Net Carbs vs Total Carbs - What's the Difference and Does it Matter?

How do you count your carbs?  Net carbs vs total carbs is a debate that happens regularly, but what does it all mean?  Read on to find out.

Carbs seems to be a term that is widely used nowadays.  But as you often find, the food or diet industry has bastardized its true meaning in order to make their rather unhealthy products and practises appear much healthier. This false advertising is primarily due to the fact that there is no legal definition of the term "net carbs".  This then started me on a journey to find the truth, and to verify that what I believed to be a net carb or a total carb was actually the true meaning.

The term "Net Carbs" was actually invented in 2001 by the company Atkins Nutritionals Inc., for the main reason of sidestepping the existing FDA food labeling guidelines. Up until that point, the only term for foods which had the fat, protein, water and ash subtracted from them was carbohydrate.  

After much "googling" it became clear to me that I needed to seek professional advice before writing this blog post and possibly disseminating incorrect information.

I rang a dietician friend of mine, and after speaking with her for a while it became even clearer that due to a lack of a legal definition, any food manufacturer could just about write anything they liked on their packaging as long as it was basically half true. What was even more scarey was the fact that if the manufacturers claims appear outside of the Nutritional Facts Table but yet still on the box or packaging, the FDA have no control over that at all. Talk about a "carte blanche".

So let's wind back a bit and discuss why it even makes a difference.

When you begin your low carb way of eating, your main goal is to get your carbohydrates below a certain level of grams per day.  You can do this in many ways and each diet seems to have a specific level to adhere to. Listed below is some of the low carb diets you may have heard of.

The reason why total carbs and net carbs became a thing, is because after using a low carb diet (or any diet for that matter) for any length of time, your body will adjust and plateau, meaning that you cannot seem to lose any further weight. This is a "normal" function of the body and is designed to protect you from dying of starvation.

It was discovered that by limiting carbohydrates even further, you could actually encourage your body to "knock" itself out of it's plateau and continue losing weight.  This is where the science behind Net Carbs and Total Carbs comes into effect.

Many of the plant products that we eat are actually carbohydrates!  I know it's a bit "mind blowing" if you didn't know that before hand.  This mainly stems from the fact that we are all told to increase our consumption of plant products when we begin a diet.  Think of it this way.  Remember when we learned in science class that plants grow by a process known as photosynthesis?  The idea of that process was that plants took in carbon dioxide and water from the air and soil and then converted it into glucose so that it could grow. The plant uses the glucose to make other substances such as cellulose and starch in order to grow either the fruit or vegetable, and of course the seed for the next generation. Glucose is actually a carbohydrate, or more specifically a sugar.

Now that doesn't mean that all fruits and vegetable should not be avoided on a low carb weight loss diet, quite the opposite actually.  This is because of a wonderful ingredient in plants called fiber; and to a lesser extent sugar alcohols. It is these fibers and sugar alcohols that make the difference between what is known as Total Carbs and Net Carbs.  Plus fiber is good for you and also why you should occasionally eat high carb, high fiber foods such as sweet potatoes.

Fiber has many wonderful health benefits and should not be avoided just because the vegetable may have a high carbohydrate content.  Some of fibers health benefits are

As with most things in life, moderation is the key to good health.  We need to avoid the highly processed carbs such as cakes and sugars, and get our carbohydrate content from plants instead.

Remember that plateau I mentioned before?  This is where Total Carbs and Net Carbs come into their own.  Most of us begin our low carb journey simply counting total carbs, but allowing ourselves a rather generous amount of them. Some of us even go "Dirty Keto" and use our carb limit for an occasional treat as well. 

As we get closer and closer to our goal weight, our body's begin to fight us and we lose weight more slowly, or stop all together.  It is at this stage that we have to get a bit more refined in what we eat in order to keep progressing on our body fat loss journey.

We have two choices, drop our total daily carb allowance to an extremely low amount ie Keto diet, or we can begin to count net carbs and halve our daily carb allowance per day.  Typically the later is the better choice, as it is more sustainable over the long term.  Plus, my belief is that eating fiber is much better for your overall health as fiber is such a beneficial nutrient with so many important health benefits as stated before.

Even though the term "net carbs" was invented by Atkins Nutritionals Inc., it is a term that has stayed in the dieting vernacular over time, and will more than likely stay for a lot longer.  But when it comes to our ability to lose body fat, it is a useful tool for calculating our carbohydrate intake.

So in the end what did my dietician friend say was the best and most effective definition of a net carb?  

How do you put this into practice?  Let's use it to calculate the difference between a normal white potato and a yam, or sweet potato as they are also known.

As you can see from the table above, eating sweet potatoes is a much better option when you are counting net carbs as they have a higher fiber and sugar alcohol content than the traditional white potato.  And the fiber gives you all of those wonderful health benefits mentioned above. Plus they satisfy your hunger as well.

Don't discount the benefits of counting Net Carbs on your low carb diet, especially when you have reached a plateau or are in the maintenance stage.