Skip to main content

That's Funny, but isn't it Easier to Just Count Carbs?

Have you seen the trailer for That Sugar Film? It's funny and smart, and I'm glad the film is being made, but it talks up reducing or eliminating added sugars. If you're going to try this at home, how do you know how much added sugar a product contains--unless it doesn't contain any? For example, the almond butter I buy lists as ingredients dry roasted almonds, honey powder (sugar, honey), palm oil, sea salt. My 80% dark chocolate is made of organic chocolate liquor, organic raw cane sugar, organic cocoa butter, organic ground vanilla beans. They both list total carbohydrate and fiber content, but how in the world are you supposed to distinguish how many carbs came from the sugar and how many came from the other ingredients? Without knowing the amounts of all the ingredients, you can't.

By the way, at nine grams net carb per half a chocolate bar and five grams net carb per two tablespoons of almond butter, these products with sugar added come in at a fraction of the net carbohydrate load of one cup of oatmeal (28 grams), a food that the trailer touts. All those lovely complex carbohydrates in the oatmeal are broken down by your digestive system into sugar.
Labels:

Comments

Galina L. said…
May be it is easier to count carbs, but blaming added sugar is more convenient for the genre of "investigative reporting" - more drama, suspense, easier to get 100% of audience to get totally outraged (almost as good as "food in the box").
September 03, 2013
Lori Miller said…
Yes, a villain is a useful literary device.
September 03, 2013
Unknown said…
I don't think the trailer shows the full story. I think Eddie posted another link to the story in an earlier post:

http://thelowcarbdiabetic.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/underbelly-star-damon-gameau-seeks.html

And the article:
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health-fitness/underbelly-star-damon-gameau-seeks-truth-behind-sugar/story-fneuzkvr-1226699963975

It's more about raising awareness about the hidden sugars in processed foods marketed as "healthy".

I happen to agree re. the carbs, but then I'm diabetic and read a lot on the subject - unfortunately most Australians don't and all our health bodies are pushing this stuff as if it's fine for people to eat. The inroads of the GI index here is probably a lot stronger too, because the HQ of it is Sydney University and Prof. Jenny Brand-Miller. You only have to use a glucometer to know how utterly useless GI is for diabetics, yet it's also still used to push carbs on diabetics.


September 04, 2013
Lori Miller said…
Thanks for the links. If it gets some people to avoid crap-in-a-box or sugar-in-a-can, many of them should see some improvements in their health. In my case, though, I started a LC diet because of GI problems, and the foods that gave me the most problems turned out to be wheat and fruit. I'd stopped drinking soda years before and wasn't eating a bunch of sugar.
September 04, 2013
Lowcarb team member said…
Yes, its always a good idea to avoid "crap-in-a-box or sugar-in-a-can,"

All the best Jan
September 04, 2013
Lori Miller said…
Especially if you replace it with meat-on-the-bone and greens-from-the-garden.
September 04, 2013
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black Friday Deals for Good Health

Here are some great Black Friday deals--all ONLINE--that can benefit your health. I've used most of these products and vendors and recommend them. I'm not an affiliate.  Vitamins iHerb.com is having a 25% off Black Friday and Cyber Monday site-wide sale. Vitacost.com is offering $10 off $50, stackable with a variety of other deals. Tried and True Supplements I use: Doctor's Best magnesium ( peach powder , unflavored powder , and tablets ) Country Life kelp tablets Solgar zinc, 22 mg NOW vitamin D, 5,000 IU NOW astaxanthin, 4 mg Jarrow hyaluronic acid, 120 mg Solaray vitamin C tablets, 485 mg Collagen Powder, Dips, Dressings, Mayo and Sauces Primal Kitchen products--all made without added sugar or Frankenfoods--are on sale. If you remember Mark Sisson from the Mark's Daily Apple blog, Primal Kitchen is his company. PrimalKitchen.com  (25% off this week only) iHerb.com  (25% off) Vitacost.com (20% off) I love their vanilla, peanut butter and chocolate-mint collagen pow...
Post a Comment
Read more

Carrageenan: A Sickening Thickener. Is it a Migraine Menace?

Let me tell you about my ride in an ambulance last night. I woke up at six o'clock from a nap with a mild headache. I ate dinner and took my vitamins, along with a couple of extra magnesium pills. Since magnesium helps my TMJ flare-ups, I thought it might help my headache. Then I went to see my mother. A few hours later, I had a severe headache, sinus pain and nausea. During a brief respite from the pain, I left for home, but less than a mile later, I got out of my car and threw up. A cop, Officer Fisher, pulled up behind me and asked if I was okay. He believed me when he said I hadn't been drinking, but he said I seemed lethargic and he wanted the paramedics to see me. (Later he mentioned that a man he'd recently stopped was having a stroke.) Thinking I had a migraine headache, the paramedics wanted to take me to the hospital. But since I knew that doctors don't know what causes migraine headaches, and I didn't know what effect their medicine would have on m...
15 comments
Read more

1972: Carole King, M*A*S*H and...Food for 2014?

I feel well enough to try Atkins induction again. The palpitations are gone, even without taking potassium. My energy level is back to normal--no more trucking on the treadmill early in the morning  to burn off nervous energy or emergency meat, cheese and mineral water stops after yoga. It's back to lounging around to Chopin and Debussy in the morning and stopping at the wine bar for pleasure. I'm using the original Atkins book: Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution from 1972. While looking in the book for a way to make gelatin (which is allowed on induction, but Jello(TM) and products like it have questionable ingredients), I felt the earth move under my feet : those recipes from 42 years ago look delicious and they're mostly real food. It makes sense, though: the cooks who wrote the recipes probably didn't have had a palette used to low-fat food full of added sugar or a bag of tricks to make low-fat food edible. Anyone who writes a recipe called "Cottage Cheese and...
21 comments
Read more

In Defense of Fast Food

Another modern trend - healthy food should be expensive, not nutrients-dense and preferably exotic, or you would be eating like plebs who live on a dollar McD menu. --Galina L. I don't try to jump over seven-foot hurdles, I look for one-foot hurdles I can step over. --Warren Buffett, pleb who eats at McDonald's Despite all the talk about wild-caught v. farmed, grass-fed v. CAFO and the vilification of fast food, a lot of us plebs benefit simply from carbohydrate restriction. But even though diabetes and obesity are rampant, and carb restriction alone would help millions of people, the impression is out there that you need to eat in a very specific way, far beyond just watching the carbs. Following a low-carb diet is already a high hurdle for many people. If some people want or need to raise the bar for themselves, that's fine with me, but there's no need to turn low-carb into a hurdle that a lot of people can't jump over. Organic produce and grass-fed or p...
17 comments
Read more

MORE Black Friday/Cyber Monday Deals

Maybe you've heard that Black Friday deals are nothing but a come-on this year. There may be some fake deals out there--there always have been. But I saved about $115 on supplements, groceries, vegetable seeds, and...primer.  $42.78 at iHerb.com over $10 at Vitacost $4.70 on Burpee vegetable seeds $45 on a free bottle of Ideal Immunity probiotics  $12.50 on a gallon of Kilz primer at Ace Hardware I posted a link to my previous post at the Inner Circle, and some of the members added links to even more great deals. Thank you, members natural1 and saukriver! ANOVA Sous vides are on sale for up to 60% off . I've never used a sous vide, but some people use them to make yogurt (among other things).  This one by Inkbird is 31% off on Ebay, and it's apparently quieter than the Anova. A small Kitchen Aid food chopper is on sale for $45.  A larger Cuisinart food processor with slicing and shredding blades is on sale for $100 at Macy's and Amazon --the same price I paid for...
Post a Comment
Read more