I was in the grocery sto’ this morning and happened upon a display case featuring low carb pancake mix. Even though I’m not doing the Atkins thing, I was intrigued. But the idea of low carb pancakes does not sound very appetizing.
How do low carb products taste in general? Do they taste like the “real thing”? I’m too chicken (and frugal) to experiment myself, but if there’s a product out there that’s yummy, I’ll try it.
I tried low carb french toast once. It was surprisingly good (with lots of butter and syrup), but towards the end of the day, I had to run out of class to vomit. I can’t eat low carb breads anymore.
I haven’t sampled too many low carb foods, but just a few moments ago I had some low-carb Doritos. “Edge”, I think they were called. They weren’t too bad; they had the flavor down perfectly, but the texture was off. You could probably chew a chip for a half hour. And they didn’t look quite right. They were sort of bubbly, like pizza dough you haven’t put holes in before baking.
The low-carb ice cream I had throughout the last week was delicious. Nothing more to say about it. I don’t want to know what methods of devil-worship and human sacrifice their food scientists and engineers undertook to get the flavor so perfect, but perfect it was. Even my cat thinks so.
I’ve been on a low-carb diet for over 6 months, and have tried some of the products out there. I’ve had the Atkins brand Vanilla Almond Breakfast Cereal, and that was pretty tasty, with a decent texture. Almost all low-carb sweets (ice creams, candies) are sweetened with sugar alcohols, which for most folks, cause gastrointestinal distress. I’ve tried the Keto brand ‘oatmeal’ which could easily substitute as wallpaper paste.
The main reason why I stay from the products is mainly because when you go on diets such as Atkins, is to remove processed foods from your diet, and stick with whole foods. The products are out there to help with cravings, but need to be looked at as once-in-a-while treats. (I don’t want to start a debate on low-carb diets, but just offering my opinion on them.)
They are getting better.
Lo-carb breads are fair, but a fellow up the street makes Lo-carb bagles, with only 14g of carbs as compaired with 40+ in a regular bagle. Bagles for me! And they taste the same!
Pasta? Most of the ones I had were closely related to rubber bands. Just a few weeks ago, I latched on to Mullers Lo-carb pasta–not down in the single digets, but not too bad carb wise.
Special K makes a good lo-carb product, but their competitors product has been rated as wet cardboard by my wife and by my mother…
Lo-carb pancakes/waffles seem to come out ok, but I need to add 30% more water than the istructions call for—and try a few varities of syrup. The truely lo-carb syrups are thin, but there are several ‘lite’ syrups that have about half the carbs as tree-derived products.
The sugar free puddings are good, I just cringe at the price of milk.
Several folks have lo-carb cookies out. They are small, but tastey
Steaks are low carb and they’re mighty tasty.
So is butter.
I’ve been eating low carb for about a year, and I haven’t been too impressed with most of the products marketed for low carb. I do like the Atkins wraps at Subway.
The one thing that I found that I LOVE is a brownie that is made by a local bakery, I’ve seen them for sale in a number of delis in the NY area – Nutritious Creations is the brand name*. I would like these even by the standards of regular brownies. There are a couple of different flavors, peanut butter, walnut, expresso, mint, etc. They count as 2g of carbs. I would highly recommend them to people who prefer chewy, rather than cake-like, brownies. They are made with sugar alcohols, as JavaMaven mentioned, I usually do not care for sugar alcholol products, so this seems to be an exception for me. Oddly enough, this same company makes a low carb cookie that is absolutely vomit-inducing. I can’t figure that out.
*If any other NYers are looking for low carb stuff, they also make a fat-free brownie, with almost identical packaging, and at my local deli, they throw them all in the same bin so you need to be careful in making your selection!
I find a lot of the Atkins products chewy (in a bad way) and/or very chemical-ly. There are some (non-Atkins) tortillas that are quite good, and some whole-grain pastas that are good as well.
In general, I find the products from smaller companies, paricularly those that were dedicated to whole foods before the low-carb thing hit, are much better. A lot of the products from big companies that are trying to get in on the market taste pretty nasty. Recently I’ve hit a number of products made with lactose or milk sugars–not such a great idea if you’re lactose intolerant.
Ben & Jerry’s now has both sugar-free and low-carb ice creams. The blueberry is made with Splenda, which to some people tastes a little off. The chocolate is excellent, as is the NY superchunk or whatever it’s called. Both the strawberry and the cookie dough tasted bad to me.
I’m a six-month Atkineer myself, and I’ve not tried most of the low-carb stuff on the shelves.
And this is my reason too. I gave up all sorts of processed and refined foods when I started low-carbing, and I’m not going to trade tasty high-carb junk food for questionable low-carb junk food. In addition, sugar alcohols tend to knock me out of ketosis, so I couldn’t eat most of them even if I wanted to. I had one (regular) Pringle the other day that a friend gave me and it tasted oddly sweet, so I probably wouldn’t even like many of the low-carb substitutes that are out on the market.
As to tasty low-carb foods, I’m fond of steaks, butter, sour cream, cheese, lettuce, chicken salad, pepperoni, most sausages, fish, broccoli, Caesar dressing, and all sorts of other things.
:: raises hand :: That’d be me. There’s an ingredient called Maltitol that gives me a stomachache (sharp stabbing pains) and gas, so I have to read labels carefully.
As mentioned, the Subway Atkins wraps are pretty good, but I can get wraps at Safeway that are twice as big for about a dollar or two less. I can make it last for two meals, so it’s a much better deal. You can get most of their deli sandwiches on a low-carb wrap, and depending on the sandwich contents, they come in at less than 12 carbs. Safeway also sells the low-carbs tortilla wraps to make your own wraps.
As JavaMaven and Bambi Hassenpfeffer said, I’m also doing Atkins to both lose weight and get the processed crap out of my diet. I don’t want that new “LO-CARB!” stuff in my diet.
I will admit to buying some of the Atkins-brand cheese-twist snack things several months ago, (out of curiosity, they were supposed to be like Cheetos) that were just freaking awful. Dry and hard - they were like bits of plastic with fake cheese powder on them.
I’ve tried Atkins syrup, which I didn’t like on pancakes: it’s very thin and watery. I’ve also got some of the Atkins bake mix, which I used to coat chicken. It’s not bad but has a pronounced peanut-y taste to it. Not bad; just not quite what I was expecting.
I am not strictly on Atkins anymore but I do try to keep my carbs to a minimum. I had pancakes yesterday (regular Bisquick ones) and they tasted sooooo good and I felt SOOOO awful for several hours afterward. Like crashing from a heroin high.
I’ve never been much for low-fat, low-calorie, low-whatever foods. I’d rather have the real thing (maybe just a small portion) or nothing. So I don’t plan to try too many low-carb products, although the ice cream descriptions have me interested.
I’m doing Weight Watchers, so I don’t use many low-carb foods, but the low-carb pasta fits a Weight Watcher’s diet too, so I tried a brand of it.
Ew.
It was disgusting. It tasted like boiled cardboard–tough, pulpy and pasty all at once. It also had a sort of musty, cardboard-y taste. Avoid at all costs. Utterly repulsive.
Er… could someone explain to me just what the hell is “low carb bread”? What’s it made of?
My mom once brougt home some Italian salad dressing that was “fat free” and “oil free”… WTF?
Refused to eat it because I couldn’t identify the anything on the label contents as edible (other than water).
It’s bread made with flour that has a higher ratio of fiber to other carbohydrates than regular flour. Fiber is indigestible, so it doesn’t add to the carbohydrate count – however, since it’s indigestible, it tends to make things spongy and chewy.
I forgot to mention this earlier, but the only LO-CARB product I buy with any frequency is low-carb tortillas. Mixed with some cheap beef and fajita seasoning, and I can make some rather tasty fajitas.
Water, sugar, various thickeners, “spices”. Feh – I’ll take the regular fatty stuff, please.
Most of the sweets taste good, though the maltitol causes most people stomach upset. I actually like the taste of most of the low carb products I’ve tried, though the only pasta I tried was a tiny sample pack. It was truly awful. The Carbsense carrot cake and chocolate cake mixes are very, very good. I try to eat mostly meats, eggs, cheeses and vegetables (mostly vegetables most of the time).
Nope no sugar. It was, IIRC, “water, monocrystalline cellulose, herbs…”
I’m not a low carb-er, so keep that in mind. However, I read in a recent Newsweek that Subway’s Atkins wraps, while low in carbs, are higher in calories than you think. Their recommendation was to request a regular sub on the wrap tortilla to save both carbs and calories (tho’ you might add some carbs with the veggies, which might be a concern - I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want veggies, but I’ve heard that their verboten if you’re starting out on Atkins. Again, I wouldn’t know.)
Anyway, thought I’d pass it along.
I’m not a low carb-er, so keep that in mind. However, I read in a recent Newsweek that Subway’s Atkins wraps, while low in carbs, are higher in calories than you think. Their recommendation was to request a regular sub on the wrap tortilla to save both carbs and calories (tho’ you might add some carbs with the veggies, which might be a concern - I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want veggies, but I’ve heard that they’re verboten if you’re starting out on Atkins. Again, I wouldn’t know.)
Anyway, thought I’d pass it along.
Two Points:
When following a low-carb diet, it’s more important to count carbohydrates than to count calories. Sure, it’s important to watch calorie intake (like no eating steak and bacon by the pound, which seems to be a major misconception of the diet), but it takes second place to carbohydrates. Most low-carb foods are calorie, protein, and fat-rich, which satiates the appetite longer, which is one of the key reasons why the diet works for so many–you’re not hungry within a few hours like low-fat diets can do with some people.
Vegetables are not verboten on Atkins (another major misconception of the diet). Actually, they are essential to the diet, especially high-fiber vegetables such as most salad greens, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, avocadoes, etc. Some vegetables like potatoes and corn are not allowed until the maintenence stage of the diet (and only in moderate portions), but are not totally verboten. The only things that are truly verboten throughout the entire diet are refined carbohydrates: white flour, sugar, corn syrup, etc.