What are effective carbs and how are they different from ordinary listing of carbs? Is this just misinformation to get people to buy higher carbs foods? Mislabeling? Bad or useless info?
Chemically, fiber is a carbohydrate, and has calories (heat energy). But the human digestive system cannot digest fiber; so in effect, the fiber does not contribute any calories to the body.
“Effective carbs” are carbs that your body will actually process. The old count included carbs that either had a neglible effect on blood sugar levels, or, uh, ‘pass through’.
Well, my dad is a diabetic and his nutritionist told him to count the carbs on foods by taking the total carbs and subtracting the fiber, because the fiber passes on through. Using his favorite bread as an example (Nature’s Own Wheat 'n Fiber): there are 7g of carbs per slice and 2g of fiber leaving 5g of carbs he has to count. But apparently there’s more to the ‘effective carb’ thing as used by Atkins, etc. We’ve seen Atkin’s products touting a much lower ‘effective carb’ rate then we come up with counting the carbs and subtracting the fiber as per the dietition’s instructions.
Atkins assumes (and I’m not a biochemist, so I’m not quite sure how right it is) that your body cannot convert any sort of sugar alcohol, like malitol, sorbitol, etc. So, if there is a listing of the amount of sugar alcohols, that can be subtracted as well, as well as if there is a listing of carbs in say, sugarless gum, but there is no sucrose or corn syrup there, so it is safe to chew without adding carbs. It seems that more and more labels are listing sugar alcohols, if any, which makes it easier than having to scan the ingredient list to look for real sugar or sugar alcohols.
In addition to cellulose (fibre) and chitin, which are two carbohydrates that are obviously indigestible to humans, most types of starch are also completely or largely indigestible by humans. Even something as commonplace a potato starch is around 98% indigestible. The only way we can use these starches is to cook or marinate them, which breaks some of the more recalcitrant bonds responsible for tertiary structure of the starch molecule. Even substances like cold-boiled pasta are largely indigestible.
It’s not bad or useless information, it just allows products to list there ‘real’ carbohydrate quotient. Listing fibre and starch is only useful so far, since most natural starches effectively act as fibre.