Low carb frankenfoods

Factual Questions
1

I’m going to be low carbing over the summer, as I did years ago, and this time around there’s a huge amount of low carb specialty foods available to me.

Some just look scary, with an ingredients list 2 paragraphs long that’s unpronouncable. I’m not well versed in these products, so I was hoping someone with experience could tell me which sort of ingredients, brands, or food types I should steer clear of.

Also, a related question - do sugar alcohols really cause virtually no insulin response? I see a lot of candy made with sugar alcohols out there, with total carb numbers that are scary - but that’s primarily sugar alcohols, which are then said not to be metabolically active as far as insulin response - is that actually true? Can a 20g of carbs candy bar with 15g of sugar alcohol really be treated as a 5g carb candy bar in terms of insulin response?

2

The answer to your second question is yes, sugar alcohols have a trivial effect or no effect on insulin levels.

Second, judging the ingredients of a food on whether you can pronounce them is not a scientific method.

3

Eating low-carb is actually very simple. Eat fresh, whole foods – vegetables and protein and some fats – and avoid processed foods. Don’t eat anything containing flour, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup or any -ose (dextrose, galactose, fructose, sucrose, etc. The exception being Sucralose, which is Splenda and an artificial sweetener).

Basically, the more you can stay away from pre-made, processed crap, the better you will do.

Are you following a particular plan? I highly suggest you do, at least until reducing carbs becomes a habit. You can get asstons of free info at atkins.com.

4

no, I know how to eat low carb. I did it extremely succesfully years ago. There are a lot of low carb foods I don’t like or my stomach doesn’t like, and so my diet becomes pretty repetitive and boring. As such, I was hoping to expand into some of the specialty low carb foods to vary my diet a bit more… I just don’t know which stuff is healthy and acceptable and which stuff is a chemical wasteland.

5

This seems an awfully snide comment to someone who just wants to eat safe food. If you don’t want to help people answer legitimate questions, maybe GQ isn’t the best forum for you.

Besides, while it may not be “scientific,” it’s not necessarily a bad rule of thumb. Processed foods are by and large less healthy than less-processed food. Processed foods by and large have plenty of long chemical sounding ingredients. When the ingredients on a food label are things I have heard of and know what they are (flour, water, milk, ascorbic acid, etc.), I can judge for myself whether those are things I want to consume.

Are long chemical sounding ingredients necessarily bad? No. But plenty of them are. For example, your “partially hydrogenated” fats and oils are all signficiantly worse for you than their non-hydrogenated counterparts. I don’t have any low carb versions of foods that would normally have carbs, so I have no idea what might be in them, but I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to look at a list of ingredients and say “Jeez, I don’t even know what the heck half of this is or may do to my body if I consume it.”

Someone shouldn’t need to be an organic chemist to know and understand the food they’re putting in their bodies.

I’ll try to find some additional online resources, but a good place to start if you want to know more about food ingredients is the FDA Website.

6

Alot of the stuff out there now you kind of just have to try and see how you react with it. I don’t recommend most of the sweet snacks out there - because for most people, sugar alcohols (especially mannitol and lacitol, as wel as malitol) will give you some “bathroom problems”, some more than others.

And I’ve been told that the LESS “bathroom problems” you have, the more effect on your insulin levels there will be (the sugar alcohols are being processed instead of ignored). So it’s a lose-lose situation.

Z-Carb candy bars come highly recommended now, because they use Splenda (sucralose) and Erithytol. “E” doesn’t have such an adverse effect as the other sugar alcohols for most people. I use it in baking that calls for splenda - 1/2 part E and 1/2 Splenda. BUT…Z-Carbs do give me a bit of an upset stomach so YMMV. You can find these at Wal Mart and I think Walgreens for a relatively low price compared to other SF candies.

Hershey’s and Russel Stovers stuff…watch out, major upset tummy with those.

Oh, and NO ONE has come out with a good pasta yet, so don’t even bother. And alot of the “Carb Options” stuff from I think Kraft Foods are a serious ripoff.

The Atkins brand breads and the Brownberry breads are delicious but more for an Ongoing Weightloss stage diet or Maintenence. Or if you can limit to 1 slice every so often. But they are EXPENSIVE.

Along with all the low-carb “frankenfoods” have also come alot of great low-carb recipes online and in books. I suggest you look into doing some of your own baking (you can find lots of ingredients at your local Whole Foods, Trader Joes or other healthfood stores). Check out Dana Carpender’s books on Amazon, and George Stella’s show Low Carb and Lovin’ It on Food TV. Also the Atkins Website has tons of great recipes even if you’re not following the Atkins plan.

Check out http://www.netrition.com for ingredients if you can’t find them nearby.

I think as you get back into Low Carb and start seeing the PRICES on these new products, you’ll realize it’s really not usually worth it to buy the specialty foods - they’ll just end up making you feel yucky and/or stall your weightloss.

Good luck!

7

Some “whole” foods are bad for a low-carb diet: e.g., milk, rice, wheat, sugar, apples. Some processed foods are quite good for a low-carb diet: Atkins Advantage bars, for instance, are low carb and have a high amount of protein.

I notice that some people want to piggy-back their “whole foods” agenda onto the Atkins diet. Well, “whole” is not necessarily “good” and processed is not necessarily “bad.”

8

The South Beach diet is more welcoming of fibre-rich wholefoods, such as brown rice and apples, even though the general trend of the diet is low/lower carb.

The problem with Atkins Advantage bars is firstly that they are packed with chemicals, chemicals that you wouldn’t have to ingest if you got your protein from a healthy source such as fish or chicken. Secondly that they become a snack replacement - instead of the fruit and nuts that Dr Atkins really intends as a snack replacement. So instead of someone having 5 carbs worth of macadamia nuts, they’ll have an Atkins bar. While this is fine occasionally, many Atkins dieters appear to get just as hooked on these bars as they got on candy bars beforehand.

Sugar alcohols: they are not supposed to have an effect on blood sugar/insulin output. However, it is increasingly apparent that not everyone reacts to them in the same way. Some dieters totally stall if they include sugar alcohols, others notice no difference.

9

All food is made of chemicals. Every last piece of food you eat is made of chemicals. That piece of chicken you ate? Chemicals. That spinach you ate? Chemicals. Chemicals, chemicals, chemicals.

If you are claiming that Atkins Advantage bars contain unhealthy chemicals,

  1. Name which chemicals are unhealthy
  2. Provide the scientific evidence that they are unhealthy
10

Here’s what’s in an Atkins bar:

Now I don’t know what all those things are, and what may be dodgy, and that’s the point. Many of those things are added vitamins and minerals (so a good thing). Other things - who knows?

As igloorex points out, people with limited understanding of nutrition - which is probably most people - are not going to have a clue what they’re really eating. What is “polydextrose litesse”? What is “cyanocobalamin”? Are these good things or bad? Are they safe? Do they have side effects? How much is it safe to consume? This Atkins bar might be 100% safe and nutritious, but what about other (cheaper) brands of low-carb candy?

It’s not a case of demanding Only Wholefoods, the issue is understanding what is in your food, whether it needs to be there, whether it should be there, etc. And especially for dieters who are trying to improve their eating habits and lose weight, forming new, permanent eating habits are critical. One of the most problematic habits is snacking on processed food. Anything that allows you to keep that pattern of behaviour is unhelpful. When the Advantage bars run out: is that person more likely to grab a quick candy bar, or a handful of nuts?

11

I have the less common problem with sugar alchohols, I digest them like regular sugar, so most low carb sweet things are off limits. I like Westsoy’s soy slender chocolate milk when I get sugar/chocolate cravings. It has all of 1 gram of carbohydrate per serving.

As far as savory snacks go, I try to stay away from “frankenfoods” and go for stuff that are naturally low in carbs. Things made with TVP (textured vegetable protein) soy, nut fours, and are high in fiber are what I prefer. The La Tortilla Factory low carb tortillas (3g carbs) are really good, especially the garlic & herb flavor.

The best thing about the craze is that there are really great recipes all over the place now. You can always make your own stuff, and that way know exactly what you’re eating. :slight_smile:

12

You might like to try stevia, a sweetener derived from a herb called sweetgrass, often called “natural” (though I think the steviosides are quite processed from it, it’s not like dried basil or anything!)

Diabetics sometimes use this, and it is also popular in the far East, eg Japan, where it is sometimes used in place of sugar in savoury food. Stevia does have a somewhat bitter aftertaste, often described as “licorice”. It doesn’t really taste of licorice, it has more the nuance of those licorice twig/root things you can buy from health food shops and chew on. I found it worked best either in things like stir fries, in place of a spoon of sugar, or honey, or just to reduce the amount of honey needed, or in more cream rich puddings such as creme brulee. You can also try it in herbal tea - certain varieties (particularly ones with mint or aniseed flavouring) mask any aftertaste quite well. And some people even grow to like the aftertatse :wink:

13

Well, cyanocobalamin is plain ol’ vitamin B[sub]12[/sub].

14

Protein Blend Soy Protein Isolate - protein from soy beans
Hydrolyzed Collagen - boiled connective tissue from animal, akin to gelatin
Whey Protein Isolate - protein from milk
Calcium /Sodium Caseinate - more protein from milk

Natural Palm Kernel Oil, Peanuts, Peanut Flour, Water. Cocoa. Natural Flavor, Citric Acid, Potassium Citrate, - self explanatory

Polydextrose Litesse -
Dextrose (aka glucose, “blood sugar”, corn sugar, etc.) can be polymerized or joined into straight ot branching chains in many ways. Some ways of joining them produce digestible (fattening) substances. join two glucoses in an “a,1-4” configuration, and you get the complex sugar Maltose; longer chains in this configuration produce starches like amylose and amylopectin. Glycogen is a branching tree of dextrose used by your body as and energy storage compund (energy strage- fattening; fats themselves are energy storage compounds)

However, other branching configurations of dextrose (like cellulose aka wood fiber) are indigestible, and therefore zero calorie. Litesse™ is a chemically processed wood fiber with a lot of loose dextrose ends. It has many of the properties of soluble fiber, but some of the sweetness of sugar. It also forms a dense non-Newtonian fluid in water, so it gives a good mouth feel. It’s not quite “zero calories” because some of the dextroses will break off and be absorbed – but it’s close

Lecithin - an emulsifier found in egg yolks, also a precursor of choline (a precursor to cell membrane compunds, especially important to nerve and muscle cells) and acetylcholine (a neurotransmitter)

Glycerine - a compound your body can burn (fattening). Also a precursor of fats (which are “triacylglycerols” or 3 fatty acids bound to a glycerin) It’s is slightly sweet, but mostly used to hold moisture in processed food. It’s also used in hand moisturizer, and to hold moisture in homemade bubble soap.

Xylitol - a simple sugar, modestly sweet, but relatively safe for the teeth, because dental bacteria don’t feast on it. According to certain studies, it’s beneficial for several other conditions, too, such as ear infections

High Oleic Sunflower Oil - oleic acid is just one particular fatty acid, It’s found in olive oil and nut oils, and is very stable to processing

Natural Coconut Oil 50% MCT - a lot of people have started considering coconut oil a healthy food for the immune system. MCT (medium chain triglyceries) are similarly touted as having benefits. I haven’t looked at the medical literature for either. Sorry

Potassium Chloride - a salt substitute, also a potassium supplement that has many times as much potassium per gram as potassium citrate

Sucralose - a “non-Nutritive” sweetener - basically a sugar that’s twisted backwards, so you can’t digest it

TriCalcium Phosphate - a chemical emulsifier that breaks up into useful calcium and phosphate ions in water

Calcium Carbonate - chalk, sea shells, etc. somewhat nutritive
Magnesium Oxide - “Milk of Magnesia” is a mixture of magnesium oxide and water (where some of the oxide becomes magnesium hydroxide)

Vitamin A , Vitamin C , Vitamin D-3 , Thiamin , Riboflavin , Cyanocobalamin , Vitamin E Acetate Natural , Niacin , Biotin , Pantothenic Acid , Zinc , Folic Acid , Chromium Chelate , Vitamin K , Selenium - nutrients. A “chelate” is a compound bonded to an organic chemical. Chelation is often used to bind toxins or heavy metal ions to flush them out of the body. Chromium chelate is meant to be more bioavailable than inorganic chromium salts, but not knowing what it’s chelated wiuth, I really can’t guess if this chelate will work.

15

Hmm, thanks for all that good info - is there somewhere on the web I could look up such things to investigate specific ingredients myself, or is this all in obscure, hard to understand, medical literature?

16

You can spend a fortune on Atkins-diet foods. Unnecessarily.

Look, people were losing weight for years on this diet before all these corporate vultures saw their profits on pasta and breads start to slip and decided to make “low carb” foods.

How did they do it?

They read Dr. Atkins’ book and followed his menu advice. Only in a couple of paragraphs does he mention low carb versions of regular foods like bread and pasta.

His induction phase chapter is primarily a list of foods you should eat, and foods you should avoid. If you can’t do without your breads and candies and potatoes, then you should find another diet.

I stayed on induction for two months. For a while I treated my self to one Atkins bar a day, but other than that, I ate natural foods from the list. A whole lotta salads. And a whole lotta cold cuts rolled up in lettuce, which is just another form of salad, really. And a whole lot of chicken breasts and steaks.

I had to stop eating eggs very frequently when my cholesterol skyrocketed. And I had to stop putting cream and sweetener in my coffee… and those were the only two adjustments to my diet program I had to make.

What foods did I miss the most? Beans and beer.

Gawd, my first beer after a month and a half sure tasted good!!

17

Well, hey, thanks for the condescending response that didn’t address my question, I appreciate it.

I can assure you I am quite thoroughly familiar with Atkins, as I’d lost over 180 pounds on it. Yeah, so I’d guess I’m fairly knowledgable.

Anyway, I was considering expanding my diet for the sake of variety, and I wanted to know what foods were actually good, and which ones were unhealthy. Shame on me.

18

A related question: I tried sugar free candy made with sugar alcohols (manitol, mostly, I think)… and I had a bit too much. Had some indigestion and laxative problems… is there some way I can counter this? Would it be unhealthy to use anti-diarrheals to offset the effect?

And what exactly are the negative effects of laxative-like food? Does the food in my stomach go undigested and therefore I don’t get nutrients? Or does it just expel already-digested food faster?

19

Mannitol was actually used medicaly as a “osmotic laxative”. Meaning: It is not absorbed well by the human gut, and therefore holds fluid in the intestine. However, while this is a valid mechanism (also shared by, say, milk of magnesia) I personally think its effect is equally due to the fact that many types of bacteria can digest it (it’s just another sugar to them) which produces changes in the microflora, as well as (often) gas. The traditional medical classification is colored by a) the fact that medicine long ignored the role of intestinal microflora (read: the mix of bacteria in the gut) and b) mannitol was used as an osmotic agent in other medical situations (e.g. to prevent fluid build-up in the skull after a stroke or brain trauma)

I wish I could point you at a reliable online source, but to be honest, even many physicians couldn’t tell you much about most food ingredients. I had a degree in molecular biology before med school, and I was amazed how little biochemistry (etc.) was taught in med school. My inclination would be to suggest that you read and understand Stryer’s Biochemistry (a book that I love and know too well – oh the stories I could tell!) but I do remember that it seemed a bit overwhelming the first time I read it [but not nearly as bad as Lehninger’s]. Maybe you can find a Biochemistry review book you like

There’s too much bad or questionable info out there – and a lot of it is backed up by people with Ph.Ds, who seem sincere. Vastly more is framed in the proper lingo, but is complete gibberish or outright wrong, to someone who actually knows biochemistry and molecular biology well.

Even the highest minds seem to fall prey to biochemical faddism: You’d think the dual Nobelist (Chemistry and Peace) Linus Pauling, who was considered the world’s foremost expert on the carbon bond (the basis of organic and biochemistry) would be a reputable source – but though I agree with many ppoints he made in his lifelong crusade for Vitamin C, it’s quite clear that his overall conclusions were somewhere between vastly overstated and incorrect. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great stuff, and we could probably benefit from a bit more in our diets, but most of his claims have fallen provably short, in trial after trial.

You can do a lot worse than asking a question here, and weighing the answers.

20

KP: Very nice. A couple things I want to add, in limited time:

Chelates: The chromium is probably chelated with EDTA, which is probably the most common chelating agent used in food. (Ethylenediaminetetraacetate – one of the nicest-sounding chemical names, I think.) It’s probably used to make the chromium stable without using a potentially dangerous salt – perhaps to prevent oxidation of the chromium to one of its toxic oxidation states (i.e. Cr(VI)).

Cyanocobalamin: Vitamin B[sub]12[/sub] isn’t really cyanocobalamin, though it’s very commonly called that. My understanding is that, when the structure of the vitamin was first determined, it had been extracted in a way that resulted in a cyano group (-CN, cyanide) being attached to chromium. Vitamin B[sub]12[/sub] is usually methylcobalamin or something like that. I guess it’s possible that vitamin B[sub]12[/sub] added to foods is cyanocobalamin, but I’m not sure that it is.

Stryer: I always liked Voet & Voet more, probably because I was in high school when I first saw the usual biochemistry textbooks, and Voet & Voet has a lot of pictures. Stryer was, by comparison, very black-and-white and boring. I’m not sure when Stryer was last updated – Voet & Voet was revised a year after I finally bought my own copy after wanting to do so for many years. I haven’t compared texts more recently, though, and there’s one major problem I have with Voet & Voet: 90° bond angles. I can’t understand “NH2-CH2-CH2-CH2-C6H5” type structures with 90° bond angles nearly as well as I can understand zig-zag structures. It’s not so much a problem with simpler things, but when I was asked to memorize the structure of, say, Coenzyme A, it got difficult. So, if you know any books that use zig-zag structures, I’d like to read them.