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Carb Labelling

C

colinrim

Member
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Whe I look at food labels I notice there are 2 figures for carbs... 1 for carbs and the second of which sugars....Should I be just concerned with the second (sugars) figure or are the both as bad?

I am going mad here trying to eat more healthily, steering towards a low carb diet....

Any info gratefully received!

Colin
 
The Carbs figure is important as it shows how much carbs will need to be dealt with but the "of which sugars" gives how much quick acting sugars will be tipped into your system, hence how quickly your BG will spike up. :shock: :shock:
 
Like Fregus says.

Sugar is a carbohydrate, so is flour. starch and so on, sugar is a very quickly absorbed carb so will cause spikes very easily.
Some more complex carbs are more slowly absorbed as the body has to change them into sugar first (that's the simple explanation!).

So sugars are a bad (for us) form of carbs, potatoes, cereals, some fruits are also bad but not quite as bad as sugar. Then there are small amounts of carbs in things like vegetables, protien etc and they are the "not so bad carbs".

It also depends on how you eat stuff (for instance, a couple of small potatoes eaten with a lot of cabbage is OK for me) and how much you eat. I can eat a level teaspoon of normal jam on my home made bread toast without any spikes. I cannot eat a small bowl of porridge with or without sugar.

We all vary, so you just have to test until you kmow what you can and cannot eat.

H
 
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