"Other" carbs

[Evie]

Alright, I'm quite naive about this, and while I've been doing some reading I consider you guys much more knowledgeable on this than me+book learning will ever be , so forgive the stupid question.

So, total carbs-fiber=amount of carbs something has that will have an effect on my blood sugar, yes? (just making sure I'm not completely wrong on the basics).

Now I love to eat Clif bars, so I've been trying to see how much of them I can eat without spiking too high. One whole bar gets me a little higher than I'd prefer, but half or a fourth a bar at a time is fine. The label goes as follows:

http://www.clifbar.com/uploads/product/Blueberry-Crisp-NLEA_1.gif

Those "other" carbs, are they subtractable? Seems kind of vague. I doubt they are because of how high it gets me(it wasn't as high as I had feared though), but I wanted to check with you guys.

[fairyblood]

As far as I can tell the other carbs are carbs that aren't sugars. So if you add the sugars 21g + the other carbs 17g + the dietary fiber 5g you get the total carb count = 43. Total carb count is the only number I pay any attention to. However I do know people who subtract the dietary fiber because it isn't supposed to be digestible.

[Granny Shanny]

The label seems almost deliberately confusing, but to take a conservative stance - don't subtract anything. At the very most, subtract only 4g or 5g of fiber.

[fgummett]

These labels were supposed to help us but I think they are now often used to confuse and even form part of the marketing.

I'd read it as 43g carbs total with at most 9g fibre which as noted above is generally indigestible by humans and may be subtracted (some folks don't). "Sugars" are IIRC the "fast acting" sugars but pretty much all of it [bar the fibre] is going to affect you BG

[Evie]

I generally go by the total carbs first to judge whether it'll spike me or not. But I like to see what the fiber subtracted number is and how it corresponds to how high I peak afterward. I've yet to come across something that's got such a huge amount of fiber that I would eat the whole thing without fearing any repercussions but I'm sure something exists out there.

Thank you for the quick replies :)