Net Carbohydrate Function
(& why nutritional information does not equal manual calculations c*4, p*4 + f*9).
Net carbohydrates are the carbohydrates that the body can fully digest into glucose (total carbs – fibre). While total carbohydrates include all forms of carbohydrates present in the food, even those your body cannot digest.
Taking this into consideration, when entering in nutritional information for an ingredient, we enter in:
- Energy (exclusive of dietary fibre)
- Total Protein
- Total Fat
- Total Carbohydrate
The exception to this is packaged foods. In this case we will add the total of all macronutrients (as above), but instead add energy (inclusive of dietary fibre) so we match the information on the package itself. This is primarily to reduce client confusion as they can readily see the nutritional information and hence we do not want to make this differ.
When the net carbohydrate function is turned on, the platform will use the below calculator to determine how many carbohydrates are net carbohydrates.
((total protein (g) x 4) + (total fat (g) x 9)) = calories from fat and protein.
Energy (exclusive of dietary fibre) * – calories from fat and protein
= net carb calories / 4
= net carb grams.
*as per the platform.
It is important when entering in new ingredients that the energy (exclusive of dietary fibre) is less than carbs*4 + protein*4 + fats*9, or else net carbohydrates will be calculated to be higher than total carbohydrates - which due to the explanation above, cannot be true.