How do you count net carbs?
When it comes to carbs, it’s easy to lose track.
It’s not just that it’s hard to keep tabs on how many grams of carbohydrates you’ve had on any given day, it’s also hard to stay up to date on all the terminology. What’s a “net carb?” How many should we have? And what’s the difference between good carbs and bad?
“Good and bad carbs might be the most confusing thing for some people,” says Elizabeth Zemelman, a registered dietitian with a practice in Thornhill. “I get so many people in my office that are afraid to eat fruit because they think it might be a bad carb, but will eat a granola bar instead, even though it has added sugar. It makes no sense. But, yes, a lot of people have a lot of misinformation about carbs. There’s just too much information out there that may be from the wrong sources.”
Carb confusion is a real thing. Even aside from the eternal debate over whether low-fat or low-carb is the way to go for weight loss, separating the good carbs from the bad is complicated, given the health claims on food packaging and the simple fact that we require different levels and types of carbs depending on activity levels. In response, a lot of people are choosing to calculate “net carbs,” since that’s usually an indicator as to the goodness of any given carb. Not necessarily because fewer carbs are always better, but because the greater the difference between total carbs and net carbs, the more complex the food is likely to be. And complex carbs are the good kind.
To understand why, let’s start with a few basics. There are three macronutrients: protein, fat and carbohydrates. And, although there’s considerable debate as to whether our diets should be higher in protein or carbs (other than from an extremely small sect of people who literally only eat meat and a lot of it), there’s consensus amongst nutritionists and medical professionals that we need both — protein to make tissue and carbohydrates for energy.
The difference between “good” complex carbs and “bad” simple carbs is how quickly we digest them and how fast the sugar enters the bloodstream. Unless you’re extremely active, you want to have as many complex carbs as possible, since we digest them more slowly and the energy from the sugar is on a time-release schedule of sorts.
Fibre is the key to the slow digestion, which is why dietitians including Zemelman suggest upgrading your carbs from white rice to brown (since brown has more fibre), for example, and starting to incorporate more high-fibre grains such as quinoa and farro into your diet whenever possible. Or, instead of that, you could count “net carbs,” which means looking at the nutritional label and subtracting the fibre and “sugar alcohols” from the total carbs — all of which are measured in grams. Why don’t we count these two things in our carb count? To find out, we consulted Leigh Merotto, a registered dietitian in downtown Toronto.
“Within a carbohydrate, there’s sugar, starch and fibre,” Merotto says. “Sugar and starch have calories that a body uses for energy, but then fibre, for the most part, is not actually digested by the body. It kind of passes through and offers digestive health benefits and it can feed good bacteria, but the body doesn’t use it for energy or calories.”
Simple enough. As to the sugar alcohols, Merotto explains they’re neither sugar nor alcohol, but something in between, found in some fruits and vegetables. They taste sweet on the tongue, but don’t typically contain many calories per gram that we actually absorb so you can subtract them, along with the fibre, to get a “net carb” number-measured in grams. If you’re subtracting a lot fibre to reach the net carb number, you’re probably eating a pretty good, complex carbohydrate.
Of course, some sugar alcohols have more calories than others. Instead of going down a rabbit hole to figure that out, though, both dietitians advise it’s probably easier to stick to some general rules about what to eat and what not to eat than to spend a lot of time with your calculator. Since Merotto’s clientele tends towards highly active people who engage in rigorous workouts, she does prescribe simple “bad carbs” (like, say, pasta), on occasion, to people who burn so many calories per day that they need to replenish their energy. For the rest of us, though, complex good carbs, which includes whole starchy vegetables, legumes (including beans) and, yes, even fresh fruit (whole, not juice) should be chosen over processed foods, whenever possible. Especially the processed foods that contain a lot of added sugar, such as doughnuts and sweetened breakfast cereals.
“I’d give more specific advice about portion sizes to a client, depending on their weight, height, activity level and age,” Zemelman says. “But your plate should basically be half-full with vegetables and fruits, a quarter should be proteins and a quarter should be whole grains. And the fruits are very important because they have a high percentage of fibre which help slow down the digestion.”
So maybe it’s not that hard to keep track of carbs, after all. As Zemelman says, there’s a lot of information out there and it can be confusing, but the answer is pretty straightforward.