Hi all!

I'm back from a vacation to my in-laws farm where everything is meat, potatoes and bread! I ended up buying some Total Protein so I had a LC cereal to eat in the morning. I am confused by the nutrition facts on the box, though. If someone could enlighten me:

11 g carbohydrates
3 g dietary fiber
6 g other carbohydrates

The nutrition facts are listed here: http://www.totalcereal.com/

The box states that it has only 8g carbs per serving, but looks to me like it could be as high as 14?? The other thing that irritated me was that it was pre-sweetened. In the ingredients it listed sugar and high fructose corn syurp among other things. Really irritating since I forgot to read the ingredients before I bought it. But I guess it's better than the frosted flakes everyone else was eating!

So, I survived, but am curious about these "other" carbs. Anyone know?

Thanks!

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Mada
221.6/193.8 <--- ONEderland! /sz 8

Could be sugar alcohols. I was upset to find out that even sugar free popcicles have them now.

I was too--Breyers sugar free fruit bars I have eaten for years--now they too have sugar alcohols and I can't have those in any quantity unless I am NOT leaving home--no worry about constipation if I do eat them. . .but I love fruit bars!

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Lori

232/190/130
My other journal http://www.lowcarbeating.com/bb/showthread.php?t=1130

I would guess that they are carbs that don't fall into any of the major categories, ie. sugar, fiber etc. I highly doubt that they are sugar alcohols, if they were they would be subtracted.

I do have to agree with the 8 net grams, as 11 - 3 g fiber = 8g.

The fact that they add sugar and HFCS shows that the company really does not understand low carbing. I will never buy this cereal.

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Started Atkins on 9/20/03
235-->190; 150 goal

I tried the Atkins morning cereal in the beginning, but now don't care for it at all. The ONLY CEREAL I will probably ever have anymore is Maggies! I just need to stop having it every morning and mix it up with some other items.

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Mary Kay 1/1/04 - 232
5/19/08 (5/23/08) - sw226/(cw222)/mg210/fg160

I keep reading about Maggies cereal, Ive never seen a maggies cereal. Is it in the stores and is it hot or cold cereal.

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Started LC 1-10-04

302/199/160, 103lbs down, 39 to go, simply remarkable.

Restart- 8-19-07
242/226/160


405 points to date ( HOLIDAY CHALLENGE )

Maggies Cereal is a mix created by our own Maggie. Check the recipe section for breakfast (above) Its a mix of flaxmeal, wheat bran and soy protein. Really comes out quite tasty (well, some of us add a little fruit or syrup) - but it is very easy to fix in the morning, take on trips, store, etc.
I'm hooked on it.

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Mary Kay 1/1/04 - 232
5/19/08 (5/23/08) - sw226/(cw222)/mg210/fg160

Hey Folks!

I"m a newbie here & a research geek, so I've always been in the habit of reading labels. And honestly, this business of "Net Carbs vs. Carbs vs. Sugar Alcohols" is a bunch of bs if you ask me. Companies are just trying to capitalize on the low-carb phenom, so they're pretending their products are lower in carbs than they really are. (The so-called low-carb Reese's Peanut Butter cups actually have more carbs in a pkg. of 2 than the original ones!) The bottom line is, A Carb Is A Carb. Eat too many of them & your body starts turning them into fat -- period. I pay more attention to Glycemic Index than to straight carbs. And the only carbs I don't worry about at all are the ones from green veggies & fruits. I avoid grains of all kinds, except as special-occasion food.

All processed cereals have a high carb content. The lower-carb versions scare me -- either they're full of soy (which isn't good for you) or theyv'e got too many ingredients I can't pronounce. It's bad enough that we're forced to eat genetically-modified fruits & veggies (or pay a fortune for the ogranic, heirloom varieties) because the gov't won't require growers to label their produce. (When's the last time you bought a supermarket tomato that actually tasted like a tomato?) Now they're coming up with genetically-modified wheat, corn & oat products that are lower in carbs -- but will prolly make you grow a third nipple!

I've already lost all the weight I wanted to lose (& kept it off since 2001), but I still follow a fairly strict (I'd guess it's under 40 grams per day) low-carb regimen, simply because I don't want to count carbs or worry about gaining weight. Plus, it took me nearly a year to get my friends to accept the fact that if they wanted me to dine out with them or have dinner at their house, there had to be high-protein foods available. And they had to be willing to eat the way I eat if they were coming to my house for dinner. No chips, no nachos, no breadsticks, no pasta, no potatoes. No desserts unless I made them myself. And now that they've finally stopped trying to tempt me to eat things I shouldn't, I really don't want to start backsliding with my pals by gorging on high-carb items around them.

So I say, ditch the so-called high-protein cereals, pastas, breads, etc. -- at least until you've hit your goal weight. Then, once you're in Maintenance, it really is easier -- & tastier -- to just let yourself have a dish of pasta or 2 slices of pizza once a week, rather than keeping track of carbs from meal to meal.

- RC

... and that may work very well for those who 1. have no underlying metabolic problems (i.e. diabetic or pre-diabetic conditions), and/or 2. don't go into "craving" mode from the resulting increase in BGL from the high carb meal.

p.s. the cereal recipe is here.

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Speaking of other carbs, anyone know what organic acids are? Found this on the Carb Countdown Smoothie information page:

* For those controlling their carbs through the Atkins Nutritional Approach, count only 3 grams of the 4 grams Total Carbs in this product. Subtract organic acids (1g) which has minimal impact on blood sugar.

Code name for sugar alcohols or realistic way of counting lactose that has been converted to lactic acid? Or something else?

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I have wondered about other carbs also. Since they DO at least CALL them carbs, that at least means that irregardless, they are still Carbs. I live in an area where you can't readily find ingredients to create your own cereal. I like ready and quick in the mornings anyhow, and personally, I like atkins morning start cereal just fine. I like the blueberry the best, and the almond crunch is ok also..I'm a cereal eater at heart, so with the carb countdown milk, it makes for a very reasonable breakfast.

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In the cookies of life, we are the chocolate chips.

When looking at the nutritional label from the site you provided, it appears that the following is true for this cereal:

Per serving:
Carbs = 11
Calories = 120 (found that on another site)
Fat = 3.5
Protein = 13

I plugged those numbers in my hidden carb calculator and came up with true carbs of 9.13 per serving (if you'd like a copy of my hidden carb calculator, e-mail me at aprilreinhadt2@yahoo.com).

So, if you take the 9.13 carbs and subtract the dietary fiber, you come up with an ECC of 6.13 per 3/4 cup of cereal. (Note that the first column on the label includes the cereal with milk). The "other carbs" listed on the label are already included in the "total carbs" tally.

So, if you eat 3/4 cup of the cereal (without milk), you'll consume about 6 grams of carbs. The cereal has 11 ounces in the box and it sells for $4.19.

If you go here, scroll down and click on Total Protein, you can see the list of ingredients, which contains (among other things), sugar, wheat flour, malitol syrup, brown sugar syrup and honey. I'd say that those things account for the OTHER CARBS.

I think I'll pass. My two cents.........

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April

The face of a child can say a lot -- especially the mouth part of the face.

My Blog

Thanks April... thought the "other" carbs weren't counted in the total, but I guess eating it wasn't so bad, since I was on vacation and had limited choices. However, I agree with others who've posted that I won't be buying this again. Had I known it had sugar, HFCS, etc, I would have looked for something else.

And BTW, I LOVE Maggie's cereal too... just didn't plan ahead to take it along. Oops!

Oh well, live and learn.

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Mada
221.6/193.8 <--- ONEderland! /sz 8