posted by [identity profile] bikerwalla.livejournal.com at 04:43am on 2004-03-27
Sugar alcohols are carbohydrates in the classical sense, and the body can and does metabolize them, but they don't raise your glycemic level significantly, and they don't get converted to fat. So in the new lo-carb diet plans, they don't 'count' as carbs.

Either they mean 'grams' or 'exchanges'. Unknown, captain.
 
posted by [identity profile] noblessa.livejournal.com at 07:29am on 2004-03-27
It's a carb, but isn't digestible (IIRC). Anyway, they don't count, either. "Net Carbs" is a LC "trigger phrase" - it means "Grams of Carbs - Fiber - Sugar Alchohols", and its the part that gets counted towards your "total intake". Staying "under 20 Grams of carbs" isn't actually "grams of carbs", its "grams of Net Carbs".
 
posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 12:27pm on 2004-03-27
Huh. So "net carbs" is meaningful after all (though according to [livejournal.com profile] ambar potentially misleading for some subset of the population). What I thought was marketing-misspeak turns out to be jargon. Okay, I guess I have to retract that portion of the rant. Thanks for the clue.
 
posted by [identity profile] juuro.livejournal.com at 12:09pm on 2004-03-27
"Exchanges"? That's a new term for me. Care to elucidate?
 
posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 12:35pm on 2004-03-27
I remember that my father used to talk about "exchanges" in the context of a diabetes-control diet (though as I understand it, the same approach and terminology is used in other diets as well).

My fuzzy recollection is that it's sort of a "you can eat this many items from column A, this many from column B, this many from column C, but you can trade two from column C for one of column B..." thing. So a hamburger on a bun would be something like one "meat exchange" and one "bread exchange", and the fries (or chips), being high in starch, would be another "bread exchange". Instead of knowing the exact quantities of fat/protein/starch/sugar in each dish, you have a "table of equivalences". And what combination of exhanges you aim for in a day depends on the reason for your diet.

Wow, I remember a lot less of that than I thought I did.
 
posted by [identity profile] juuro.livejournal.com at 12:49pm on 2004-03-27
So, to use the term "exchange" as a unit, there needs must be some commonly known, accepted, and accredited table of equivalences. Otherwise I could claim any equivalence to be true -- and looking at the output of food scientists over the last four decades, have support for my claims.

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