Why are carbs counted in foods with more grams of fibre than carbs? (Keto diet)

Trying2Heal

Hello,
I'm following a vegan keto diet. I've seen from several sources that leafy greens like kale, spinach, brocolli and other high fibre plant foods like mushrooms should not count towards your daily carb intake as the fibre content is greater than the carbohydrate content, effectively making them zero net carbs (or even minus carbs!). However, when I enter these foods into the Cronometer app, they all contain/increase my net carbs. Why is this? Why isn't it zero net carbs? (I have the app set to the Keto profile btw). Thanks!

Marie_Eve_Cronometer

Hello @Trying2Heal ,

UK food labels list Carbs and Fibre separately, therefore the carbohydrate figure is already "Net Carbs".

Cheers,

Susan_RD_101

@Trying2Heal

Hello!

I think that there may be some misinformation here. While these foods contain few carbs and a good amount of fibre, none of them will have more fibre than carbs. Personally, I would never count them towards net carbs given that they are such a nutritious part of your diet.

Kind regards,

Marus

Hi !
I never heard of "minus carbs". If a food has a nutrient, it has it, you have nothing to do about it. Fiber can not cancel the carbohydrates, as far as I know. You were misinformed.

Trying2Heal

@Susan_RD_101
Hi Susan, thanks for your response. On the nutritional information of food packaging, there are various foods (in the UK) that list a higher fibre content than carbohydrate content in grams (asparagus, mushrooms, kale, brocolli etc). Are you saying this is inaccurate labelling? Why would the information be displayed in that way? Is it a misrepresentation in some sense? Or is there something I don't know about when it comes to the figures typically stated? Is there something different about UK labelling perhaps?

It seems to be common in keto circles to discount foods that have a higher fibre content than carb content because of the net carb calculations. I'd really like to understand this because it makes a significant difference to my carb intake if foods with a higher fibre to carb ratio can be negated. On the other hand, if this is some sort of labelling trick and foods cannot have more fibre than carbs, I'd like to know/understand how that works too! . Thanks, I really appreciate your time .

Marus

Now I understand what you are saying. When you say "carbs", you think at total carbs (including fiber), but I use "carbs" only for net carbs. Of course, a food can not have more fiber than total carbs, because fiber is a part of total carbs. Total carbs = fiber + starch + sugars. So you can never have negative net carbs.
I am not on ketogenic diet on Cronometer and I also have Net Carbs in my diary. This is shown for every people, because fiber don't count as a carbohydrate in any diet.

Marus

Nutritional information for the foods you listed (and probably for all foods) may have higher fiber content than carbs, but those carbs are net carbs, so you can not substract fibre from them.

Vickie

@Trying2Heal I wonder if UK food labelling is the same as Australia, where we don't include fibre content in the carb count, meaning that the carb on the label is net carb? When I create a food on Cronometer, I always add carb+fibre on the food label to use for the total carb number.

Trying2Heal

@Marus @Vickie Ah, I see! So, just looking on the back of a pack of avocados as an example, it says:
Per 100g
Carbohydrate 1.9g
Of which sugars 0.5g
Fibre 3.4g

So the 1.9 carbohydrate would be the net carbs and the total carb is presumeably 1.9g + 3.4g?

Well, it's rather annoying/confusing that they don't state that it's net carbs on the packaging! Good thing I've been using the generic USDA database on the cronometer app most of the time and not been going by the packaging!

Thanks .

Marus

Yes, that's it !
For me, it has never been confusing, because they list Fibre separately. If the "carbohydrates" would have been "total carbs", they should have written:
Carbohydrate 5.3g
- Of which sugars 0.5g
- Of which fibre 3.4g

Susan_RD_101

Thank you to @Marus and @Vickie for responding to this!

Hope this clears this up for you @Trying2Heal but let us know if you have any other questions.

Schleb5283

@Marus @Susan_RD_101 @Trying2Heal sorry to jump in but I was just googling the same thing, I'm from the UK as well, and if the UK ingredients state the carbs and fibre separately which means the carbs already net, what does that mean for the sugar content? Does that mean we should add the sugar count to the carb count as they are listed separately? Just wanted to know as I am Type 1 diabetic which means the units of insulin per meal are based on the net carbs I ingest, and sometimes my glucose levels are all over the place and I cant figure out why when I have adjusted my insulin based on the nutritional values on labelling. Thanks in advance 😊

Hilary

@Schleb5283 you can learn more about using the different countries' label types in Cronometer here: https://cronometer.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018869171-Reading-Nutrition-Labels

You shouldn't have to do any calculations separately if you are using our database foods. When we add them to the database, we take label types into consideration.