, but to proceed cautiously. If you try the product, like it, and it seems to have no ill effects on you, then enjoy it. If you don’t like the taste, or if you feel unwell after eating the product, then stop using it.

As Michael points out, all carbohydrate in the product is included in the total. So to use his example, if a product contains 25 g of sugar and 25 g of fibre, the total carbohydrate is 50 g, and the net (subtracting the fibre) is 25 g. The fibre amount needs to be subtracted from the total amount, not from the amount of digestible carbohydrate.

(Allie) #13

I would be ill for days.

There’s more to keto than just low carbs.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #14

As far as I am aware Canada’s labeling laws are the same as USA. I recall, but no longer recall just where, a label that used added fiber to offset total carbs and claim a lower net. If I remember where I saw that I’ll post it.

(Heather Meyer) #15

On the label… It shows you total carbs. Here in Canada we have to subtract fibre and sugar alcohols from the total to get our net carb count.

Ex Bread is 17 total carbs - Fibre which is 16-sugar alcohols which is 0 = Total Net

Unlike UK and EU where they already subtracted. There carb count already has fibre grams subtracted from the product so if it says 17 grams Carbs…its 17 net.

(Heather Meyer) #16

Well, i tried a bagel and ended up with my throat swelling up…so im allergic to somthing in the bread clearly. So i tossed it.