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FDA To Decide What Is Low-Carb?
posted 03/31/04
A label that states Low Carb, may not be very accurate.

At the moment it is hard to trust low-carb claims we read on the supermarket shelf. Some products claim to be low-carb when they have just cut a teeny bit off the carbs in comparison to their normal product.

Soon, companies will not find it so easy to make these claims. The FDA is going to decide how many carbs a food product must have before the low-carb claims can be made on the packaging. The FDA will also decide how the food companies must count the grams (of carbs and ingredients).

Everyone is confused about carbohydrates. Lester Crawford, Deputy Commissioner said. He said the FDA needs to demystify the current confusion about carbohydrates. He reckons many products are going to have to change their labels.

Meanwhile, nutritionists are telling people to be careful. If a product tells you it is low carb, that does not mean you should automatically buy it.

Just as a decade or so ago, the fad was low fat. All people read was the fat content and ignored the calorie content. Many people put on weight. Imagine how many calories a big packet of low fat chocolate biscuits have. You should bear this in mind when a product says it is low carb.

Some restaurants are selling low-carb meals that have over 1,300 calories in them. Customers could walk out thinking they are on a diet and will lose weight. Low carb is one of the aims of someone who would like to lose weight, there are other aims as well. Such as, watch the calories, look for balance in protein and good quality fats, eat your fibre (fiber), try to go for quality foods that are as near to their natural state as possible (avoid junk).

A low-carb meal is one that does not shoot your insulin levels sky-high. Low carb means a meal that releases the carbohydrate (glucose, fructose, sucrose or lactose or sugar) slowly into your system. The more fiber you have the slower the release will be.

How to go about it requires a certain amount of research. An apple may have more carbs than some other foods. But an apple has plenty of fiber, which will slow down the release into your system. An apple has fructose, which is a slower releasing sugar than most others. An apple has other nutritional values that are good for your health.

You need to look at the whole balance of a meal – not just the carbs, like we looked just at fat content in the eighties and nineties and got fat.

Source: Diabetes In Control.com: FDA.

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