Howdy

In a bid to become more consistent and balance my daily intakes, I've decided to count carbs, protein, fiber, fats and calories for each food of each meal of each day in my 4 day rotation.

Yes, its a mission! But quite important I feel so I can regulate bowel movements (or at least rule this out as a lack/too much fiber), eat at similar times and get a sustained amount of energy, protein and calories each day.

Anywho I just had some general queries about carbs, and how to understand a label.



Can all carbs be split into starch, fiber and sugars?

Looking at this label example from 100g of broccoli, it would appear 2.1g seems unaccounted for. Would it be sensible to estimate 3.6g of 'energy' carbs based on this label?

www.nutritiondata.com/facts/vegetables-a...able-products/2356/2

I also assume that fiber is indigestible, therefore this shouldn't be factored in as 'energy' carbs (?)

This seems to be one of the best sites out there, however if it does look a little suspect I'm open to other suggestions.

Many thanks,

(P.S 'Galactose' is an awesome name!)

Hi konnor,

Sorry it's taken me so long to reply to this post. Been insanely finising a uni assignment this week. Got it in 45 minutes before deadline yesterday. The website has therefore taken a back seat (well not even been in the car)!

First things first well done for finding NutritionData.com it's one of the best (if not the best) sites of it's kind out there and is used by nutrition professionals and students (including myself!).

Basically carbohydrates can be split as follows:

Sugars:

Monosaccharides e.g. glucose, fructose, galactose (single molecules)

Disaccharides e.g. lactose, maltose (2 monosaccharides joined together)

Oligosaccharides (prebiotics) e.g. fruco-oligosaccharides FOS, galacto-oligosaccharides (3-10 monosaccharides joined together if memory serves me!)


Starches:

Above 10 monosacchardie molecules joined together you have \"polysaccharides\" or starch.


Fibre:

Fibre can be split into various categories and many labels or books etc will list it as \"non-starch polysaccharides\" or NSP. This is slightly misleading as NSP is not the only type of fibre but it is by far the most predominant. Other plant components classed as fibre include pectins and lignans which are found in the skin and connective tissues of plants for example.

You can also split fibre in insoluble and soluble forms. Insoluble is things like bran which simply passes through the digestive system unaltered and aids frequency. Soluble fibre is slightly different and can be metabolised by beneficial bacteria to form short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) - good for gut health - and soluble fibre can also absorb cholesterol, lowering blood levels, among other things. Of importance to you is that it slows the absorption of other sugars from foods thus helping to control blood sugar levels. So make sure to eat plenty of fibre with each meal!

Anyway, yes you are right when you say fibre shouldn't be counted as \"energy\" carbs.

To be honest I am not sure about the missing amount of carbs on this label. I assume it is due to types of carbs that aren't required to be listed e.g. oligosaccharides . These can be metabolised by gut bacteria or digested by us and contribute to energy production so it's a bit of a guess how much ebergy you'd get based on that label I'm afraid.

Hope that ramble made some sense!<br /><br />Post edited by: Maff, at: 2009/12/05 17:23

Cheers for that.

Fortunately its not likely to change the accuracy too much. Just seemed a little odd considering on the whole its an excellent site.

I've just finished typing out a 4 day rotation diet with 20 different veg, 3 different meats, 2 fish, 3 different wholegrains and one day with beans. The calories for each day total 2500 and each day has between 30-40 grams of fibre in total. Carbs are at a test level of 100 grams, due to me being quite slim and unable really to think I can go much lower despite blood sugar probs and Candida. Protein is in the range 150-200g but not strictly measured. Neither are fats as most forms will be good for me in abundance.

Hopefully this will give me a good base I can tweak as I need to, and detect any intolerances if they crop up. For too long its been a case of grabbing whatever is in the fridge with no real consistency over calories, eating times, carb content etc.

Off to Tesco's!