To many of you this may be old hat, but for our newest low-carb friends this little tool can be a real eye opener.  Watch those sneaky carbs!

Hidden carbs are very easy to find. All it takes is the nutrition label and a little math. Here’s an example of how it works:

The Great Value Heavy Cream nutrition label says it has 50 calories, 5 grams of fat, 0 carbohydrates, and 0 grams of protein per 1 tablespoon. To see if this is accurate we simply use the following formula:

fat x 9 calories + carbs x 4 calories + protein x 4 calories = total calories per serving.

So here’s how this works. Each gram of fat contains 9 calories. Each gram of carabohydrate contains 4 calories. Each gram of protein contains 4 calories. (Now you know what that little line at the bottom of the nutrition label means!) In our example above, our fat should be worked like this:

5 grams of fat x 9 calories = 45 calories.

That accounts for most of the calories in this product. But we still need to find out where the other 5 calories are coming from. So we continue on..

0 Carbohydrates x 4 calories = 0 calories.

0 Protein x 4 calories = 0 calories.

Now we have a problem. There are 5 calories unaccounted for. Most likely those are attributed to carbohydrates. So while the label says there are 0 carbs per 1 tablespoon, in all likelyhood there are actually 1.25 carbs per tablespoon.

5 left over calories divided by the 4 carb calories = 1.25

How do the food industry get by with this? In most cases all they have to do is keep the serving small enough that the carb count is below 1. It could be .9 carbs and they can still list it as 0 because it isn’t technically a full gram of carbs. Do you see how easy it can be to ingest more carbs that you realize? Now this isn’t meant to make you paranoid about everything you eat. It’s just a little tool you can use to help with those items you just aren’t so sure about.