carbs in supplements/vitamins?

[imafatchick]

I was looking at my calcium (Spring Valley - 600 mg - the type sold at Walmart) and the other ingredients (the ones that make the tablet a solid white mass) must have carbs... corn starch? maltodextrin? dextrose?

and it got me thinking...

How can we know how many carbs are coming from our supplements? I was taking Hoodia the first 5 days of induction (am on day 7) and I stopped yesterday after this all came to mind (I did get into ketosis by day 2 so it must not have been hurting me too much)... Can't stop the vitamins though of course...

Is there already a thread on this? Did the book address this? I've read almost the whole thing now (2002 version) but I didn't see any mention of it. Did I miss something? Is there a certain page number one of you could direct me to?

I generally take a lot of supplements and I don't want to mess up. Right now I've cut back to just my potassium and multi because the carb thing spooked me.

Thanks!

[Georgiana]

Re: carbs in supplements/vitamins?

The net carbs are probably very low, which is why nothing is listed on the label. How they affect you... that's an individual thing.

Did your doctor recommend these calcium supplements? If not, you might just not need them.

On Atkins, getting enough calcium from diet alone was never an issue for me.

[imafatchick]

Re: carbs in supplements/vitamins?

Thanks... I'm less worried about getting my calcium, it was more just an example because it was the one where I first noticed the ingredients. But I take a number of things usually, and for instance the hoodia, raspberry leaves, ginseng.... they're all dried plants...

And if we use splenda we are supposed to count the fillers in those tiny loosely packed packets... so it must add up fast right? I guess what I'm wondering is whether the splenda-packet-type-of-counting comes into play here too?

[Georgiana]

Re: carbs in supplements/vitamins?

What are all those supplements for? I've only heard of hoodia being used as a weight loss supplement... but you don't need that on Atkins.

I take a multivitamin and a fish oil supplement. I'm in Europe, so we have the net carbs listed on the label even if there's only a few of them. My multivitamin has 0.07 net carbs per tablet, while the fish oil capsules have less than 0.01 net carbs per 100 g (one capsule weighs 1.38 g). So you can see the numbers are very small. It's true though that the supplements I take don't have maltodextrin, dextrose, etc. among ingredients.

I guess what I'm wondering is whether the splenda-packet-type-of-counting comes into play here too?

Well, for Splenda you know the exact carb count. It's 0.91 net carbs per packet.