Confused about Carbs

[Lulika]

I have a question, sorry if it's been asked before but I am still such a novice at all this and am a little confused.
I notice people talk about foods having a carb value, for example, a slice of 4 carb bread. What does that mean exactly? That the bread contains 4g of carbs per slice?
I was thinking of following an 80-90 carb per day diet. So does that mean I need to calculate how many carbs are in a serving of each type of food? Is there some kind of list of carb values in foods? This feels like math to me and I am hopleless at math!! :eek:

[morrisma]

In the US, every package of food and some prepared foods have carb, sugar, protein, fiber, etc values for each serving and - this is critical - the number of servings per package.

If you have 4 carb bread, that probably means 4 carbs per slice, so 8 carbs for a sandwich (plus whatever you put on it). I often have a can of soup for lunch. The "Total Carb" for the soup shows 18g of carbs but the serving size is 2 per can so I use 36 carbs in my calculations.

My endo gave me a carb book so I could more easily estimate carbs for meals I cook or order out and there are a couple of websites that allow you to enter food and weight or portions to get the total carbs. Very helpful to get started until you get better at estimating.

Mike

[Jan B]

Lulika,

It may sound hard now, but eventually you will know the carb values of food, in general! Most bread around here, for example, has 15 carbs per slice. It is very important to count your carbs -- it will definitely pay off in the end. Don't feel overwhelmed! I know that Princess Linda posted some sites where you can look up carb counts in about any food. I have a copy of Calorie King (at most bookstores), which lists carbs (and fat and protein, etc.) of most any food you eat, including restaurant food. Become a label expert! AND I have often just googled "carbs in potatoes" for example and been able to find the answer. Also, I finally bought a nice little food scale that has helped tremendously. A label may say 2 tablespoons = 6 carbs (28 grams). When I weighed the product, I was shocked at my bad estimation of 2 tablespoons!

[Lulika]

Thanks so much for that! It will get easier I imagine as I travel this road! :)