Help with my carb counting.

[tinamarie95]

The egg carton says each jumbo egg has 1 carb. but everyones saying eggs have .5 carbs each. And the carb counters online are different from the carb count of the labels. should i go by the labels? or what online carb counters tell me. A package of artichoke hearts says they have 4 grams of carbs and 5 of fiber, and online says something different. WHAT TO BELIEVE???

[barrnone]

Re: Help with my carb counting.

I use fitday for all...good luck!

[atkinsgal08]

Re: Help with my carb counting.

Different size eggs have different carb counts!

The labels (unless you're in the UK or EU) are the least reliable source.

I would trust a carb counter such as the USDA before a label.

https://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

It can be downloaded to your PC here:

Nutrient Data Products and Services

>>A package of artichoke hearts says they have 4 grams of carbs and 5 of fiber,>>

Is this a US package?

[JulieB]

Re: Help with my carb counting.

I use .6carbs for a large egg - I don't know where you saw .5 for Jumbo...It makes sense to me that a Jumbo egg would be more than a large...Did you see .5 for a Jumbo egg on an online carb counter? Which one?

For packages, there are 2 things to consider:
1) the package label goes by serving size (per serving)
2) Counts on nutritional labels can be rounded.

So if the package contains nothing but artichoke hearts (i.e. ingredients list = "artichoke hearts.") then I would measure the contents of the pkg & go by a carb counter. But if the food is processed, or has multiple ingredients, then I use the package's nutritional label, and round up .5 carbs PER SERVING.

Still pretty confusing...maybe someone else has a better method or can explain better...I'm not sure my brain is working at full capacity right now....

[brandywine1241]

Re: Help with my carb counting.

If you are in the US, labels list nutritional information in whole numbers. Therefore, if a food (say one jumbo egg, which has .8g carbs according to the USDA database) has .5 up to 1.49999999 g carbs, the label will list it as 1g carbs. Anything less that .5g carbs will be listed as 0g carbs. The artichokes appear to be packaged in a country where the fiber count is not included in the total carb count as it is in the US. In this case you can use the carb count on the label as net carbs unless you want to look up the fractional (more accurate) number.

As you can see, this rounding technique on labels can really throw you off when trying to limit carb intake to such a small number.