sugar alcohols?

Question
Hello,
I have been searching online today because I have a question about Cary's Sugar Free syrup. I understand what sugar alcohols are and how they effect blood sugar. My question is (according to the label): one serving of this syrup has 30 calories. Fine. But then how can the same one serving have 12 g of carbs? Doesn't one gram of carbs equal 4 calories? Thus shouldn't the calorie count of one serving be 48 cals instead of 30? I know this is not a big difference in calories, but does this mean that there might be errors in a lot of labels, all of which I read quite carefully. Or, does sugar alcohol have a different carb/calorie count? Thanks in advance, Layla

Answer
Hi, Layla

Without looking at the label, I think the apparent discrepancy might be in what exactly the carbs are in this product.

Different people are looking at different parts of the label.  I don't look at calories so much as I will look at protein and carbs.  But that's me.  For those concerned about calories in "sugar free" products, the important part is the sugar.  Often there are ingredients the producer can use that will not count toward calories, but will count toward the carb count.

So you want to look for ingredients like sucralose and aspertame as they are considered zero-calorie sugar substitutes.  So they can label it as sugar-free and not count the calories, but it is really sweetened with splenda, equal, or something like that.

Cruel, but true because most people only see "sugar-free" and don't read any further.  Good on you for catching that!

1. Prev:weight loss / running
2. Next:Gaing weight the right way