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How accurate are food labels....

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Ben Dolden

Ben Dolden

Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
I've been on the DAFNE course around carb counting and one of the things learnt was around how to read and understand food labels, in particular carbs, so you can work out how much insulin to take.

How accurate do you think food labels are?

I ask as I had salmon tonight with a cheese filling and apparently it had 24g of carbs in it? The ingredients were literally salmon and cheese both of which are low/no carbs so I'm confused how they got to 24g?

On one hand I'm thinking do I take 2-3 units as per the label or do I count as zero as I know these ingredients have little carbs?

The outcome was I took 2 just to see what it did to my blood levels and it brought them down from 12.1 to 5.9 after 2hrs 30mins? (Had the meal with a salad)
 
I would be interested to know what else was in the cheese filling.
The 2 units was that for the food or a correction dose as you were at 12.1 before eating?
 
Hello Ben. Two things. Firstly, I'm sure there was a 'Trust me I'm a doctor' feature a few series ago where they tested various ready meals, and they weren't completely accurate ( although not too far out)
Secondly, the dish itself. Was there a thickener like flour or something hidden in the list of ingredients? In which case it may account for 24 carbs, but if the dish as a whole contained a lot of fat and protein ( which salmon and cheese does) this can slow down the body's absorption of the carb, so you may find it takes longer than expected to get into the bloodstream. So watch out later for an unexpected rise in your levels, as the carb, and also to a certain extent, the protein, is turned into glucose and raises your blood glucose levels. ( if I'm having a protein/fat heavy meal, I quite often delay my insulin dose, or split it and give half up front, and the rest after an hour)
 
Pumper_Sue said:
I would be interested to know what else was in the cheese filling.
The 2 units was that for the food or a correction dose as you were at 12.1 before eating?
Click to expand...

Hi Sue

Was just for the Salmon meal (no adjustment) as didn't have confidence in the food label. Good job I didn't make an adjustment based on the outcome.

The only other ingredients on the label show butternut squash, salt and pepper.
 
Robin said:
Hello Ben. Two things. Firstly, I'm sure there was a 'Trust me I'm a doctor' feature a few series ago where they tested various ready meals, and they weren't completely accurate ( although not too far out)
Secondly, the dish itself. Was there a thickener like flour or something hidden in the list of ingredients? In which case it may account for 24 carbs, but if the dish as a whole contained a lot of fat and protein ( which salmon and cheese does) this can slow down the body's absorption of the carb, so you may find it takes longer than expected to get into the bloodstream. So watch out later for an unexpected rise in your levels, as the carb, and also to a certain extent, the protein, is turned into glucose and raises your blood glucose levels. ( if I'm having a protein/fat heavy meal, I quite often delay my insulin dose, or split it and give half up front, and the rest after an hour)
Click to expand...

Hi Robin

Thanks for your comments, certainly very useful and very interesting how you delay you insulin with fatty foods. Do you find that approach to work well for you?

I was only reading up last night on hypos and treatments as I had one (3.1 level). When I was first diagnosed 15yrs ago and in hospital they ran through all the treatments for a hypo and one of the things they mentioned was that a small mars bar was a good treatment for a hypo but from reading last night chocolate, although full of sugar, is also full of fat so takes longer to get into the blood stream then a fizzy drink/ glucose tablets.
 
Well butternut squash is about 12 carbs per 100gms so unless you ate a mountain the carbs didn't come from that 🙂
 
Hi Ben

I think they have to be accurate with these things. Otherwise legal challenges may happen. As far as I'm aware the measurements on nutritional content are done in the lab i.e. not guessed at by someone in an office reading google. 😉 Your salmon dish does seem high in carbs from the ingredients you've described. :confused: Are you sure it's not 2.4g CHO?
 
Ben Dolden said:
Thanks for your comments, certainly very useful and very interesting how you delay you insulin with fatty foods. Do you find that approach to work well for you?
Click to expand...
Yes I do, though in my case, I find insulin normally takes a while to get going, ( this is one of the things I discovered from having a Libre) So I can do my bolus up to half an hour before meals, so if I'm having a high fat/protein low carb meal, delaying it means I tend to do it as I sit down to eat. It's a case of experimenting and working out what timing works best for you.
 
Matt Cycle said:
Hi Ben

I think they have to be accurate with these things. Otherwise legal challenges may happen. As far as I'm aware the measurements on nutritional content are done in the lab i.e. not guessed at by someone in an office reading google. 😉 Your salmon dish does seem high in carbs from the ingredients you've described. :confused: Are you sure it's not 2.4g CHO?
Click to expand...
Matt Cycle said:
Hi Ben

I think they have to be accurate with these things. Otherwise legal challenges may happen. As far as I'm aware the measurements on nutritional content are done in the lab i.e. not guessed at by someone in an office reading google. 😉 Your salmon dish does seem high in carbs from the ingredients you've described. :confused: Are you sure it's not 2.4g CHO?
Click to expand...

Hi Matt

Yeah definitely 24g. I thought the same as you to start with that it should be 2.4g
 
Could be a misprint? Maybe they missed the decimal
 
I've found quite a few labels that miss out the decimal point. One example was a ready meal l saw in Tesco that was something like 34g carb per 100g & 68g per 50g portion! Actually, in that case they may have got them the wrong way round.
 
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